Lois Jean Wille (;
née Kroeber; September 19, 1931 – July 23, 2019)
was a Chicago-based journalist, editor, and author. She won her first of two
Pulitzer Prizes in 1963 for a series on local government's failure to provide contraceptive information and services to low-income women.
Her stories led to a number of important policy changes in women's healthcare, public housing, and the juvenile court systems.
In 1989, she received her second Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
Early life
Wille was born in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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in 1931 to architect Walter and homemaker Adele, née Taege. She had one younger brother, Donald.
Soon after she was born, she moved with her family to
Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Wille's maternal ancestors were of German descent, and lived in Chicago since the 1800s. Her mother was born in Arlington Heights. Wille's father was born in
Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, and moved to America in 1924 after finishing college.
Wille described her father as “an intellectual…
holoved mathematics, science, archaeology and transmitted a lot of that to my brother and to me.” Her mother “did…the things that a mother and homemaker did in the thirties and forties…but also early on developed a great interest in politics and civic affairs and later in her life she was one of the most avid listeners of talk shows and radio and readers of newspapers. I think she read newspapers more thoroughly than I did.”
Wille attended a Lutheran grammar school and Arlington Heights High School before attending
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, where she received both a bachelor's degree and master's degree from the university's
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications in 1953 and 1954, respectively. Wille won the Northwestern Alumnae Award in 1986.
While a senior at Northwestern, Wille was the managing editor of the campus newspaper, ''
The Daily Northwestern
''The Daily Northwestern'' is the student newspaper at Northwestern University which is published in print on Mondays and Thursdays and online daily during the academic year. Founded in 1881, and printed in Evanston, Illinois, it is staffed primar ...
''. She also was involved in the efforts to integrate campus dormitories.
Journalism career
''Chicago Daily News'' and first Pulitzer Prize
Upon graduation, Wille began her career at the ''
Chicago Daily News
The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.
History
The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Doughert ...
'' in 1956.
At the time, most women were assigned “feminine” beats, like “Our Gal” stories, fashion coverage, and celebrity interviews. Among Wille's early work included interviewing film star
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
, coverage of
Khrushchev's visit to the United States, and a feature on the Lady of Angels school fire.
When Wille saw an opening in the newsroom in 1957, she jumped at the opportunity. She got the job, becoming one of two women in the newsroom.
"The jobs were hard to get," Wille recalled. "The excuse we kept hearing: 'Well, what if you get pregnant? Then you’re going to quit.' And what do you say? You vow never to get pregnant? It was nonsense, and it’s something a boss or editor would never dare say today."
Early in her career, Wille began covering the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
and social welfare issues.
Much of that work involved reporting on the conditions of Chicago's ghettos, with a focus on disparities in housing and healthcare. In September 1962, Wille ran a five-part series investigating the state's failure to provide birth control information and services to women on public aid and women below the poverty line.
She found that city public health clinics and the public
Cook County Hospital
The John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County (formerly Cook County Hospital) is a public hospital in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is part of the Cook County Health and Hospital System, along with Provident Hospital of Cook County and ...
refused to give women information on contraception if they relied on the state for health care.
"I had wanted to write about this problem for a long time," said Wille, "both because it was important to women's health and because it denied an essential part of health care to poor women that more affluent women got as a matter of course."
Wille faced some pushback in the lead-up to running her series. The editor of the ''Chicago Daily News'', Maurice "Ritz" Fisher, was a devout Catholic with reservations about publishing a story involving birth control. After consulting a local Catholic priest and activist, Fisher allowed the story to be run. Less than three months after the story's publication, the Illinois Public Aid Commission voted 6-4 to pay for birth control for welfare recipients.
In 1963, Wille won her first
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Wille had said that she never imagined she would win a Pulitzer for this story, and that her goal was to change public policy. "It bothered me that women who were so poor that they had to rely on government for their medical care could not get the same quality of care that I could," Wille said in her interview with Diane Gentry in 1991.
"Women were dying because of it. There were women who were aborting themselves and dying. Children who were being abandoned because they were unwanted. So that's what motivated me."
During that time period, Wille also wrote a series on children who suffered brain damage from eating
lead paint
Lead paint or lead-based paint is paint containing lead. As pigment, lead(II) chromate (, "chrome yellow"), lead(II,IV) oxide, (, "red lead"), and lead(II) carbonate (, "white lead") are the most common forms.. Lead is added to paint to accele ...
in tenements, investigated issues with commitment procedures at a local mental health clinic, and reported on the failures of the juvenile court system in
Cook County
Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...
.
For several of her stories, Wille went
undercover
To go "undercover" (that is, to go on an undercover operation) is to avoid detection by the object of one's observation, and especially to disguise one's own identity (or use an assumed identity) for the purposes of gaining the trust of an ind ...
or semi-undercover.
After leading a report on the impact on Chicago of the death of Mayor
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 until his death. He has been cal ...
, Wille shifted her focus from investigative to editorial writing. She was promoted to editor of the editorial page in 1977.
''Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune'', and later career
When the ''Chicago Daily News'' ceased publication in 1978, Wille became the editorial page editor at the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
.''
In 1984, following
Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the ''Sun-Times'', Wille left the paper for its rival paper, the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...
''.
In 1987, she became editor of the ''Tribune’''s editorial page.
In 1989, she received her second
Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing. She retired from the ''Tribune'' in 1991.
Wille's colleagues at the ''Tribune'' described her as "standard-bearer for women, a remarkably adroit writer-thinker-editor who is tough and dogged without losing her femininity."
Doug Kneeland, Wille's deputy editorial page editor, wrote of his colleague: "No question. If Lois Wille were running Chicago, it would be a better place. Fairer, more decent, more honest, more demanding and more giving, preserving the best part of its past, while reaching out eagerly to make even more of its future—for all of its people.”
Columnist
Mike Royko, Wille's colleague at the ''Daily News, Sun-Times'', and ''Tribune'', described Wille as having "no weaknesses as a journalist", stating: "Over the years, I've seen lots of Pulitzer prize winners in action, but I have never seen anyone who is superb at everything, except Lois. She's brilliant, with the best analytical mind I've ever seen. She's a superb writer, great reporter, marvelous organizer. If she had been a man she could have been editor of the ''Chicago Daily News'' and ''Sun-Times''."
Bibliography
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Personal life
Wille met her husband, Wayne, also an editor and journalist, in a journalism class at Northwestern. They were married in 1954, the same year Wille received her master's degree. They had no children.
Death
Wille died on July 23, 2019 in Chicago after suffering a severe stroke.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wille, Lois
1931 births
2019 deaths
20th-century American journalists
20th-century American women writers
American people of German descent
American women journalists
Chicago Daily News people
Chicago Sun-Times people
Chicago Tribune people
Pulitzer Prize winners for journalism
Journalists from Illinois
Medill School of Journalism alumni
Northwestern University alumni
Writers from Chicago
21st-century American women