Kathy Lohr
Whether covering the manhunt and eventual capture of Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains of North Carolina, the remnants of the Oklahoma City federal building with its twisted metal frame and shattered glass, flood-ravaged Midwestern communities, or the terrorist bombings across the country, including the blast that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, correspondent Kathy Lohr has been at the heart of stories all across the nation.
Lohr was NPR's first reporter based in the Midwest. She opened NPR's St. Louis office in 1990 and the Atlanta bureau in 1996. Lohr covers the abortion issue on an ongoing basis for NPR, including political and legal aspects. She has often been sent into disasters as they are happening, to provide listeners with the intimate details about how these incidents affect people and their lives.
Lohr filed her first report for NPR while working for member station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and began her journalism career in commercial television and radio as a reporter/anchor. Lohr also became involved in video production for national corporations and taught courses in television reporting and radio production at universities in Kansas and Missouri. She has filed reports for the NPR documentary program Horizons, the BBC, the CBC, Marketplace, and she was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
Lohr won the prestigious Missouri Medal of Honor for Excellence in Journalism in 2002. She received a fellowship from Vanderbilt University for work on the issue of domestic violence. Lohr has filed reports from 27 states and the District of Columbia. She has received other national awards for her coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Midwestern floods of 1993, and for her reporting on ice storms in the Mississippi Delta. She has also received numerous awards for radio pieces on the local level prior to joining NPR's national team. Lohr was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She now lives in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, covering stories across the southeastern part of the country.
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Along the Gulf Coast, thousands of residents are still living in FEMA trailers, close to the water. None of them are likely to rebuild where they lived, since they can't afford it or can't get insured. Meanwhile, drugs have become a huge problem in the trailer parks. -
In Gulfport, Miss., attorney Jim Wetzel and his wife, Garnette, have almost completed rebuilding their 20-year-old Georgian Manor on the coast. It's about the only home on Beach Boulevard that's still standing. The mayor of Gulfport calls it an inspiration to the community.
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In Houston, a retrial begins for Andrea Yates, the mother who claims she was insane when she drowned her five young children in a bathtub in 2001. An earlier conviction was thrown out. -
As three Alabama college students face trial for burning nine rural Baptist churches, the state's attorney general meets with the affected congregations to hear their views on an appropriate punishment. The accused could face decades in prison if convicted. -
Don Siegelman wants the Alabama governorship back. First, he has to get by a tough opponent, Lucy Baxley, in the June 6 Democratic primary. And there's one more thing: He faces trial on corruption charges. -
It's hard not to notice when 18,000 people pick up and leave town all at once. Each time the soldiers at Fort Stewart are deployed, the residents of Hinesville, Ga., feel the absence keenly. -
The Army is trying to help families reunited after yearlong deployments through programs and workshops for soldiers. But the real work of reconnecting falls to the individual families who want to make their relationships successful.
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On Wednesday, demonstrators are coming to Washington to urge helping black farmers, many of whom were left out of an Agriculture Department settlement. A recent study by the Government Accountability Office noted problems, but the USDA shows no inclination to revisit the claim.
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators file through Atlanta's streets as part of a national "campaign for immigrants' dignity." In cities nationwide, demonstrators continue to show their opinions on the debate over immigration and border enforcement. -
Three Alabama college students face dozens of years in prison if convicted on charges of burning five churches in the state. Their friends say they've thrown their lives away and don't understand why. The young men who face trial say it was a prank.
