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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.

  • A class at historically black Spelman College in Atlanta discusses the passing of Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and the meaning of leadership in the black community.
  • Months after Hurricane Katrina hit, some along the Gulf Coast are still stranded in shelters. Mississippi residents who've been housed at the D'Iberville civic center are wondering why they've had to wait so long for help.
  • The shopping district of Atlanta's newest redevelopment project opens Thursday: Atlantic Station is built on the site of an old steel mill near downtown. The idea behind the design is New Urbanism, environments where people can live, work and shop in one space. Time will determine whether Atlantic Station fulfills that vision.
  • Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia has asked public schools in his state to close Monday and Tuesday to conserve fuel. Some parents aren't happy.
  • More than 3,000 supporters gather at a Baptist church in Nashville for a video broadcast called Justice Sunday II. Evangelical leaders called on conservative Christians to get involved and to fight what they call activist judges.
  • In the 1800s, American frontier towns and agricultural communities far from churches saw the rise of summer revival camps. Traveling preachers would bring evangelism to the countryside. The tradition is still going strong at a bible camp in Georgia dating back to 1828.
  • Ten years ago, Oklahoma City was rocked by the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Bill Clinton were among thousands who gathered to remember the 168 people who died in the attack.
  • After confirming plea deals in Georgia and Alabama Wednesday, confessed bomber Eric Rudolph will serve life in prison. Afterward, he said his 1996 attack at the Atlanta Olympics was meant to embarrass the federal government. In reference to a fatal 1998 bombing at an Alabama women's clinic, he said "abortion is murder."
  • In the western North Carolina town where Eric Rudolph eluded capture for five years, residents express surprise at his guilty plea Wednesday to four bombings.
  • Nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed, Terri Schiavo died Thursday. Her story and the efforts by Congress and the right-to-life community to keep her alive brought ethical issues concerning end-of-life decisions onto the national stage.