Penny Cockerell began her career as an intern for The Daily Oklahoman in 1992, where she was hired after graduating with a B.A. in Journalism. She worked her way through the lower echelon of the newsroom with police and general assignment reporting; then, three years into her career, Ms. Cockerell found herself on the front lines of covering the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing, then known as the worst domestic bombing in U.S. history.

The bombing became a career-changing event for Ms. Cockerell, who also covered the 1997 trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in Denver and McVeigh’s 2001 execution in Terre Haute, Ind. Throughout it all, Ms. Cockerell focused largely on the 168 families who lost loved ones, the survivors, the rescuers, and other victims, including the perpetrators’ families. Through this experience she fervently sought to find the right balance in approaching victims in raw grief, in maintaining relationships with them as months and years passed, and in telling their stories with both accuracy and passion – all while keeping her own sanity.

Covering such a tragic event took its toll on Ms. Cockerell. While it enhanced her career and gave her the “big story” so many journalists crave, the vicarious grief that came with knowing and reporting on so many victims added an unexpected dimension to her profession – one of absorbing their stories in a personal way, no matter her attempts at keeping a professional distance.

Ms. Cockerell first became acquainted with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in 1996, when her newspaper won the Dart Award for its coverage of victims. Dr. Frank Ochberg was its comforting leader and as time passed, Ms. Cockerell applied for and received a Dart fellowship in San Antonio, Texas, where she met other journalists with similar experiences in covering trauma – a needed respite indeed.

Ms. Cockerell has devoted much time and thought into the Dart Society, which is a group of Dart fellows formed as an offshoot of the Dart Center. Her hope is to find and help other journalists like herself who face trauma, either on a daily beat, in a natural disaster, in war, or during another terrorist attack, by sharing her experiences and outcomes, and learning from theirs.

Ms. Cockerell’s work has also won her numerous awards, including the national Sigma Delta Chi Award for spot news coverage of the bombing; three regional Katie Awards by the Dallas Press Club; a Byliners Award from Women in Communications Inc.; and several Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalist awards, among others. She was a Dart Foundation fellow for reporters who cover trauma in 2000; a Knight Foundation Newspapers-in-Residence fellow to Michigan State University in 1999; and a William Randolph Hearst fellow to the University of Texas at Austin in 1998.

She is also a public affairs officer with the United States Naval Reserve and has served since 1990. She is married to Perry Cockerell and has three stepchildren.