Good evening.

I'm Bruce Haines.

It was the Greek philosopher Socrates who said the unexamined life is not worth living.

It was the idea that by introspection and self-reflection that a person could make positive changes to improve themselves and society.

And in that regard, the life of Helene Foellinger was both examined and extraordinary.

She was publisher of the News-Sentinel, president of Fort Wayne Newspapers, and one of the Fort Wayne's leading patrons whose philanthropic impact continues today through the foundation that bears her family's name.

A new documentary recalls her life and her community impact.

And we'll share excerpts from that film.

Helene Foellinger: An Influence for Good on this edition of PrimeTime.

And with us today is Foellinger Foundation board member Sarah Strimmenos.

And with Sarah is Cheryl Taylor, former president and CEO, at Foellinger Foundation.

Welcome to you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Sarah and Cheryl as we move across the table.

You know, it's interesting when we look at where we are in a community and try to think ahead, it's always good to think back.

Two of those persons who helped get us to where we are in the present.

And so it's in that regard, I kind of wonder.

It's a great story to tell.

Why are we telling Helene Foelli Absolutely.

So it is the 65th anniversary of the foundation coming up.

And our building is being renovated.

And that was the perfect time to take the massive archives that we have from the family and digitize them.

There was meticulous.

We maintained records and we're the beneficiary of that gift significantly.

So it was time to clean out the basement and digitize the archives and see what we had and see what we could do with that, to share the legacy of the family with the community.

And Cheryl, it is an amazing story about someone whose name we've heard, but a little bit.

It's been like the wind we see where the name has been and yet we want to know more.

Tell us a little bit about healing for you.

Well, the documentary is what everybody needs to see because it is masterfully done and answers all of those questions.

You know, Helene Foellinger was a child of Fort Wayne, was the child of long term immigrants, multi generations of immigrants.

And she was the, as you noted in the introduction, was the owner and the publisher of the News-Sentinel was responsible for Fort Wayne Newspapers and the Joint Operating Agreement.

She was an extraordinary philanthropic donor and very closely connected to her family.

Having that digital library available of items to help bring the story to life is supplemented in the documentary by that human element of those who knew her and knew the family.

Who all did you interviewed for the documentary?

We interviewed over 20 people that had either a direct connection with Helene or a connection through their family, people that had worked with her.

Cheryl, of course, herself, was in the video, longtime board members and also our one of our missing board members, Jenny McCullough.

Boyd was able to speak about the the legacy of the foundation.

So we're very grateful for that.

And here is a selection, in fact, of some of those who have come to comment during the course of the documentary about the life of healing and the person who is healing fully here.

Well, I was in all of the world.

She was far and away the most recognized and powerful woman in Fort Wayne and possibly the most recognized and powerful person in Fort Wayne.

She was a maverick in her own right, a woman in a position like that.

And I think it's something that so many aspire to do and grateful for her for paving the way.

I happened to sit in on a meeting with she and the mayor where she scolded the mayor, Hey, you know, you've got to step up here.

I mean, she was about fairness.

She wasn't one of those people.

Just talk to hear herself talk.

If she opened her mouth to say something, it was worth listening to in immeasurable.

It really is.

As I said, every election you look to see the impact of of what the family has done for the community.

It's as inspiring as any story you will read or hear that these immigrants made this from these immigrants, from their work, from their hardships.

It wasn't all perfect.

It wasn't all rosy.

And from that grew a legacy that will live for generations.

Fort Wayne has been extremely kind to our family, and I feel a very deep responsibility to do something for Fort Wayne.

The documentary is available for you on demand by visiting the Foellinger Foundation website.

It is an easy way for you to connect.

And there you see the link at the bottom foellinger.org/documentary An Influence for Good.

And it is Helene Foellinger cert But then within her context is the Foellinger Family, too.

It's important to tell both parts of that.

What do we know about the family through this?

Well, we know that Oscar Foellinger, who started at a very young age in the newspaper business and took over the News-Sentinel at a very young age, was active and an outdoor person, entrepreneur, energized, kind of man, very much a risk taker.

And that's exactly the way his daughter was a lean sister.

Loretta was very involved in philanthropic activities.

She was a pilot, also an outdoor person.

And Helene's mother, Esther.

