Dickey Chapelle, a Shorewood native and American photojournalist known for her work as a war correspondent from World War II through the Vietnam War, was one of history’s most fearless conflict journalists — and the first American woman to die on the job.
Born Georgette Meyer in 1919, “Dickey” — self-named after her favorite explorer, Admiral Richard Byrd — earned a full scholarship to study aeronautical design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after graduating first in her class from Shorewood High School at the age of 16.
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.
On Nov. 4, 1965, Chapelle was killed by a land mine while on patrol with a platoon, becoming the first war correspondent killed in Vietnam.
