Anne Garrels was an international correspondent for NPR who reported from the front lines of major conflicts around the world. She was older than 70.
Her brother said she had lung cancer.
She began her journalism career at ABC News. She made her name as a war correspondent at NPR, where she worked for more than twenty years. She conveyed how war affected the people who lived through it. The Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square, Bosnia, Chechnya, the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan made up her backdrop.
The report is full of history, context, analysis and humor. She won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for her coverage of the Soviet Union in 1997 and it could have applied to her work over the years.
Her personal style masked her passion for taking risks. Despite a Russian ban on outside journalists, she covered the Chechen wars. She traveled to Afghanistan to report from the frontlines of the fight against the Taliban. When journalists were killed in a convoy, Ms. Garrels decided to travel alone and take a bus to Kabul.
Along the way, she collected the stories of the people around her for reports on the war.
Deborah Amos, an NPR correspondent who worked with Ms. Garrels, said that she was relentless. She took all the risks.
She was not afraid to speak her mind. The war in Ukraine began in February, and Ms. Garrels proposed to cover it.
She helped found assist-ukraine.org, which raised money to send supplies to Ukrainians, because the network refused to send her.
Ms. Garrels dug in and returned to the scene of her previous reporting. She followed residents of a single city in west-central Russia for 20 years to monitor the break up of the soviet union.
She reported during the Iraq war. The run-up to the war was covered by more than 500 journalists. She was one of 16 American correspondents who were not embedded with the U.S. troops who stayed.
Ms. Garrels and her safety became a story of their own.
She was interviewed by other reporters when she came back.
Ms. Garrels told Terry Gross that she had not considered leaving Baghdad. She said that her gut instinct told her that she would be okay.
She admitted to Ms. Gross that she was worried about being taken hostage, but she was usually so exhausted at night that she would sleep like a baby.
She said that she was scared of not telling a good story. She said that she doesn't write very well. It's a difficult process.
During her time in Baghdad, Ms. Garrels said she had experienced a crucial journalistic moment. She quoted Iraqis who said that the arrival of American troops had been a humiliation and that they would resent them. She said that the main images on television were of people cheering the fall of the statue.
Ms. Garrels was asked by her editors in Washington if she wanted to change her story because of the conflicting images. She insisted that her interviews were more accurate.
The Army's after-action report said that the Marines staged the removal of the statue with a small group of Iraqis in an empty square.
She said that it was one of the most important moments in her career as a reporter.
She was able to find the deeper reality in her reporting.
She received the George Polk Award for her reporting from Baghdad. She was part of the NPR team that won two awards for its coverage of Iraq.
Anne Longworth Garrels was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her father was the chairman and managing director of Monsanto. Her mother worked at a home.
The family moved to London when Anne was young. After attending St. Catherine's School in London, Anne went to college in Vermont.
Laura Palmer said that Ms. Garrels was originally going to be a doctor. She was told by a professor that she should learn Russian. She didn't know why. She moved to Harvard and fell in love with Russians.
She graduated with a degree in Russian. She was sent to Moscow to work at ABC News because she knew Russian. She became the Moscow bureau chief for ABC. She was kicked out of her job in 1982 for her tough reporting on housing shortages and loneliness.
Ms Garrels was sent by ABC to cover the conflicts. She worked for NBC as a State Department correspondent.
James Vinton Lawrence was the husband of her in 1986. Mr Lawrence was a renowned caricaturist for The New Republic.
She opened NPR's Moscow bureau. She and Mr. Lawrence relocated to Norfolk, Connecticut, after she left Moscow.
The first book written by Ms. Garrels was called "Naked in Baghdad". She used to work in her room at the Palestine Hotel without wearing clothes. If Iraqi security forces banged on her door, she would be given time to get dressed, and she would be able to hide her satellite phone.
Ms. Garrels was a contributor at NPR. The basis for her second book, "Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia," was her continued reports from Chelyabinsk. She had her first treatments for lung cancer in the same year that her husband died of leukemia.
Ms. Garrels is survived by her siblings and stepdaughters.
When Ms. Garrels came home from overseas, she would flip an inner switch and go from battle mode to rest. She was unable to navigate her way into town or use her computer in her down time.
She got back into battle mode when she was ready to leave. He said that Annie became an enormously competent steel-backed reporter because of all that incompetence.
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