George Weller, 95; Reporter Received Pulitzer in 1943

George Weller, 95, a former Chicago Daily News reporter who earned a Pulitzer Prize for his graphic account of an emergency appendectomy performed by a Navy pharmacist’s mate in a submarine during World War II, died Thursday.

Weller died of unspecified causes at his seaside villa near Rome, where he had lived for 30 years.

Born in Boston and educated at Harvard, Weller began his career at the New York Times, but moved to the Chicago paper about 1939 and became a war correspondent. He won the Pulitzer in Reporting in 1943 for his story about the sailor who used a medical manual to perform impromptu surgery aboard the Seadragon on Sept. 11, 1942. The operation chronicled by Weller became a segment in the late-1950s syndicated TV series “The Silent Service.”

Weller spent most of his reporting years abroad, usually based in Rome. In 1954, he won the George Polk Award, which is named after a CBS reporter who was killed while covering the Greek Civil War. Weller was a good friend of Polk and had served as best man at his wedding.

For a few years after World War II, Weller lived in the U.S., where he received a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard. In addition to news stories, he wrote books and plays.

He was president of the Foreign Press Assn. in Italy in 1954.