Kirkpatrick, Helen (1909–1997)

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Kirkpatrick, Helen (1909–1997)

American journalist who was foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. Name variations: Helen Milbank. Born Helen Paull Kirkpatrick on October 18, 1909, in Rochester, New York; died on December 30, 1997; daughter of Lyman Bickford Kirkpatrick (a real estate broker) and Lyde (Paull) Kirkpatrick; attended private schools in Rochester and the Masters School, Dobbs Ferry, New York; graduated from Smith College, 1931; attended the Zimmern School, Geneva, summer 1931; attended the Geneva Institute of International Relations, 1932; married Victor Polachek, in 1934 (divorced 1937); married Robbins Milbank, in 1954; no children.

During World War II, Helen Kirkpatrick was the sole woman correspondent on the Chicago Daily News foreign staff. Capturing a series of spectacular headlines and bylines, Kirkpatrick won the admiration and respect of her more seasoned male colleagues and was frequently compared with pioneering journalists Dorothy Thompson and Anne O'Hare McCormick .

Helen Kirkpatrick was born in Rochester, New York, in 1909, and educated at private schools. She graduated from Smith College in 1931 and pursued her studies at the Zimmern School in Geneva and the Geneva Institute of International Relations. In 1932, under the auspices of the National Student Federation of America, she was one of two student observers at the Disarmament Conference. Returning home, she worked for several years at Macy's department store in Manhattan before returning to the field of international relations in 1934.

While working as the executive secretary of the American Russian Institute for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union and, later, in a position with the Foreign Policy Association in Geneva, Kirkpatrick realized that she wanted to share her experiences with others through journalism. Becoming friendly with the newspaper correspondents in Geneva, she occasionally filled in for them when they were ill or on vacation, and various newspapers began to notice her work. Before long, she was writing for leading British newspapers and magazines and acting as Geneva correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. By 1939, she had published her first book, This Terrible Peace (in which she predicted war), and was a regular on the lecture circuit in the United States, giving talks with such titles as "The Future of the British Empire," "Careers for American Women in Europe," and "Behind the Scenes in London." In collaboration with Victor Gordon Maddox of the London Daily Telegraph and Graham Hutton of The Economist, she also edited the Whitehall Letter, a weekly digest of the news that warned of the takeover of Adolf Hitler. Published in London and distributed throughout the British Empire, it was read closely by such heads of state as Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and

Gustav V, the king of Sweden. To obtain material for the newsletter, Kirkpatrick commuted from one European trouble center to another.

In September 1939, Kirkpatrick joined the Chicago Daily News' London bureau and immediately became known for her "exclusives"; her first was an interview with the duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII of England, who had for years shunned the press. With the outbreak of the war, Kirkpatrick's bosses went off on assignments, leaving the young journalist virtually in charge of the bureau. The promotion of sorts did not sit well with some of the editors of the Daily News, and on a brief trip to the states to promote her second book, Under the British Umbrella, Kirkpatrick was summoned to a meeting with Colonel Frank Knox, the newspaper's publisher, who explained that the daily simply did not have women on the staff. "I can't change my sex," she told him. "But you can change your policy."

The policy was never changed, but Kirkpatrick became a singular exception, winning over the hierarchy of the Daily News with a speech she delivered before the Council on Foreign Relations at the Palmer House in Chicago. Returning to London, she continued to acquire some of the best contacts of any American journalist at the time. Kirkpatrick encountered little of the hostility experienced by other women journalists during the war. Exceptionally tall and distinguished looking, with high cheekbones and blue eyes set into what was termed a memorable face, Kirkpatrick apparently discouraged insults by her very presence.

Like most wire service reporters during the war, Kirkpatrick covered "headquarters" stories, including communiqués, briefings, and press conferences, but she also wrote articles on military strategy, diplomacy, and eyewitness accounts of the fighting. When a Chicago subscriber objected to a woman reporting military strategy and a controversy ensued, the paper stood by her. In 1943, she spent six months in Algiers, covering the North African campaign, and she was present during the surrender of Italian forces in North Africa, flying to her destination aboard a one-seater P-38, wedged into a tiny space behind the pilot's seat. She also covered the surrender of the Italian Fleet in Malta, where she contracted "sandfly fever," an illness marked by high fever and diarrhea. In Naples in 1943, she reported from a field hospital a mile from the front where she observed surgeons performing 20 major operations on casualties too critical to be moved, while the war raged on around them.

In May 1944, Kirkpatrick was chosen to represent all newspapers on a committee assigned to arrange coverage of the landings in Normandy, although the U.S. War Department had ruled that no women correspondents would be allowed to accompany the armed forces during the invasion (June 6, 1944). Reaching the front within several days of the invasion, along with several other enterprising women, Kirkpatrick obtained an interview with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander. Kirkpatrick also was the first correspondent assigned to the headquarters of Brigadier General Pierre-Joseph Koenig, commander of the French forces of the interior, the Free French forces operating inside France, and was one of the first correspondents to enter Paris on Liberation Day, August 25. She accompanied the Free French leaders when they entered Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to give thanks to God and, while there, barely survived an attack by a group of French fascists. "For one flashing instant, it seemed a great massacre was bound to take place as the Cathedral reverberated with the sound of guns," she cabled the Daily News. "There was a sudden blaze, and machine guns sprayed the center aisle, chipping tiles to my left. Time seemed to have no meaning." Kirkpatrick also traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, with the first Allied tanks and visited the Berghof "Eagle's Nest," Hitler's famous retreat on a mountain above Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. There, she reportedly swiped a skillet from the kitchen to cook field rations.

After the war, Kirkpatrick covered the first of the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and, in 1947, reported on the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow. By this time, the Daily News was under new ownership and the foreign service had come under the management of Dorothy Schiff , publisher of the Post, and her husband, Ted Thackrey, the editor. Under a lucrative new contract, Kirkpatrick accepted a job as roving correspondent for the Post. She quit, however, when she learned that Thackrey was a Communist. There was a later investigation, and the Post's foreign news service did not survive.

Kirkpatrick concluded her career by serving as chief of information for the French mission, Economic Cooperation Administration, Paris, where she worked to help implement the Marshall Plan. For her contributions, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the French Medaille de la Reconnaissance, the U.S. Medal of Freedom, and the Rockefeller Public Service award. She also received a Nieman fellowship to Harvard University, which she never used.

In 1954, Kirkpatrick, who had been married briefly during the 1930s, married Robbins Milbank, member of a prominent New England family. Over the next 30 years, the couple maintained homes in California and New Hampshire, and Kirkpatrick became active as a civic leader in both states, serving the causes of education, conservation, crime prevention, and world affairs. After her husband's death, she established a home in Williamsburg, Virginia.