Chapelle, Dickey | Wisconsin Historical Society

Historical Essay

Chapelle, Dickey (1919 - 1965)

Photojournalist

Chapelle, Dickey | Wisconsin Historical Society
Dictionary of Wisconsin History. Dictionary of Wisconsin History.

Dickey Chapelle

View original source document: WHI 64787
b. Shorewood, Wisconsin, 1919
d. Vietnam, 1965

Early Life

"Dickey," self-named herself after her favorite explorer, Admiral Richard Byrd. As a teenager, she began working at a Milwaukee airfield and eventually landed a job with TWA in New York. There she enrolled in a photo class taught by TWA's publicity photographer and her future husband, Tony Chapelle.

Work

Dickey was one of the first women foreign correspondents to cover World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and Cold War military struggles. Her work appeared in "Reader's Digest," "National Geographic," "Look," and the "Saturday Evening Post."

She covered stories in Algeria, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania, India, Iraq, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Saipan, Jordan, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, the South Pacific, Turkey and Hungary, where she was arrested and imprisoned from 1955 to 1957. Chapelle was killed in Vietnam in 1965.

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