Chew, Peter 1924-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 5, 1924, in New Rochelle, NY; died of complications following a heart attack, July 16, 2006, in Washington, DC. Journalist, photographer, and author. Chew was a former foreign correspondent and freelance photojournalist known particularly for his writings about horses and horse racing. After serving as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service in Italy and the Middle East during World War II, he graduated from Princeton University in 1946. While at Princeton University, he was chair of the school newspaper, and he continued to pursue journalism after graduation by working for the Newark Evening News. He was a reporter for the Associated Press and for Look magazine in the early 1950s before going freelance in 1954. Joining the National Observer staff in 1962, he reported on events such as the Vietnam War, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and the 1965 Dominican Republic revolution. After leaving the National Observer in 1974, Chew resumed freelancing, often covering stories about equestrian events for Blood Horse and other magazines. His articles won awards from such organizations as the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, and Chew released his first book on this subject in 1974: The Kentucky Derby: The First One Hundred Years. His second and only other book, The Inner World of the Middle-Aged Man (1976), earned him the National Media Award from the American Psychological Association in 1977. Chew continued to write almost to the very end of his life, and his last article, about equestrian painter Sir Alfred J. Munnings, was released posthumously in the Smithsonian.

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PERIODICALS

Washington Post, July 20, 2006, p. B6.