I think I like to consider her the glue that put everything together.

And she was an extraordinary gardener.

And when you're telling stories like this and thinking that it's at least 150, some years of history, from the time Jacob Foellinger arrives as an immigrant from Germany to the time of Helene's passing in 1987, I believe, but 150 years and across those generations, the commitment to civic leadership seems like it was huge that Jacob was on Common Council Oscars at the chamber, and Helene is on everything.

Absolutely.

It does stay in the family, doesn't it?

It really did.

And when you think about what that was probably like for their family to come here, when Jacob settled in Fort Wayne, he becomes a bootmaker, adapts to the community, something that was needed in the community.

So he saw that a way to fulfill that.

He, of course, then helps launch the city's public school system.

So you think about the time that that would have what that would have been like.

Oscar himself never graduated from high school and yet achieves many certainly things that you wouldn't expect from someone with a lack of education.

Definitely self-made people, self-made family.

And that was something that Helene, I think, felt very a huge responsibility.

She set herself I felt a deep responsibility to serve in that vein and help support the family through the publishing business.

And that's what she did.

And Cheryl, you mentioned the documentary that in a sense, Oscar examined his life and seemed to make that commitment about seeing that his daughters went on to college.

But then the part, too, about getting connected within the newspaper business, as he assumed his initial position as business manager and that it keeps on growing.

But sure, you can watch what you mentioned in the document.

Well, I just thought it was so interesting.

You're sending your daughters to college in 1928, 1932.

I mean, it's it's not totally unusual, but it was certainly extraordinary.

But for me, the the bigger observation, I think, to which you're referring is that for a surge is said for a person who didn't complete high school to decide that their vocation in life was to own and publish a newspaper as a way to educate the entire citizenry.

To me was such a huge commitment to, as you said, self-reflection.

What is it I can do to make this community a better place?

And this is a part of what feeds Oscar's development.

He is connecting to his world.

He loves the outdoors.

And here we need to point out, this is Fort Wayne's first commercial corporate aircraft, right?

Absolutely.

It is something that looks for if you think percussion, it looks like Lindbergh's plane.

It was modeled, I believe, after Lindbergh's plane.

And so much of the innovation that that goes on and is shared through the additional items that the city never had before and not the least of which also was a beautiful home, still being able to, to, to take a look at that down southwest near Foster Park, I believe three and a half acres.

...garden, tennis courts let's go.

The Bells would be happy to have you in.

Complete with stables and it's just spectacular.

And so we share these images so that you might see it as you drive through the community here yourself.

It seems, indeed, Cheryl, that Helene did carry forward so much of Oscar's and Jacob's commitment, as we mentioned, for being involved in the community, that the newspaper is an influence for good in the community.

So certainly is she.

But as she is moving through her tenure at the News-Sentinel and Fort Wayne Newspapers, there seems to be a concern that what has hit the family regarding the concern for safety and with their love of travel and with their love of flying.

As you'll learn in the documentary, those things were significant elements, it seems, among others, in how we led to the creation of the foundation in 1950.

Can you?

Well, both Oscar and Loretta separately were on vacation and Oscar had a heart attack.

Esther, unfortunately.

I'm sorry, Loretta.

Unfortunately, the plane crashed.

And so when Helene and her mother, Esther, were preparing to go on a basically a worldwide trip, they recognized that, you know, was right under your nose and said we might not come back, essentially.

And so they set up the foundation.

And my thinking about that is great planning and good for them.

They did come back, fortunately, but had they not, the foundation would have been here from 1958 on in.

As Sara said, it's in your 65.

And her contributions to being able to pay it forward, which is an expression that that still comes up a lot in philanthropy.

But there probably isn't a place in greater Fort Wayne that hasn't been touched by either Helene directly or through the representative investment in a nonprofit that has helped to make that work happen.

Absolutely.

You think about the legacy that she wanted to create for her father, the outdoor theater and Frankie Park, for his love of the outdoors and love of music and the creation of the botanical gardens in honor of Esther.

Her mother loved gardening, so and that was something that she a real statement that she made to the community to set that up in memory of them and in honor of what they had meant to her.

And we have a portion of the documentary to share, which takes you a little deeper into the idea and the motivations for the establishment of another gem in the in the crown of Fort Wayne.

