Robin Reed Anchor WDBJ7
Robin Reed
Emcee
Robin has been with WDBJ7 since March of 1982.
Robin Reed’s path to television began with a passion for baseball but a major league career was not to be. TV sports reporting was the logical extension but when the opportunity to present weather in Roanoke came along, Robin knew he had found a new hometown.
Robin has served as an instructor at Virginia Western Community College and for the last 7 years has taught meteorology and communication courses at Virginia Tech. He has become one of the most sought-after speakers in our area.
In February of 2017, Robin was asked to take over the 6 P.M. anchor chair for the departing Chris Hurst. Viewers appreciate having a familiar face presenting the news and Robin is enjoying the new challenge.
JAMES CHANDLER
Best-Selling Author and Honorable Judge
Wyoming author James Chandler's rise to the top of Amazon's legal thriller best-sellers chart is a surprise to the Gillette, Wyoming author. His first two books, "Misjudged" and "One and Done," introduce us to Sam Johnstone, a troubled Army veteran who takes on a new job as an attorney in a small Wyoming town. James Chandler is a pen name for Paul Phillips because of his day job as a Circuit Court Judge in Wyoming.
Paul recalls growing up as a military brat in a world free of 21st Century distractions. His family was stationed overseas much of the time and moved frequently. Without many friends around, he developed a passion for reading. In those days, he enjoyed Hardy Boys, biographies of athletes, and military history. He has always been drawn to mysteries and thrillers.
In 1982 Paul entered the military service after graduating from Eastern Oregon State College, where he played on the college's baseball team. It is also where he met Ann Simmons, his college sweetheart, and soon-to-be wife. After traveling with the military for many years, the Army sent him to graduate school at Marshall University, where he obtained a master's degree in journalism. In 1998, he was assigned to the Pentagon, where he wrote press releases and handled other public relations duties for the Secretary of Defense.
Retiring from the military after nearly 20 years of service, Judge Phillips finished law school and went looking for work in the Rocky Mountain West. There he was able to quench his thirst for quality fly fishing and his yearning for wide-open spaces to enjoy with his family. Paul was 44 years old when he began practicing law in Gillette. He spent the next ten years honing his skills as a trial lawyer with incredible intensity before becoming a judge.
Although it seems hard to believe, Paul is intimately familiar with the disappointment that comes with the rejection of a manuscript. His first book, "Misjudged," which he began writing in 2015, was rejected by more than 50 literary agents and 40 or 50 publishers. Paul had just about given up hope of becoming a published author before attending the 2019 Wyoming State Bar Annual Meeting & Judicial Conference. There he met Martin Clark, a recently retired Virginia circuit court judge and best-selling novelist, who shared his own story of rejection and convinced Paul to keep trying.
MARi JULIENNE
Author, Curator, and Editor
Mari Julienne earned her history degree at James Madison University and her master’s in public history at the University of South Carolina. She has worked at the Library of Virginia since 1999, primarily as an editor of the Library’s ongoing Dictionary of Virginia Biography project. She was the co-curator of the Library’s 2020 exhibition, We Demand: Women’s Suffrage in Virginia, and co-author of The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia, published in February of 2020.
Julienne’s work in The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia describes in vivid detail how the suffrage movement unfolded in a key southern state where traditional views about women (and much else) held sway. Despite the challenge they face, Virginia suffragists created an effective state organization, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia that coordinated the efforts of scores of local chapters located not only in urban area but surprisingly in remote and rural areas of the state as well. The suffragists in this book are for the most part unknown to historians of Virginia, and their achievements have not been properly understood. Indeed, they succeeded rather than failed in their original objective of persuading the General Assembly to propose a woman suffrage amendment to the state constitution.
CHIP JONES
Pulitzer Nominated Author
and Journalist
Chip Jones has been reporting for nearly thirty years for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times, Virginia Business magazine, and other publications. As a reporter for The Roanoke Times, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Pittston coal strike. He is the former communications director of the Richmond Academy of Medicine, which is where he first discovered the heart stopping story in
The Organ Thieves.
Excerpt: In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a white businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge.
The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the late 1960s. Featuring years of research and fresh reporting, along with a foreword from social justice activist Ben Jealous, “this powerful book weaves together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows of centuries of racial injustice” (Edward L. Ayers, author of The Promise of the New South).
“Journalist Chip Jones tells a gruesome story….The disregard for Black lives The Organ Thieves documents makes it an urgently modern warning.” —The Washington Post
“Chip has a remarkable talent for uncovering and telling stories. The years he has spent on this book shed light on this fascinating and alarming slice of history.” –Derek Jeter, National Baseball Hall of Famer, executive, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out in this “startling…powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart transplant race