This year challenged us. How we responded to that challenge revealed what we cherish, what we believe and where we stand.
In this 50-minute documentary, Cincinnati Enquirer reporters and photographers delve into the lives of more than two dozen local people over the course of eight months. "2020: The Year That Revealed Us" chronicles the events as they began to unfold in early March through the summer of upheaval, through the divisive fall election and into the months of mounting death from a virus that many thought wouldn't last. Among those we spoke with are Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Rev. Damon Lynch, restauranteur Jeff Ruby and his daughter Britney, Cincinnati Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart, a funeral home director, a police officer, protesters and a 7-year-old girl.
A special report: In the next seven days of the heroin epidemic, at least 180 people in Greater Cincinnati will overdose and 18 will die. Babies will be born to addicted mothers. Parents will go to jail. Children will end up in foster care. This is normal now.
Zay Crawford felt trapped in a boy’s body at a young age. With puberty fast approaching, she got an implant that suppressed the puberty process. This is the story of one family’s journey to acceptance and understanding of their 12 year-old daughter.
Published February 2015
In 1997, catastrophic floods hit the Ohio River Valley, damaging homes and communities. The fix is patchwork and never-ending. Over two decades after the flood, Cynthiana’s story of disaster recovery is unfinished. What happens while small towns try to rebuild and improve their infrastructure, and who takes on the risk while they wait?
On Nov. 5, 2009, a U.S. Army major killed 13 people and injured more than 30 others at a military base in Texas. Many of the victims are remembered at a memorial there. This is the story of one man who survived the shooting but could not survive life afterward. He killed himself in 2013; he has not been memorialized.
Meet the Alhamouds, the first Syrian refugees from the current crisis to land in Greater Cincinnati. Their story is about what happens after war, after displacement, after resettlement. It’s about searching – for happiness, for hope, for home.
Warning: Contains strong language and graphic content
Sexual assault on campus isn’t an easy conversation to have because it is not an easy topic to unravel.
About 3 million students on campus this fall will be sexually assaulted during their college years.
Countless stories make it clear: The system of how colleges and universities currently investigate and adjudicate these crimes is broken. The elements that surround campus sexual assault – consent, rape culture, alcohol, fear - are confusing and devastating and ever-changing. And the story of sexual assault on campus changes depending on who is talking about it and who gets hurt.
We set out to hear from all sides.
Four years ago, an eighth-grade student opened fire in the Madison School cafeteria and injured four students. Cameron Smith was shot twice. His life has never been the same. After multiple surgeries to remove the bullets, he had to learn how to walk again. And now Cameron lives in constant pain.
But life has always been hard for Cameron. He told us, "The shooting wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me."
After 40 years, a governor, a TV anchor, a teen volunteer and a hospital administrator remember the third deadliest fire in the nation’s history.
Cheetahs in the wild are in trouble. Cincinnati - and a cheetah named Donni - are part of an international effort to help save them.
Meet the Mill Creek Yacht Club members, who are dedicated to cleaning and restoring the 28-mile long creek that was once one of the most polluted urban streams in the country.
In March, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel with Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Thane Maynard and Ron Evans to one of the most remote places in the world, the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, to document the wild western lowland gorillas.
60 percent of the world’s western lowland gorilla population live there. But their numbers are dropping rapidly due to deforestation, poaching and disease.
The Zoo has been financially supporting the research and conservation efforts in this region for almost two decades. We went to see where the money was going, how the field research was being conducted and to see if a few people from Cincinnati can help save this species from extinction.
Published May 17, 2018 for The Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today
Gee Horton is a self-taught artist who creates hyper-realistic portraits with graphite and charcoal depicting the African American experience. He began drawing in 2018 and quit his corporate job in 2020 to pursue art full time.
Alicia Kappers checked herself into the hospital at the end of March. She was 31 weeks pregnant and tested positive for coronavirus. She doesn't remember anything for the next month. When she gave birth to her second son, Laith, she was in a medically induced coma. Alicia has no memory of him being born, but nurses later told her that she shed a crocodile tear after the delivery.
When she was released from the hospital, the halls were lined with health care workers who cared for Alicia and Laith. They cheered with pom poms, balloons and signs. Her ICU care team cried and hugged as they waved goodbye to her. They felt relief and hope. The love was overwhelming.
It's the first day of swim practice, and no one is getting in the pool.
That's in the plan scribbled on a page in coach Jane Spooner's spiral notebook.
That's the line she repeats, over and over, to the kids squirm-sitting in a circle on the concrete at Ziegler Park.
Still, they reply, over and over, "Can we swim?"
This is the first hour of what will be 43 hours of practice, and the 24-minutes-old swim team is already challenging the expectations written on lined paper.
They have another idea of what they should do and what they can do. And that no matter what, they will do it together.
By 10:40 a.m. that May morning, the team, the brand new Over-the-Rhine Rhinos, sits along the walls of the shallowest end of the pool, pairs of eager feet dipping in the water.
The group of 19 that day are as old as 13 and as young as 4.
Some walked here from their apartments in the surrounding city. Some drove in from homes in Bond Hill.
They don't know each other's names, and most of them do not even know how to swim.
Some don't know how to float. Or how to hold their breath. Or even how to put their faces in the water.
In the next two months, that will change.
But other things won't. And those are also the things that make these Rhinos and this summer meaningful.
Like that what counts here has nothing to do with the time it takes to swim from one wall to the other.
That winning, it will turn out, doesn't mean beating someone else.
Published August 9, 2018 for The Cincinnati Enquirer
For the full story by Carol Motsinger: cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/08/09/over-rhine-cincinnati-new-swim-team-changing-city/913297002/
Hopkinsville didn’t choose to be the greatest point of the solar eclipse. The universe chose this Kentucky town. And it’s making the most of it.