In tax returns, a Neuharth family ages -- in stages

Retired Gannett CEO Al Neuharth writes his weekly USA Today column from a tree house at his Cocoa Beach home, overlooking Kennedy Space Center's launch pads at nearby Cape Canaveral.

Freedom Forum's annual IRS tax returns paint a detailed portrait of the cradle-to-grave support the journalism foundation is giving a host of charities near founder Al Neuharth's Florida home.

Reading hundreds of pages of grants to non-profits nationwide, I couldn't help picturing the multi-millionaire Neuharth, 84 (left), and his third wife, Dr. Rachel Fornes, now raising six adopted children in Cocoa Beach. Firing my imagination, of course, were Freedom Forum gifts, at least several dozen from 2000-2007, almost entirely to schools in Cocoa Beach and surrounding Brevard County.

Cradle through elementary
Appropriately, this Neuharth family history begins at birth: the Home At Last adoption agency that Fornes, a chiropractor, started and runs in Cocoa Beach, not far from the couple's home. Freedom Forum has given the non-profit nearly $66,000 in grants since 2000, the IRS reports show. (Home At Last, meanwhile, has paid Fornes a combined $76,000 in wages.)

Next, I noticed $35,500 in grants flowing to a Montessori Parent Organization in Indian Harbour, just 14 miles south of the Neuharth's home, a waterfront estate called the Pumpkin Center. (How could my thoughts not turn to the Neuharth kids, who would be entering preschool and then elementary during this period?)

Another chapter unfolds, in those grants to Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne; it got $46,500. Melbourne, also home to Florida Today, is just 22 miles south of Cocoa Beach.

High school to the grave
Suddenly, I'm picturing these children advancing to high school. Perhaps it was because I noticed, for the first time, that Freedom Forum in 2007 started supporting Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School. That year, the school got $5,000. (Looks like the school's fundraisers hit a potential jackpot: Ka-ching times six!)

Finally, there was a sad little grant I've seen just once: $1,000 to the Eureka Cemetery Association in Neuharth's beloved hometown of Eureka, S.D., in 2004 (IRS report detail, inset.) I'm sure $1,000 would go a long way toward family plot care.

Neuharth has a strong, sentimental attachment to Eureka. I recall a USA Today column about moving his parents' graves. And he's written several times about buying the old family home -- a house that figured prominently in his hardscrabble childhood.

The grants above total $154,000. Plus, of course, the foundation paid Neuharth, its senior advisory chairman, $225,000 in 2007 alone, plus another $184,482 for expenses. (Whoever said it's hard to support a family, never met Big Al.)


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