And that is the Foellinger- Freimann Botanical Conservatory.

Take a look at.

One of the Foellingers final projects was her leadership in the design, development and building of downtown Fort Wayne's endure Sanctuary.

The Botanical Conservatory.

The Conservatory became part of the city's Parks and Recreation Department, honoring her mother, Esther, Foellingers love of gardening and the wonders of nature.

The Foellinger-Freimann Botanica Conservatory opened in 1983.

This is proof of what can be done with a joint effort when people who want things to happen get together and make them happen.

Well, this is kind of an interesting story in that Helene and Bill Sauers, who was the Freimann Trust trustee, got their heads together and decided that we needed a conservatory in Fort Wayne.

And I was approached with that idea.

At that time, I didn't know what a conservatory was.

I didn't know if you looked at stars.

I didn't know what it was.

So we came back and my staff and I and started studying conservatories, botanical conservatory throughout the country and found out that they're quite expensive to maintain.

So this is the hardest part going back to Helene and Bell and say, I don't think we can accept this wonderful gift because we can't afford it.

So with that, please said, don't worry about it, we'll take care of it.

So they went to see Ian Rolland and got $1,000,000 from Ian and Lincoln Life to set aside as a special fund, a dedicated endowment that would at the end of year, the earnings would pay for any shortfall.

We have been talking about this for quite some time, and it's finally come into being.

I think it will be a great thing for the revitalization of the downtown area.

And we're very, very happy to be a part of this.

The big issue is it's downtown.

It had to be downtown.

And was right next to the Embassy.

Big hotels were around.

She wanted to do that.

Not so much that so much that it was a a conservatory as it was a conservatory for the people of Fort Wayne that was really important to her.

And she wanted to set up three different areas of plant life so that people who don't get a chance to travel, let's say, out here to the Southwest.

It was a desert room where she had the plants that grew in this area and in the desert.

All of that was really important to her to let the community learn about different areas of the United States.

After it was built.

And she and I were walking through it and she said, Mother would love this.

So much that has now created so many memories throughout Fort Wayne over any number innumerable years, and particularly around the holidays, or when people say, will she get married in a special place and they call up the conservatory, like among other things.

A reminder that we are sharing excerpts from a very special documentary and influence for good.

It is the story of Helene Foellinger on the 65th anniversary of the Foellinger Foundation.

And Influence for Good can be seen whenever you want to see it at foellinger.org/documentary.

So please avail yourself, as they say, of of that, as Helene did with her philanthropy to create the Botanical Conservatory and so much else, she was intentional in her giving.

And I have heard in philanthropy the phrase donor intent a great deal.

Let me ask you both, what does that mean to you?

To us it means exactly that.

The intent of the Foellinger Family, as we understand it through Helene's writing speeches, we are again the beneficiaries of a great deal of resources that she herself created that help us understand how she did want to see this fortune invested and the impacts that she wanted to make in the community.

And that's really our primary paramount charge and duty as being part of the foundation is to follow donor intent and make sure that the legacy that she intended for her family is what is played out in the community.

Cheryl, that you.

Decades ago some people associated with a Lilly endowment wrote a marvelous paper called Traditions in Philanthropy, and there are a number of them listed.

And one of them is called The Tradition of Improvement.

And the board decades ago centered the Foellinger Foundation and primarily Helene, right in the middle of the tradition of improvement.

And we've talked a lot about self-reflection, improvement, family members, what they did for themselves.

So it was also about community improvement.

And in one of those documents that Sara is talking about, there's a reference to it in the documentary.

It's a speech Ms. Foellinger gave at South Side High School.

She talks about helping people move from dependance to independence to interdependence.

That's all about the tradition of improvement, which is which is her donor intent.

And through that, there has been more than 250 million, I believe it is investing in Allen County nonprofit organizations.

So share with us the work of the foundation currently, where some of those impact areas that express healing intentions.

I would say across the communities.

Certainly she did have a focus on that.

The funds would be invested in Allen County.

So there is definitely some very large social service agencies and in the county that have benefited from her legacy and the foundation grant.

When you think about Cheryl had mentioned the continuum that you're on moving from dependance to independence to interdependence.

