[1] Ulevich was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended public and private schools before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he graduated in 1968 with a BA degree in Journalism.
After graduation, he worked for AP as a writer in St. Louis, Missouri, before resigning to study Chinese in Hong Kong.
In 1970 friends and associates in journalism urged him to travel to Indochina to witness the U.S. incursion into Cambodia, assuring him the cross-border operation would herald "the last two weeks of the war".
He returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in journalism, later resuming his AP work in Saigon.
After leaving Thailand, Ulevich worked for AP as Asia Photo Editor in Tokyo and as photojournalist in Beijing.