Lois Ogden Sutherland was born in rural Campbell County, Kentucky on April 3, 1921, a date she always cited as "four - three - two - one" and referred to as the beginning of her countdown. She died April 26, 2002 at St. Luke Hospital in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky, only four months after her beloved husband Bill passed away.
Described by a former faculty colleague Dr. Penny Summers as “headstrong and crusty in her defense of press freedoms and ethical practices,” Lois was best known for starting what became Northern Kentucky University’s (NKU) journalism program in the mid-1960s before NKU even came into existence.
What’s indisputable is that the six decades Lois worked as a newspaper reporter, high school teacher, journalism professor, student newspaper adviser, and freelance writer had a tremendous impact on generations of young journalists. Mike Farrell was one of them.
A former student who became managing editor of The Kentucky Post and later a journalism faculty member at the University of Kentucky (UK), Farrell recalled, “Lois was teacher, mentor, advocate, inspiration and mother all wrapped in one. She taught us how to be journalists in the classroom and then guided us to be journalists in The Northerner (NKU’s student newspaper founded by Lois) newsroom.” He added, “I learned to be a college teacher by doing the things she had done for me.””
Born in her parents’ home along the Mary Ingalls Highway, Lois remained a life-long resident and enthusiastic booster of Campbell County. She was the first of two daughters of long-time Covington dentist Dr. Max Ogden and Nell Young Ogden and graduated from Holmes High School in 1939. When she went to the UK, her first major was home economics, but her experience writing for the student newspaper, The Kentucky Kernel, convinced her to change her major to journalism.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1943, she began reporting for the Cincinnati Times-Star (a now defunct daily newspaper) and became one of the first American women to cover major sporting events and do locker room interviews.
As World War II was winding down, Lois met and married William “Bill” Sutherland, a Coast Guard veteran from Ft. Thomas who subsequently went on to dual careers as a mail carrier and a well-known local photographer. For most of their 56-year marriage, they lived on the California, Kentucky farmstead that had passed down through Lois’s family from a land grant given to the Young brothers by George Washington in payment for surveying work they had done in the Northern Kentucky territories.
In the late 1940s, Lois’s career began evolving when she went to work for Fox and Hound Magazine in Lexington while Bill completed a degree at UK. After he graduated, they returned to Campbell County and Lois went to work doing public relations work for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati. A few years later, when they began raising their family, Lois changed careers and began substitute teaching in Bellevue, Ky. Their family eventually grew to three children, Mary Nell (Boeckman; b. 1949), Tom (b. 1952) and Scott (b. 1959), and four grandchildren.
As her children matured, so did Lois's teaching career, from part-time to full-time, and from high school to college level. She taught English at Campbell County High School from 1958 to 1966. Then, after earning a master’s degree in education (Xavier University; 1967), she began teaching English and journalism at UK’s Northern Community College in Covington. In 1971, when that institution was supplanted by Northern Kentucky State College, which later became NKU, Lois became a charter member of its faculty, serving as its first journalism instructor and founding adviser of its student newspaper.
In 1977, after NKU had been granted university status and was large enough to establish a Communication Department, Lois was named interim department chair and guided its first year of operation. It was during this period that faculty colleagues dubbed her “a female Lou Grant” for her resemblance in attitude as well as appearance to the crusty news editor with a heart of gold portrayed by Ed Asner in two 1970s TV series.
Even after retiring in 1987, Lois remained engaged in both NKU and in journalism. She continued to work part-time at NKU supervising journalism interns well into the 1990s, wrote a regular column entitled “4 – 3 – 2 – 1” for the Campbell County Recorder through 2000, and did occasional freelance writing for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Today, Lois Sutherland’s name lives on at NKU in the form of an annual award presented to an outstanding member of the student newspaper staff.
Lois Sutherland preparing to meet with students for an informal seminar during her post-retirement service at NKU.
In class, discussing the day's newspaper with journalism students in 1975.
Advising a journalism intern in 1991, shortly before her second "retirement" from NKU.