University of Wyoming
William B. Dickinson was born May 18, 1908 in Kansas City, Missouri to William and Alice Dickinson. He attended the Independence, Missouri Public Schools and the Kansas City, Missouri Junior College. He graduated from the U. of Kansas in the Spring of 1929, and he started working for the Kansas City Star that afternoon.
After two years working for the Star, Dickinson got a job with the United Press, (which became United Press International in 1973). While with UP he was stationed in Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York. He married his first wife, Aileen Robinson, in 1930, and she died suddenly in 1940. From 1939 to 1940 he was on a “sabbatical” as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard. During World War II, he was stationed in London, the Philippines, and the Southwest Pacific. He was assigned to General McArthur, so he covered the landings at the Admiralty Islands and at Leyte on the Philippines. He finally covered the surrender of the Japanese government on the battleship Missouri. In 1943, he met an Australian reporter named Suzanne Fraser, and she became his second wife in 1944 until they divorced in 1948. After the war he worked on UP’s main news desk in New York until he became the UP foreign news editor. He married his third wife, Joan Younger, in 1949. The three marriages produced two children by Aileen and two by Joan. Another child was Joan’s by a previous marriage.
In 1948 Walter Lister of the Philadelphia Bulletin persuaded Dickinson to come to work for the Bulletin as his news editor. Dickinson worked on the news desk as Washington bureau chief, Associate City Editor, Assistant Managing Editor, and, finally, as Managing Editor. In 1969 Dickinson was able to serve as a foreign correspondent on a trip to the USSR, and during 1972 he was able to do the same thing while covering President Nixon in China. He retired in 1973 after five years as Executive Editor, but he continued writing and reporting until his death in 1978. During his retirement, he also served on the U. S. Privacy Protection Study Commission and the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Director). By 1982 the Philadelphia Bulletin had closed.
During his tenure with the Bulletin, Dickinson was instrumental in helping the paper earn two Pulitzer prizes. He also earned many awards and honors for stories ranging from his United Press coverage of the Philippines to his Bulletin articles on Philadelphia municipal affairs.
The William B. Dickinson Papers 1904-1982 focus on three main periods of Dickinson’s life. There are letters to his family and friends before World War II. There are professional articles, manuscripts and personal letters saved from the war. The largest part of his correspondence however is devoted to professional letters, articles and manuscripts created during his 25 executive years with the Philadelphia Bulletin, A substantial collection of professional news photographs and personal pictures come from Dickinson’s youth, war years and family. A large collection of press photos documents a trip to the U.S.S.R. in 1969 and the Nixon trip to China in 1972.
There are no access restrictions on the materials for research purposes, and the collection is open to the public.
The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.
There are no known other archival collections created by William B. Dickinson at the date of processing.
The William B. Dickinson Papers were given to the American Heritage Center by his widow Joan Younger Dickinson in 1982 and 1983.
The collection was processed by John Hanks in January 2003 and encoded by Cameron Green in February 2016.
Item Description, Box Number, Folder Number, Collection Name, Collection Number, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.