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Fun Trivia: F : Famous Women

Special Sub-Topic: Women War Correspondents


Which woman correspondent immigrated to the U.S. from Eastern Europe at the age of seven after WWII and became an American war correspondent during the Vietnam War?

    Jurate Kazickas. Kazickas and her parents immigrated from Lithuania to the U.S. in 1947. She based her book, "These Hills Called Khe Sanh" on her experiences on patrol with American GIs. She became a highly respected reporter and journalist in New York and Washington, as well as the President of the Kazickas Family Foundation whose mission is to assist in the development of Lituania in its transition from a Communist to Democratic state.

Which correspondent was born into privilege, descended from both the B.F. Goodrich family and that of the former Vice President to James Buchanan?
    Mary Marvin Breckinridge. Breckinridge began her career as a photojournalist and cinematographer, creating a film concerning the Frontier Nursing Service which provided healthcare services to those in isolated, rural areas. Thereafter, her photography concerning international regions and issues were frequently featured in magazines including "The National Geographic," "Life," "Look," and "Collier's." She was hired by Edward R. Murrow as a European broadcaster for CBS, becoming the first female "Murrow's Boy." After marrying U.S. Diplomat James Patterson, she devoted herself to philanthrophy. She died in 2002 at the age of 97.

Which woman did NOT serve as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War?
    Eleanor Packard. Packard covered the fascist-Mussollini invasion of Ethiopia and was a UPI war correspondent. Among Edith Lederer's many achievements was being the first resident AP correspondent in Vietnam and covering the 1975 fall of Vietnam to Communism. Marciano adopted two Vietnam orphans and joined "The Washington Post". Bartimus became AP's first female Bureau Chief in 1974, working in Europe and Latin America, and has worked collaboratively with David Halberstam, Amy Tan and Stephen King.

Who was the first woman war correspondent to win a Pulitzer for International Reporting?
    Marguerite Higgins. Higgins was a correspondent for "The New York Herald Tribune" during WWII, reporting from Britain, France and Germany, and assisted Allied forces in the liberation of Dachau for which she received a U.S. Army campaign ribbon. She also covered post-war Germany, including The Nuremberg Trials and the Soviet blockade of Berlin. When the Korean War broke out she was serving as the Tribune's Tokyo Bureau Chief and was dispatched as their war correspondent, but ordered out of the country by Gen. Walton Walker who had banned all women as war correspondents. General Douglas McArthur lifted the ban, and Higgins was awarded a Pulitzer in 1952 for her coverage of the Korean War. In 1955, she became the bureau chief of the Tribune's Moscow bureau, then joined "Newsday" in 1963 as a correspondent for the Vietnam War. She published the book "Our Vietnam Nightmare," in 1965 as one of the earliest criticisms of a failed foreign policy in Vietnam. She died shortly thereafter, after contacting a parasitic disease while on assignment. She is buried alongside her husband, Lt. General William Hall, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Which photo-journalist began her career as the first female photo-journalist for "Life" magazine, was one of the first western journalists to be permitted inside the Soviet Union in 1930, and recorded the events of WWII and the Korean War?
    Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White was the only foreign correspondent in Moscow when the Germans invaded, and she captured dramatic photography of the bombing of Moscow. While traveling with Gen. Patton's forces in Germany, she recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. During the Korean War she traveled to the remote mountains where a guerrilla war was waged and focused on the effects upon the villages and people. She is also well known for recording the events surrounding the separation of Pakistan from India and was portrayed by Candice Bergen in the film "Ghandi." She died in 1971 at the age of 67, her career having been stilled by the effects of Parkinson's Disease. Carson and Lange were also photojournalists who recorded the horrors of concentration camps.

What female war corresponent worked with Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War, became his third wife, and covered wars around the globe for six decades?
    Martha Gellhorn. All four were the wives of Ernest Hemingway. She divorced him in 1944 when he had become somewhat jealous of her accomplishments -- including the fact that she had gotten ashore on D-Day before him -- and he had begun an affair with WWII war correspondent Mary Welsh. Welsh became Hemingway's fourth wife, and their marriage lasted until his suicide in 1961. Gellhorn's career as a war correspondent began in the 1930s and ended when she determined, at the age of 81, that she was too old to cover the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. She was also an accomplished author. Suffering from cancer and nearly blind, she took her own life in London in 1998.

When Edward R. Murrow put together his team for the radio broadcasts from Europe shortly before the beginning of WWII, he hired a few good women as broadcasters and reporters. Which of the following was NOT among the original "Murrow Boys?"
    Kate Webb. Kate Webb was an Austrailian correspondent for UPI and Agence France Press during the Vietnam War. She was captured and held for 24 days by the North Vietnamese, during which time it was reported that her body had been recovered and her obit was published. Her later work as a correspondent included reports from Indonesia, North Korea, the Gulf War, and Afghanistan where she was held captive and brutally beaten by an Afghanistan warlord. She died of cancer in 2007. Helen Hiett and Mary Marvin Breckinridge were also two of Murrow's original recruits. Murrow's criteria for the women correspondents were that they be well-educated, knowledgeable in languages and history, well travelled throughout Europe, and -- as he expected of his male reporters -- be "steady, reliable and restrained."

What female reporter was denied access to Franklin D. Roosevelt's press conferences, but made a personal appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt who then began conducting her own weekly press conferences for women reporters?
    Ruth Cowan. Cowan joined Associated Press in Chicago, covering crime, gangsters and the trial of Al Capone. In 1940, AP sent her to Washington as a bureau reporter, and in 1943 as a war correspondent to London, North Africa and Algiers. During the Allied invasion of France (D-Day), Cowan covered the war from Allied hospital ships where she interviewed wounded soldiers, and then covered Paris during the liberation. She left AP at the age of 55 (AP's compulsory retirement age for women reporters; men,65) and married Bradley Nash. She became a consultant to the Republican National Committee and worked for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She died in 1993.

Who was the first woman to be accredited as a War Coresspondent by the U.S. Department of War?
    Peggy Hull. Peggy Hull gained her credentials with America entering WWI and her career spanned 31 years. She reported from Mexico, Japan, France and Russia. She travelled with the troops and her stories frequently centered on the soldiers' personal stories. During WWII, a Japanese soldier provided her safe passage because she was a woman. Jane Swisshelm was never formally accredited as a war correspondent, but started newspapers in Minnesota in the mid-19th century which she used to advocate abolition, women's rights and federal assistance in the Indian attacks upon settlers. She served as a nurse during the Civil War and was close friends with Mary Todd Lincoln and Edward Stanton. She died at her farm east of Pittsburgh in 1884, from where she had founded the newspaper "Reconstructionist" which was critical of Andrew Johnson's post Civil War policies.

Which journalist, playwright and author was born the illegitmate daughter of a dancer and violinist, but would report from battlefronts across Europe, Africa, and the Far East during WWII, become a staunch anti-Communist, member of Congress, and Ambassador to Italy?
    Clare Boothe Luce. Boothe married publisher Henry Luce in 1935 and continued writing well-received books and plays, as well as serving as a Member of Congress from Connecticut. During WWII, she contributed to her husband's "Life" magazine concerning her observations across Europe, Africa and the Far East. In 1952, President Eisenhower appointed her the U.S. Ambassador to Italy. Upon retirement she became widely known as a philanthropist, supporter of conservative politics and lecturer. President Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died of brain cancer in 1987, leaving a sizeable bequest to The Henry Luce Foundation and its Clare Boothe Luce Program for women in mathematics, science and engineering, and the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute.


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