Sara Fritz

Sara Fritz, a respected award-winning Washington news reporter for over 40 years, passed away Wednesday, October 16, from a virulent lung infection incurred after hip replacement surgery. She was 68. Sara was widely known among Washington reporters for her integrity, tenacity and many friendships. Beginning in her native Pittsburgh, PA, Sara covered floods, unions, the White House, Congress, campaign funding, the Iran-Contra hearings, Whitewater and many, many other major news stories. She worked for United Press International (where she met her husband of 38 years), U.S. News and World Report and The Los Angeles Times. She was the Washington bureau chief of The St. Petersburg (FL) Times and, after a brief retirement, was executive director of Faith and Politics, a non-denominational ministry to Congress, and then executive director of Youth Today, which published a periodical dedicated to news about social programs intended to help troubled adolescents. Most recently, she completed a manuscript about whites who closed the schools in Prince Edward County, VA, for five years rather than integrate them. Sara was born Dec. 16, 1944. She was raised in Gibsonia, PA. She was the daughter of Richard C. Fritz and Dorothy Farr Fritz. She graduated from Richland High School and received a B.A. from Denison University in 1966. She also received an honorary degree from Denison and several other colleges. In addition to her husband, James A. Kidney, of Washington, Sara is survived by their daughter Mary, and two sisters, Marjorie Henderson and Judith Farr Demitris. Their son, Daniel, died in 2000. Interment will be private. A memorial service will be scheduled in mid-November. The family requests that donations be made in Sara’s name to the Daniel M. Kidney Memorial Scholarship Fund, Denison University, 100 W. College St., Granville, Ohio, 43023.