Background
Virginia Schau (Virginia Margaret (Brown) Schau) was born on February 23, 1915, in Sacramento, California, United States. One of the two daughters of Henry R. and Mable L. (Masters) Brown; Mr. Brown ran a grocery in Sacramento.
the University of the Pacific
Virginia Schau was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1954.
Virginia Schau (Virginia Margaret (Brown) Schau) was born on February 23, 1915, in Sacramento, California, United States. One of the two daughters of Henry R. and Mable L. (Masters) Brown; Mr. Brown ran a grocery in Sacramento.
Virginia Schau graduated from Sacramento High School (now Sacramento Charter High School) in 1933 and then attended college at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, receiving a Bachelor of Music in 1937 and a Bachelor of Arts in 1941.
At the outbreak of World War II, Virginia Schau worked to support the war effort, and by mid-1942 was the acting head of the Mail and Records Division of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service for the San Francisco Procurement District.
She was an amateur photographer. She used a Kodak Brownie for the award-winning photograph of a truck that fell off a bridge, its driver suspended by a rescue rope. Virginia Schau was the first woman ever to win the award. The award-winning photograph was taken in Redding, California, entitled "Rescue on Pit River Bridge" Virginia Schau received a $1,000 cash award as the prize, as well as being paid by other news outlets for the use of the photographs. Interviews at the time she received the reward depict a bewildered, but happy, amateur, who modestly called herself "no photographer at all" who won a prize with her "little Brownie" camera. The money came in handy for defraying the hospital bill concerning the birth of her first-born child, a son.
Virginia and Walter Schau eventually moved to Santa Rosa, California, where they spent their last years. Both are buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.
Virginia Schau was a member of the national music sorority Mu Phi Epsilon.
On April 19, 1942, Virginia married First Lieutenant Gilbert Burton Doolittle, U. S. Army at the Presidio in San Francisco, California. Promoted to Captain, Gilbert Doolittle would be killed on February 1, 1945, in the Battle of Luzon as the Allies fought to retake the Philippines. Captain Doolittle's remains would be returned to the United States and in 1948, he would be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
On May 22, 1949, in San Joaquin County, California, Virginia Doolittle married Army veteran Walter Miller Schau, a "cost accountant" for the Standard Oil Company in San Francisco, and moved to the town of San Anselmo, California.