Television viewers in rural Williston, N. Dak., most likely saw reporter Winifred Larsen when they tuned into the evening news in the mid- 1980s. Like all small-town reporters, Larsen covered it all, from tornadoes and crime to fires, said her son Corey Sauer. “She waded through floods to get a story. She even watched a local teenager get sentenced after stabbing his best friend to death.”
Sauer, who only met Larsen, his birth mother, when he was 35, was so inspired when he learned about her dedication to journalism and passion for justice that he has made significant gifts to the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund in her memory.
“After I first connected with my biological mother through letters 22 years ago, she wrote to me and described her career,” he said. “She said ‘TV news is fun and very interesting work but it’s also grueling work. It took sweat, occasionally a bit of blood and on too many occasions, tears.’”
When she passed away in 2016, Sauer, a history buff and career illustrator in St. Paul, Minn., wanted to find a way to honor her memory and the importance of journalism.
“Journalism and the free press have recently come under assault by forces trying to destroy them. It burned me to think that her life’s work was being made into a joke. I wondered, how can I fight back against that?”
And then it occurred to him. “I thought of FRONTLINE—I learn so much from it. I always feel, after something like Putin’s War or Trump’s Trade War, I want more,” he said. “That investigative journalism, asking the tough questions to get at the heart of the issues, no matter where those questions lead—that kind of endeavor is absolutely hypercritical.”
Born and raised in St. Paul, Sauer learned the ins and outs of philanthropy through his adoptive family’s founda- tion, the Sauer Family Foundation, which supports children’s health and well-being.
When he’s not in the business of grantmaking, he works as a construction volunteer for Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, having put in more than 3,000 hours of time over the past nine years.
Reading his mother’s letters still inspires him. “I am proud that this is what she did for a decade of her life,” Sauer said.
To learn more about the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, please contact Senior Associate Director of Major Gifts Lynd Matt at lynd_matt@wgbh.org.
