(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Portia Young.

Next on 10thirtysix, we honor Women's History Month.

With a focus on two Milwaukee leaders who've made their own history.

Plus, hear from Miss America, Grace Steinke who shares her thoughts on the American dream.

And a look back at our Emmy award-winning story on Sherwood native and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle.

(gentle music) March is Women's History Month so we're dedicating this next half hour to women past and present whose stories are quite noteworthy.

Milwaukee County has some historic firsts worth celebrating when it comes to black women in positions of leadership.

Alexandria Mack takes us into the world of two first responders who are shattering glass ceilings while protecting and serving our community.

- Engine 2 is about to get a run so you'll see all of the members come down.

Quickly get on the engine and go out and see what's going on who in the community is in need of help at this time.

(firetruck accelerating) (firetruck sirens blaring) - [Alexandria] They say there's strength in numbers.

- It feels great seeing the state of Wisconsin and all over the world actually making these historic strides with women of color.

Because it's something we didn't used to see.

- [Alexandria] But the real strength may be staying the course when you're one of only a few.

- I, Denita Renee Ball.

- Having been elected to the office of Milwaukee County Sheriff.

- Having been elected to the office of Milwaukee County Sheriff.

There are oftentimes when we are the first or just one of a few but we should not be discouraged if that's what we really want to do.

- [Alexandria] Assistant Fire Chief Sharon Purifoy and Sheriff Denita Ball have built careers in fields long dominated by men but as first responders it was never about the numbers as much as it was about the people they were able to help through some of their darkest moments.

- Once I got on the job I saw that I probably helped more people during stressful situation as a Milwaukee firefighter as I did as a social worker or at least, just as many.

You know, we always say we're seeing people at their worst time.

You are their go-to person at that time.

- Just working with the people making a difference in the lives, in their lives.

Sometimes we would encounter people on some of the worst days of their life and so, it was my hope that I would make a difference.

- [Alexandria] Now, as the first African-American female assistant chief for Milwaukee Fire and the first female sheriff of Milwaukee County history doesn't feel like a a thing of the past.

- So this is engine two.

We also refer to it as headquarters.

It's actually the engine that I started on in April of 2003.

It was the first house that I was assigned to as a firefighter.

I had never set my bar so high.

I was going to get in, do so many years and then get out.

So when I found out that I had gone higher than anybody else, you know, it made me realize that this is where I was supposed to be.

And then when I got the promotion to assistant chief I definitely knew that this is where I was supposed to be.

- [Alexandria] Raised in Sherman Park with her parents and four siblings she never imagined a degree in psychology would lead her to a life of fighting fires.

- Women firefighters, even in 2023, is a very small almost embarrassing percentage of of firefighters and it is hard.

It was hard for me coming on.

I think at that time I, I made 50 so it was about 900 sworn and civilian employees and I made the 50th female firefighters out of 950.

So you try to find your place and it's very hard because you can go on a run that day and in that 24 hour period, never see another female.

- [Alexandria] This was a similar experience for Ball during her 25 year tenure with the Milwaukee Police Department.

- [Denita] It was low numbers then when I started out.

There more now, even in my class there was four of us but I did have a small class of only 28 at that time.

And so, the ranks were low.

Women had just started getting into the police field just maybe less than 10 years before.

- [Alexandria] Born in a small town in Arkansas Ball had to overcome more than just the obvious barriers that came with her gender.

- Well, I was born to a single mom who wasn't ready to have children.

And so, I was raised by my grandmother and she died when I was 12 years old.

And as a result I ended up being in a couple of foster homes but I've also had to battle breast cancer, stage four where I had the surgery, the chemotherapy the radiation, all of that.

And so, I didn't let that get me down.

I just knew that I would get through this and as a result I, the Lord had different plans for me and here I am today.

- So help me God.

- So help me God.

(audience applauding) - [Alexandria] It's that resilience paired with impressive resumes that proved these historical appointments aren't just to meet a diversity quota.

- [Denita] I'm not here to check off a box.

So I'm trying to make sure that we have meaningful change within the community.

And I think most people who are in these positions feel the same way.

They actually want to make a difference within their respective communities.

- [Alexandria] Although Purifoy and Ball are fairly new in their positions their legacies are already being written.

Purifoy, the highest ranking black women across all Wisconsin fire departments and Ball, the first black woman sheriff in Wisconsin.

- [Denita] I just want to be a positive reflection of what I believe someone in criminal justice should be.

