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Beloved News Anchor Opens Up About Retiring After Four Decades

A beloved news anchor is getting her flowers. After four decades on the air, she's finally hanging up the proverbial microphone.

A beloved news anchor is getting her flowers. After four decades on the air, she's finally hanging up the proverbial microphone.

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Lori Burkholder is stepping away from WGAL. Her last day will be this November. Speaking with Penn Live, she opened up about her career which began in 1989.

"I have done everything I wanted to do here," she said. "After 37 years, I started thinking about what I want my next decade to look like. I turn 60 in a couple weeks. And I mean this: You know when it's time."

The news anchor started as a camera operator before transitioning to TV host and producer. She earned several awards including Emmys for her work. According to the news anchor, she knew it was time to retire.

News Anchor Retires

She explained, "I mean this: You know when it's time. And for me, the time was to do this. I wanted to be young enough and healthy enough to enjoy the next chapter, if that makes any sense. I've loved working here. So I didn't really seriously start thinking about retirement probably until the beginning of the year."

The news anchor expressed gratitude for her career and finding stability in an ever growing unstable industry.

"I was just really lucky. I started here, and got married, raised my kids in this town. This is my hometown. So it's nice to be able to work at a place where you grew up," she said. "I look at my career as two careers here. I had that entertainment side, which was so much fun. TV was just different back then. The talk show was a bunch of us that were figuring out how to do this live half hour, every day. That was so fun."

The news anchor also opened up to the outlet about some of her favorite moments as well.

She explained, "If I look at that, my favorite part would probably be, other than all the local stories: We used to take the show on the road. We went to Disney World a couple of times. I got to meet Jim Lovell, who was an astronaut on Apollo 13.He was the kindest man. We had Richard Simmons here in studio one day; he ran around the whole station. I got to dance with Tommy Tune. We got to be on cruise lines — it was just a different time of TV, and it was a lot of fun."