Mrs. Boynton Robinson was a virtually unknown civil rights pioneer from Selma, Ala. Weeks after our meeting and to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, she crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the second time after nearly being murdered the first time. She was 103, but beyond her age, her story and circumstance made her my most memorable interview from America Tonight.

No country lost more of its people in the crash of flight MH17 than the Netherlands. I’m from a small Dutch town that lost three families on that flight. I wrote and edited this piece for Al Jazeera America on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy that killed all 283 passengers and 15 crew.

While covering the Baltimore Riots, I approached what turned out to be an inspirational young man. He was there in the middle of the chaos picking up trash.  I followed up with him a few weeks later and we also  interviewed his best friend’s father.  That morning two men had fatally shot this father’s only child. He carried no pictures of his dead son, only the boy’s highschool diploma.