I want to, when I encounter people and I do treat them with dignity and respect.

- The legacy that I would like to leave is here was a person who did not know what they were gonna do at one point in their life found a neck and gave a hundred percent.

So my legacy would be one of fairness inclusion, diversity and just a hundred percent hard work.

- [Alexandria] Two first responders making history in the city of Milwaukee.

Though the paths are different they did agree on what their progress symbolizes.

- My story represents that you can do anything if you put your mind to it.

- My story represents the fact that if you put your mind to something that you can do it.

- Grace Steinke is another woman making a name for herself as Miss America.

The nuclear engineering student at UW Madison spoke at a Milwaukee Press Club and Milwaukee Rotary event.

The 20 year old shared how being a violinist and then Miss Wisconsin Outstanding Teen helped her build confidence and connections.

- I started when I was 13 years old.

I was a violinist.

I had been playing for about five years and it was getting to a point that my family was like, hey well, let's start figuring out ways you can help out financially.

You know, violin lessons are expensive.

So I started competing in local violin competitions to help earn some scholarships to cover those lessons.

And I went up there I went up and it was a small room a panel similar to this and I got the violin up and I started doing this just shaking everywhere.

Forgot my music.

Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

So 13 year old me really wanted to become a better performer.

And I looked up talent competitions came across the Miss America's Outstanding Teen Organization.

It has now been changed to the Miss America's Teen Organization.

We dropped outstanding, little bit of a mouthful but at the time I competed as Miss Wisconsin Outstanding Teen and I fell in love.

I was always a taller girl.

I never knew how to stand up straight.

I never knew how to speak to an audience.

I never knew how to interview.

And the Miss America Organization taught me that.

And it continued to teach me that as I continued to network and just meet so many incredible people.

In 2017, I became Miss Wisconsin's Outstanding Teen.

And I'd like to tell a special story about this space, right here.

I actually made an appearance here on Veteran's Day when I was Miss Wisconsin's Outstanding Teen.

This entire room was filled with tables.

Every single one of them was filled by veterans and their family, from World War II which was so incredible.

I played my electric violin.

I had my electric violin for that performance.

And I remember walking through the crowd and just was playing and chatting with people as I was entertaining because I had gotten over that fear of performing pretty quickly, thankfully.

And I remember them asking for songs specifically the Marines Hymn.

Specifically so many unique songs that were special to them.

And I was sad because I didn't know them at the time but how excited was I when I realized I made the connections I made the interactions so important that they invited me back the next year.

Not as Miss Wisconsin's Outstanding Teen by that time I had finished that year of service.

But they invited me back as Grace Steinke to perform again.

And I made sure it was, I was ready for any song requests and it was truly so special to be able to connect with those individuals and to just see them again year after year after year.

And some of them I didn't see but I saw their families.

And it's so special being back here in the same exact space where that all really started.

And that's one of the reasons why I came back to the Miss America Organization when I turned 18 and could compete in the Miss level.

I value those connections.

I value those stories.

I value people.

And that is something that I will forever see as a powerful ability of just hearing stories and uplifting them.

I'm someone who has been through a decent bit as an engineering student, you know.

I've experienced blatant sexism from my professors from my peers, from my colleagues, from my bosses.

Anyone you can imagine.

And never have I wanted more than just to have someone to listen to my story.

And I'm here as Miss America to be that person to listen to your story, to share it, to uplift it and to continue helping in however I best can.

But, aside from that I'm also a nuclear engineering student.

And of course, I'm a little biased and like to promote that too.

So I'm really excited to have this opportunity to talk about nuclear energy and how it can continue to impact our society.

Right now, we've got a lot of lights in this room a lot of microphones.

And here in Wisconsin we've only got one nuclear power plant.

Only one form of reliable, safe, effective zero carbon energy that's producing only 14% of our states in energy.

Which, let's just stop and think about that cause I said only 14%.

That's a lot for one power plant.

That's a lot to power 14% of the state of Wisconsin.

We should be capitalizing on that and we should be utilizing nuclear energy for everything that we can use it for.

- After the event, Grace also took some time to share her American dream story with 10thirtysix producer, Maryann Lazarski.

(inspirational music) - My American dream is genuinely to just be happy to live a life that is fulfilling and just, you know makes my soul happy in the end of the day.

And that's something that's just so important and possible here in America.

(inspirational music) My role as Miss America has provided me with the opportunity to go to school and get a higher education.

