Sharon Cohen, much-honored AP national writer, dead at 68

Sharon Cohen, a matchless reporter who told American stories with great skill and compassion over more than four decades at The Associated Press, died Monday at her Chicago home. She was 68.

At her death, more than a year after she was diagnosed with brain cancer, Cohen was a national writer, a prestigious position she had held for 20 years. From her base in Chicago, she unreeled an array of stories about the triumphs and tragedies of people both ordinary and extraordinary.

There was the story of Vashti Risdall, the foster mother of 162 children who retired at age 96 only because her 74-year-old daughter insisted. Of Marine Sgt. Merlin German, the “Miracle Man” who survived a bomb blast in Iraq, dancing with his mom after 100 surgeries. Of barber Gilbert Peppin, who lived under a shadow for 30 years, unjustly suspected of his wife’s murder.

Every story got the Sharon Cohen treatment: determined reporting, zealous fact-checking, direct and evocative writing. She knew no other way.

“Sharon’s genius was in capturing the stories of Americans as they lived out the intense changes and disruptions of the last 40 years — struggling when their town’s factory closed, trying to pull away from drugs or violence, bewildered when they came back from war," said Sally Buzbee, the AP's senior vice president and executive editor.

"Her stories often made me cry. They always opened our minds. As a reporter and writer, she was a dream — both utterly precise and dogged and also hugely compassionate.”

Cohen was an idea machine, never comfortable unless she had one story she was working on, another on deck and others in line. In the days before the internet, when she was a regional reporter covering the Midwest, Cohen subscribed to a score of small newspapers; she was always looking for that three-paragraph brief on page...