What S A Woman Doing Here A Reporter S Report On Herself
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Dickey Chapelle was an American photo journalist known for her work as a war correspondent from World War II through the Vietnam War.
Background
Dickey Chapelle was born on March 14, 1918 in Shorewood, Wisconsin, United States. She was the daughter of Paul Gerhart Meyer, a salesman of construction materials, and Edna Francisca Engelhardt, an interior designer. She grew up in a permissive, pacifist household consisting of her parents, brother, grandparents, and several other adult relatives. Her aunts were to have much influence over Georgette, who thought of herself as a tomboy during her high school years. While friends had movie stars as heroes, she so idolized Admiral Richard E. Byrd that after seeing a film about his South Pole expedition that sparked her interest in aviation, and later meeting him after a lecture in Milwaukee, she began to use a form of his name, Dickey, as her pen name.
Education
She graduated as valedictorian from Shorewood High School in 1935 and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study aeronautical engineering on a scholarship that fall.
Career
Because she spent so much time writing news stories for the Boston Traveler and exploring the Boston Navy Yard, she did poorly in her classes and did not return after her sophomore year. Instead she took flying lessons and attended air shows in Milwaukee. When she accompanied her grandparents to their winter home in Florida, she took a job as a publicist for a Miami air show and also reported on aviation. In early 1938 she went to New York City to become director of publicity for Trans World Airlines (then Transcontinental and Western Airlines). Chapelle had been with TWA for about two years when she began to study photography with the airline's publicity photographer, Tony Chapelle. During the next year she worked to build a reputation as a free-lance journalist by shooting photo essays, especially on aviation. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, her husband volunteered for naval service and was sent to Panama. Dickey followed in June 1942 as a war correspondent on assignment for Look magazine. After returning to New York in 1943, she wrote and contributed to several books on aviation. In January 1945 she was sent to the Pacific by Fawcett Publications. On Iwo Jima she photographed the transfer of wounded marines to a Red Cross hospital ship. By April 1, 1945, she had arrived on Okinawa, where she continued to photograph casualties, asking to be taken "as far forward as you'll let me go, " a request she was to repeat throughout her career. During 1946 and 1947, Chapelle served as associate editor of Seventeen magazine, traveling to thirty countries. During the next six years she worked with her husband to document the war devastation in Europe and the Middle East for the American Friends Service Committee, CARE, UNICEF, Save the Children, National Geographic, and the U. S. State Department. In 1949 they founded AVISO (the American Volunteer Information Services Overseas), which remained active for only one year. Shortly after her divorce in 1956, while she was director of public information for the Research Institute of America, Chapelle was asked to photograph Hungarian refugees for the International Rescue Committee and Life magazine. She worked for ten days at Andau with James Michener and others, documenting the flight of the refugees across the frozen fields to the Austrian border. On December 5, accompanying two Hungarians attempting to bring penicillin into their homeland, she was captured. She spent the next five weeks alone in a cell at Fo Street Prison in Budapest. She engaged in what she later described as a "battle of the wills" against cold, hunger, lengthy interrogations, and uncertainty by exercising, memorizing poetry, and reviewing a mental balance sheet each day. On January 14, 1957, she was transferred to the Marco Street jail, where she shared a cell with eight Hungarian women until her trial and release thirteen days later. In July 1957, Chapelle again traveled to a combat zone by having herself smuggled in and out of Algeria to photograph the Scorpion Battalion of the Algerian Federation of National Liberation. She then went to the Mediterranean to document the activities of the U. S. Sixth Fleet, and from there to cover marines at the front lines in Lebanon. She entered Cuba as a tourist in November 1958 and spent the following nine weeks photographing Fidel Castro's revolution, for which he awarded her a medal in April 1959. It was during 1959 that she learned parachuting and jumped with an army airborne division into Korea. Her autobiography, What's a Woman Doing Here? , was published. She continued to photograph combat in Vietnam for such publications as Reader's Digest and National Geographic, and to speak about the conflict to groups in the United States. In the field she dressed in Fatigues and carried only her two cameras and a small combat pack. She was respected by the marines she photographed for her courage and her attitude, which was exemplified by her comment, "I lug my own stuff and I take no favors. " On November 4, 1965, Chapelle was with two companies of marines near Chulai, Vietnam. At dawn she was moving toward the village with the troops when a mine exploded. She was one of four killed by the blast. Her last article, "Water War in Vietnam, " published in National Geographic in February 1966, described the dangers of Vietcong mortar fire and mine explosions.
Achievements
In 1962, Chapelle received the Overseas Press Club's highest honor, the George Polk Memorial Award, for her courageous coverage of the Vietnam War.