That's what we kind of of the lens that we look through for grantmaking the independence continuum.

When you start out, you may be unable to support yourself in very unstable environment.

And the idea is that through philanthropy, through the connections with the organizations and the opportunities that we have in this community, that you will be able to move through that continuum to your own independence based on that kind of evolution that you are yourself having, self-reflection being also part of that.

But how can you how can we support these organizations that truly move people from being dependent to independence?

And then how can they look back and then help others achieve what they have on themselves as an individual?

Mm hmm.

Almost every person in the documentary has either used the word leader or the word leadership to describe Helene or inferred leader or leadership, which she was and she did exhibit.

And to recognize that and honor that and show the foundation's commitment to nonprofit organizations, it has invested several million dollars over the last four or five years in a variety of leadership and educational programs for the communities non profit.

And that is another place where the grants assessors talking about can be supported by ongoing education and training for the people that run those organizations.

Yeah, there is another documentary on your website.

Talk about the journey.

Tell me about that.

The journey is a fabulous opportunity to check out how the leadership programs evolved and and just to spotlight a few individuals that had gone through the program.

But it really is just to showcase these individuals and more of their story, too, as individuals and what brought them to where they are in their career and why they want to serve in the capacity that they serve in.

But it was really, I think, a responsibility that we have in providing this leadership lab, as we call it, for both rising leaders, people that are newer in the organization, executive leaders.

And then we have a very special group of leaders, the Sonder Fellows that have a Southeast Fort Wayne community focus.

It's been a real blessing to see these individuals come together.

And the excitement is, you know, they get this opportunity to participate in the programing that self-reflection and learning more about themselves.

And not only do we support the organization, but the individuals, if that individual then leaves and goes to another location, even if it's outside of our community, we still have the belief that we have fostered something in this individual that will then help them lead to a bigger opportunity someplace else.

We hope they stay with us.

But it's a really about building that leader and building those individuals that have that kind of innate responsibility to bring the greater good to what they're doing.

I had put a note down that of a phrase that came from the documentary Communities are stronger when people stay invested in the community.

And Cheryl, your experience with the foundation certainly speaks to that.

Well, I think that this is what speaks to me is for her and her mother, because they were co-founders of the foundation.

But for them, I think it was all about investment in this community in many respects.

It's been an investment in all of us.

You know, as we are temporaries and have been temporary stewards of the great gifts that they left.

And something, too.

I had a chance to read the obituary for Helene in the Journal Gazette, and at one point it said it described her as a trailblazer for her gender.

She was able and equipped to take advantage of opportunities as they arose, not necessarily.

In fact, she sort of put pooh poohed, if you will, the idea that she was a feminist.

But as I believe Ellen or Maureen says in the documentary, she didn't preach feminism.

She just did it.

She had the chance to be the sole woman on the UPI board, the first woman inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.

And I mention all of that because we see this perhaps as as easier hurdles to clear today, but not so much back then, even if you buy the idea that it's easier today and it in many cases still is not.

I think it's interesting.

Not only did Eleanor say that I rewatched the documentary recently and at least four other people in one way, shape or form, said Helene just did it.

It was it was that that was a through line for me.

It just resonated how many different people said she just did it.

And I think that that's, you know, was her own personal abilities and understanding of what she could do.

But also, you know, the environment which she was was rare and raised and said, yes, you know, you can do these things.

You're your generations before have done these things.

You can do these things.

And so in that spirit, again, it says on the foundation's website that we were founded by Helene Foellinger and her mother, Esther, to carry forward their family's tradition of civic involvement.

And and certainly the idea of of getting us connected to that past involvement to help, if you will, explore the options available to us as a community for future impact foellinger.org is the way, way to go?

Absolutely.

We also want to remind you all again that you can view the full documentary An Influence for Good, the Helene Foellinger Story at foellinger.org/documentary and again Foellinger Foundation online for additional activity as well, a first half hour.

Thank you both very, very much.

Sarah Strimmenos is a board member with the Foellinger Foundation.

Cheryl Taylor is retired CEO and president of the Foellinger Foundation.

Thank you both so much.

Thank you so much.

And for all involved with prime time, I'm Bruce Haines.

Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your evening.

Take care.

We'll see you again next week.

Good night.