I was someone who never thought about going to grad school but now as Miss America, I've earned almost $68,000 just over $68,000 in scholarships that will be put towards a grad school education if I so choose.

When I was competing for the role of Miss America I prioritized making sure I was happy with what I was presenting on stage.

Competing for Miss America is quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You can only do it once.

I wanted to make sure I left everything out there on the stage because I knew if they chose me to be Miss America I wanted them to choose me for who I was and for what I stand for.

Not me trying to be someone else.

Not me trying to be, you know the ideal Miss America but they would choose me because of who I was as a human being.

And I'm really excited that they did.

You know, I'm here today, but truly I feel like every day is a question of is that dream threatened?

Is that something that, you know, I can walk into?

Absolutely not.

But it takes hard work and it takes a lot of determination and tenacity to continue to make that dream happen for myself.

I don't think it is something that's handed out.

That's one thing that is awesome about America is it's something that rewards hard work.

(inspirational music) As a woman and as a nuclear engineer and as Miss America part of being happy means knowing I made a difference in the world.

And it doesn't necessarily mean I change the entire world but sometimes that means making the one connection that will change that one person's world.

If I know I've done that, that's so important to me and will lead to a lot more fulfillment in my life.

(inspirational music) My different interests definitely play a major role in my dream and in my life because one, they're the things that make me happy but two, they're things that I just genuinely want to be a part of.

I get really frustrated, a lot because sometimes people make incorrect and drastically wrong assumptions when they see I'm Miss America or when they see I'm a nuclear engineering student.

But the thing is, I am so much more than that and the women involved in this organization are so much more than that.

We're the women who can.

We can do anything we set our minds to.

If we dream it, we can do it.

And that's something that's powerful.

With enough hard work and enough tenacity that can come true.

As a classical violinist and a competitive water skier they actually feed a lot into my role as Miss America and as a nuclear engineering student.

I credit a lot of my violin for the patients it taught me.

I wasn't a natural at my violin.

I had to work at it.

I had to sit down with the metronome.

And if you're a musician you know the frustration I'm talking about when I bring up the metronome.

I had to really force myself to work on it and to not give up and to do it over and over and over again until I got it.

But that's something that has played into my role as an engineering student because the whole engineering process is try and try again and be okay with failure.

I think sometimes people fear failure but failure is an experience that we can learn from.

And water skiing is similar to that, as well for me.

You know, not only do I get to go out on the water and have a great Wisconsin lake day, but I also I'm trying to learn new tricks on my trick ski.

And when you fall and hit the water over and over and over and over again, yeah, it gets exhausting sometimes.

But it has really fed it into who I am as a human today.

- Many consider Sherwood native Dickey Chapelle to be an American hero and pioneer.

Dickey born Georgette Meyer was the first American female war correspondent killed in action.

That was in Vietnam, November 4th, 1965.

We look back at our Emmy award-winning story on Dickey Chapelle and her captivating photography.

(bullets firing) - [Mike Wallace] When you say combat reporter it usually brings to mind the picture of a battered unshaven, weary correspondent trudging through the mud.

Now, it may surprise you but this lady, who has covered wars and violence and danger ever since she was 18 years old who she is a woman who has covered seven wars in the past five years and her name is Dickey Chapelle.

- [Jackie] It's very honorable what she did and you know, I'm shocked that people don't know who she was who don't even know her name.

- [John] And I had never heard of Dickey Chapelle in my entire life.

And when I was actually first at the Coast Guard one of the people that I've worked with said hey, you gotta check out this book called Brown Water, Black Beret.

And in that book, there's a chapter about Dickey Chapelle.

She did something that was not very common at a time where it was not easy to do what she did.

- The thing that sticks in my mind is that she said the main thing you have to always remember about covering combat is you've got to survive to get the story and the pictures out to the world.

If you get killed in there, it's all for nothing.

- [John] The sum of her core was that she really was doing this because she felt she was doing the right thing.

That she was telling people things about war that they needed to know and that she was a a good person to do it, just as good as anybody.

She felt that her gender should never get in the way.

- [Dickey Chapelle] I grew up in the heart of the United States, and I believed that I could do anything I really wanted to do.

And I still believe it.

The first place, I hope you will never say it without a sense of its uniqueness.

You have just defined Americanism because nowhere else in the world and I've now worked in my 44th country nowhere else in the world can a woman about 17, or an old lady in her forties, like I am nowhere else in the world, can she say I can do anything I want to do.

