Chester "Chet" L. Wickwire (December 11, 1913 – August 31, 2008) was the American chaplain emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University.
[1] Wickwire was born in Nebraska but was raised in rural Colorado where he received a religious upbringing as a Seventh-day Adventist.
While at Yale, he contracted poliomyelitis, which resulted in a thirteen-month stay in a local pauper's hospital; "an experience which he credited as providing him with a broader perspective on the world.
In 1953, after graduating from the Yale Divinity School, Dr. Wickwire was hired as the Executive Secretary of the Levering Hall YMCA, located at the Johns Hopkins University.
In 1958 he started the Tutorial Project, in which Hopkins students volunteered to help tutor Baltimore's underprivileged, largely black urban youth.
[7] The university created the Chester Wickwire Diversity Award to honor an "undergraduate student of any race or ethnic background who promotes multicultural harmony on the Homewood Campus.
He worked with Baltimore's community leaders, including Walter P. Carter, and ministers in the 1960s to integrate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park.