Dr. Sauvageau

Dr. David R. Sauvageau, Ph.D., of Brainerd, died Thursday, March 27, 2008 at his home. He was born in St. Paul, MN on December 8, 1937, the son of Dorothy Ann Weisz, who soon moved with him to her fathers home near Gregory Park. He graduated with honors from Washington High School (news editor, Hi-Y President, Jostens Citizenship Award) and Brainerd Junior College (student council president, newspaper editor). In 1957, he enlisted in the US Army, serving as a journalist in Colorado, New Jersey, Texas, and Germany. Discharged in Europe, he worked there for another year as a Berlitz teacher and a reporter for the Associated Press. Back home, he graduated in 1963 from the University of Minnesota, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. In the mid 1960s he won Rotary International Fellowships at Swedens University of Lund, then at Germanys Max Planck Institute and Austrias University of Vienna, where he studied under famed author and Nobel Prize winning ethologist, Konrad Lorenz. He returned to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in comparative literature and science in 1977, having also taught at his alma mater for the maximum six years. He then taught English, humanities, science and literature, journalism, and German at Michigan Tech University, Winona State University, Northern State University, Arrowhead College, Bemidji State University, Mayville State University, and Southern Utah State University. As global population more than tripled during his life-time, Professor Sauvageau was an active member of several environmental and population-control organizations. Choosing not to have children, he has willed his woodland property on a bay on the Mississippi River to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which will maintain it as a nature preserve.