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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Bank of America says too few people are using drive-through teller windows. So, the bank is cutting that service at some branches. Teller lanes from Georgia to Texas have already closed. -
Civil rights leaders meeting in Atlanta say states, including Texas and North Carolina, are deliberately trying to make it more difficult for voters. They're calling for a national campaign to strengthen voting rights, increase voter participation and eliminate long lines at the polls.
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Georgia, like many other states, protects the identity of companies that make drugs used in executions. The lawyer of a death row inmate says not being able to verify the effectiveness of the drug violates his client's right "to be free from cruel and unusual punishment." -
Texas is one of several states that have passed laws tightening standards for clinics and doctors who provide abortions. Proponents say the laws make the procedure safer. But abortion rights advocates say the tightened requirements are unnecessary and driven by ideology, not safety concerns. -
When Joel Goldman was diagnosed with a medical condition that makes him shake and stutter, he quit his law practice and started writing novels inspired by true crime in the Kansas City area. Eventually, he gave his disorder to FBI Agent Jack Davis, one of his main characters. -
And now another chapter in our series on African-American lives. NPR conducted a poll of African Americans with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. The survey found optimism but many respondents expressed fears about the economy.
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Former Republican Governor Mark Sanford reclaimed his political career Tuesday night, winning the South Carolina congressional seat he once held. He defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a special election.
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South Carolina's 1st Congressional District hasn't elected a Democrat since 1978. But in a race against scandal-ridden former Gov. Mark Sanford, Democrats think their candidate, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, has a chance to pull it off in Tuesday's special election. -
Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, a Republican, and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, faced off Monday night in the only debate before a special congressional election in South Carolina. Sanford is trying to make a comeback after he lied about an affair with an Argentine woman while he was in office. His ex-wife has also accused Sanford of trespassing at her home.
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It's been 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr., began writing his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," a response to white Alabama clergymen who called him an "extremist" and told blacks they should be patient. But the time for waiting was over. Birmingham was the perfect place to take a stand.
