A Pillar Remembered DETERDING WAS A DISTINGUISHED DESCENDANT OF A CARMICHAEL PIONEER
BY SUSAN MAXWELL SKINNER MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS
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or Carmichael’s oldest family, the 2015 Pearl Harbor anniversary recalled more than a day of infamy. A man of military and community action, patriarch Russell Deterding was born on Dec. 7. As the day passed, his large clan celebrated the life that ended in August. “We called and emailed each other and shared stories about Dad,” says his first daughter, Donna Deterding. “We miss him but we know he’s with our mom, now. They loved each other from the minute they met; now they’re loving each other in heaven.” In war, Russell Deterding survived wounds leading men into battle. In peace, he led parishioners at the church he helped build. He captained nonprofits with the kindly hand that guided his family. At his death at 85, he was one of the few people who cherished memories of his grandmother, Carmichael pioneer Mary Deterding. Now part of the American River Parkway, Mary’s San Juan Meadows Farm was still supplying Sacramento markets in Russ Deterding’s youth. He recalled Mary’s house near San Lorenzo Drive: “It was small and basic,” he told this author. “As a boy I used a hand pump in grandmother’s kitchen to get a glass of water. She fended for herself and had a tough time.” Separated from husband Charles, Mary Deterding was a towering sponsor of Carmichael development from the early 1900s. Her son Dick and his wife, Josephine, raised Russell. From a brick and timber house that still graces lower Palm
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Russell Deterding shows a portrait of his legendary grandmother, pioneer Mary Deterding. The businessman and community leader died in August.
Drive, young Russ set off to Christian Brothers and Sacramento High schools. His graduation from business studies at St. Mary’s College coincided with the first year of the Korean War. At 21, he became a U.S. Marine. Returning to Carmichael in the prosperous 1950s, Captain Deterding
married his childhood sweetheart, Lou Anne Compton. The prolific couple would produce seven children. First joining his father’s plumbing and air-conditioning supply business, Russell later launched a similar venture of his own. He diversified into building, development and real estate.
Along the way, the businessman reinforced family traditions of community service. He led Sacramento’s elite Sutter Club and the Camellia Festival Association. He chaired the Sutter Hospital Research Foundation and the Sacramento Children’s Receiving Home board. He was a tireless booster for Red Cross and Rotary organizations. Devoutly Catholic until his death, he undertook regency of St. Mary’s College and helped establish Jesuit High School and Our Lady of Assumption Parish, both in Carmichael. “He and Mom drove to Mass every morning before work,” recalls daughter Donna Deterding. “Later, when they moved closer to OLA, Dad walked there.” Opening church doors with his own key, he was first to the altar every day. His old friend Monsignor James Kidder reports: “Russ was certainly a man of faith. As sacristan, he prepared bread and wine for mass. He was good to priests; we enjoyed his hospitality and sense of humor. He’d say I was his best friend. Then he’d give a list of previous ‘best friends’ who had died.” His offspring inherit a legacy of Deterding pride: Earlier ancestors crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains in ox-drawn wagons; they established farms and a roadhouse in the area now called Rancho Cordova; they built hospitals, universities, bridges, churches, water districts and communities. All over Sacramento, monuments and plaques immortalize these pillars. Modest, quiet-spoken Russell Deterding is the latest distinguished DETERDING page 27