- Dickey had an eye for a dramatic picture.

(solemn music) My father taught her photography.

He taught her composition and she grabbed onto that like an artist.

I mean, she was a Rembrandt of composition.

(intense music) - I like the photos that she took often of of soldiers just being soldiers you know, not necessarily the, the battle shots.

And I think that we tend to look at a conflict and revere the people who take the photos of the of things blowing up.

(intense music) But to understand a war you have to be in the back of the of the line, you know, behind the front line.

And, you know, she spent a lot of time in the in the front, as well.

But, but I was really captivated by her images from the back of soldiers having a smoke.

I mean, they're timeless in many ways because I could take that same image and in my mind I could see, you know soldiers or marines that I had spent time with in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And if you go, honestly, to tell a story to document what you're seeing how can you miss the civilians?

I mean, they're part of, they're part of the conflict and they still lived even as they were trying not to die.

(solemn music) - [John] She could capture a moment.

She could see a moment that was very, very dramatic and she could capture that.

And, and the one thing about shooting war or actuality they don't stop and wait for you to get the picture.

When I see the World War II photos I see more of that kind of reflection of somebody who was more of a student, you know taking those types of photos.

Plus, the war was a little bit different for her because she spent most of the time on Yuma Jima and Okinawa.

She was covering field medical units or she was on the hospital ship on a couple of hospital ships, actually.

And so, the action's a little bit different.

You know, you have, you have less urgency of getting a photo now and getting your head down.

I think that it's important that people know who our heroes are all of them, even the ones that are non-traditional.

- [Jackie] She seemed very curious about the experience she was living.

She noticed details.

She wasn't necessarily focused on you know, what she, she thought people wanted to see you know, or images that would support a certain storyline.

I mean, she, her images suggest that she just went with a camera and a pen, you know and just documented what was going on around her.

You know, and all the research I did on her and all the reading and looking at her photos I couldn't find much ego.

It was refreshing, in a way but it suggested a humility that she carried with her as she went about documenting war.

- I think that the camera probably helped her focus her fears.

You know, she's got a job to do and so you can't avoid that camera that you've got held in front of your face.

And I always feel that and to at least the way I look at it, is that, you know that having a camera does provide that sort of sense of mediation.

You're out of the moment because you're focusing on something else.

And so I think that the focus probably helped her continue to move forward.

Her camera was probably her shield.

- [Jackie] Her photographs are so telling which is what's so remarkable about this book is that you really get to see the war as she experienced it through her camera.

And, you know, she, she saw a lot and, you know, I didn't see her stopping herself from taking a picture.

I mean, she took some remarkable images on instinct.

- [Joseph] She was a pioneer, a real pioneer and you don't go into that lightly.

You go into that trying to prove something.

You go in there trying to prove you're just as good as any man at that job.

And I think she proved that.

- March happens to be Dickey Chapelle's birthday month.

For more on her life and work as a combat photo journalist check out our award-winning documentary Behind the Pearl Earrings on our YouTube channel.

(gun firing and explosions) - [Voice On Radio] We're coming right behind you.

(guns firing) - [Kathy Mykleby] War used to be considered a job solely for men.

It didn't matter if it was fighting it or reporting about it.

One of the best known American women combat correspondent was Margaret Bourke-White the very first American female photojournalist and the first woman to work in combat zones during World War II.

Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, Margarite Higgins best known for covering the Korean War from the front lines also made a familiar name for herself.

Perhaps lost in the shadows of these successful women was Dickey Chapelle another gutsy woman among the first to write about and photograph men at war.

It's how and why she covered war that made a difference.

With troops on the battle lines while other correspondents tended to stay in designated press centers.

She put a face to those who served sharing their personal stories along with accounts of what was really happening during combat with the rest of the country.

- The sum of her core was that she really was doing this because she felt she was doing the right thing.

That she was telling people things about war that they needed to know and that she was a a good person to do, or just as good as anybody.

She felt that her gender should never get in the way.

- [Kathy Mykleby] Those who knew Dickey Chapelle remember a signature uniform that complimented her petite frame fatigues, an Australian bush hat dramatic Harlequin glasses her beloved Leica camera and a pair of small pearl earrings.

She said she wore the earrings so as not to be mistaken for a marine.

- [Ron] I believe my father gave them to her.

She wanted to express the fact that she was a woman and that she was in a place where a woman was not expected to be.

- That'll do it for this edition of 10thirtysix.

Remember, check us out on all of our media platforms.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music)