Top Philanthropic Donors: Juanita Kious Waugh

Ms. Waugh managed her family’s farms and inherited some of her wealth from the family’s banking, brick, and cattle businesses.

Ms. Waugh, who was 87 when she died in February 2010, bequeathed about $43.5-million in cash to the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn., for education programs and building projects. She also left 7,634 acres of farmland valued “at nearly $40.2-million to Saint Joseph’s College.

Although not closely involved with the Mayo Clinic, Ms. Waugh and her mother had been patients there over the years. Her involvement with Saint Joseph’s College, however, came from her decades-long friendship with the Catholic college’s former leader, the Rev. Charles Banet, who was president from 1965 to 1993.

Though outspokenly nonreligious, Ms. Waugh met Father Banet at a dinner party and the two became fast friends, often engaging each other in debates about religion. Her bequest to Saint Joseph’s has its roots in that friendship and in her commitment to protecting her family’s farms, ownership of which dates to the late 1800s.

After Ms. Waugh’s father, Lloyd Waugh, died in 1949, the farms were managed for two years by others, but Ms. Waugh and her mother, Laura Blanche Kious Waugh, were unhappy with the way the farms were being run, so the two women took over their management. Together, they operated the farms until 1982, when Ms. Waugh’s mother died and Juanita became the sole manager. Fiercely proud of her family’s successful farming business, Ms. Waugh knew she wanted to keep the land working even after her death.

Although she had given the college small gifts in the 1970s and ’80s totaling only about $3,600, Ms. Waugh stopped donating around 1983. Yet until his death about 10 years ago, Father Banet kept her informed about the college, and in 2009 she contacted Saint Joseph’s officials as she was preparing her will.

Donationd $83.7 Million in 2010.

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