These people reshaped Sacramento over the past four decades. Who follows to forge a new way?
Did you know who S. David Freeman was when he died last week at 94?
The headlines described Freeman as the former general manager of SMUD but he was much more than that. When Freeman became GM at SMUD in 1990, Sacramento’s utility was a joke around town – a bad joke. SMUD personified incompetence because its books were a mess and ratepayers were billed in excess to pay for the mess.
SMUD had just closed Rancho Seco, a nuclear power plant that was a flash point for civil unrest. Thirty years later, it seems incomprehensible that liberal Sacramento had a nuclear power plant at all, but it did. It seems apocryphal to suggest that SMUD was reviled by Sacramento, but it was.
The Bee had broken stories about SMUD execs buying fancy perks for themselves, including Rancho Seco jackets and other swag while SMUD customer bills were rising.
It was like small town corruption and Freeman blew into Sacramento and mocked it. He organized a big public sale and auctioned off the Rancho Seco jackets. The symbolism was clear: There was no place in Sacramento for such foolishness.
SMUD stabilized, stopped being controversial. Freeman moved SMUD toward clean, renewable energy. He was tough on some employees and there were many people inside who were happy to see him go, but SMUD was transformed.
Last October, we felt lucky in Sacramento that our lights stayed on while huge swaths of California went dark because they were served by PG&E.
Sacramento owes a debt to Freeman, who was modest of stature but had a huge personality. He wore a cowboy hat that gave the impression that he was from Texas even though he wasn’t. Freeman once worked in Texas. He also once worked for Texas-born President Lyndon Johnson. But Freeman was from Tennessee and was a descendant of Russian Jews.
He would turn on that Southern drawl and could be sweet and disarming. But he was usually the smartest person in any room he entered. He could be tough and mean and calculating when he wanted to be. He knew who he was and what he had to do.
Freeman’s death, coming in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, felt larger than the passing of one consequential person who helped change Sacramento as it was growing rapidly and as community wide ambitions and standards grew as well.
Sacramento will be different after COVID-19 and a new generation of Sacramento leaders are already ascending.
They will inherit a community in which Freeman was one of a generation of difference makers and memorable characters. They made a mark during great change between 1980 and 2020.
These leaders either rose through the ranks and ascended to influence in Sacramento, such as the late Mayor Joe Serna Jr. Or they blew through town like Freeman. Or, ones such as original Kings owner Gregg Lukenbill, have eased into quiet lives long removed from their heyday.
Or they they have recently died, such as star chef Biba Caggiano and business power house Lina Fat.
During that span, the Kings relocated to Sacramento from Kansas City, in 1985. Light rail began shuttling passengers around the region in 1987. Rancho Seco closed in 1989. The Hyatt Regency, Biba restaurant, and dining titan Randy Paragary laid the foundation for a Sacramento future of hospitality.
Women and ethnic minorities ascended to political influence for the first time, such as Robert Matsui, Anne Rudin, Heather Fargo, Grantland Johnson, Jimmie Yee, Sam Pannell, Deborah Ortiz and many others.
Multiple waves of Bay Area transplants led a population surge in Sacramento County from less than 785,000 in 1980 to more than 1.5 million today.
Sacramento change agents
One of the people in those early 1980s waves was an ambitious student from the Bay Area named Darrell Steinberg, who graduated from UC Davis Law School in 1984 and decided to make Sacramento his home. Now mayor of Sacramento after serving as the leader of the state Senate, Steinberg is arguably the most accomplished politician to serve on the local front in a generation or more.
If I were to compile a list of most memorable people who have stepped to the forefront for the betterment of Sacramento between 1980 and 2020, Steinberg would be on the list. So would Freeman.
So who else makes that list of those who reshaped Sacramento? Those consequential people who influenced our lives?
Serna would be on the list for using his bully pulpit to great effect in the 1990s. Rudin and Fargo for breaking glass ceilings and gaining voter support like women never had in Sacramento before. Lukenbill for having the audacity to bring the Kings to Sacramento and for dreaming big on scores of other projects, some successful and some not.
The late Bob Matsui was interned with other Japanese Americans during World War II and grew up to be one of the most admired political leaders in Sacramento. It’s a legacy that Doris Matsui has kept alive serving in her husband’s old congressional seat and by bolstering Sacramento’s flood system.
The late Mort Friedman and Marcy Friedman make the list for building Arden Fair Mall into a key community amenity and for their generous philanthropy. So would Joyce Raley Teel, who inherited her dad’s locally-based grocery chain in 1991 and who established the Food for Families non-profit to feed the hungry.
Caggiano and Fat, who were close friends, died within months of each other recently. Both seemed to be everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s as the grand dames of Sacramento’s restaurant scene.
Paragary was like the Don Corleone of Sacramento’s hospitality scene. Restaurateurs Randall Selland and Patrick and Bobbin Mulvaney created dining excellence. Selland won Sacramento’s first Michelin Star. The Mulvaneys are worthy of one and have also dedicated themselves to promoting suicide awareness and feeding the hungry.
The late Bishop Francis Quinn was the spiritual leader of Sacramento’s Catholic Diocese from 1980 to 1992. He was beloved by Catholics and non-Catholics for his smiling humanity. He was America’s oldest living Bishop when he died 97 in 2019.
In 1994, Jan Scully became the first female DA of Sacramento County and the first female DA of any large California county. She transformed her office during her 20 years as Sacramento’s DA and she “retired” by founding the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, a non-profit serving victims of domestic abuse, elder abuse, human trafficking, sexual assault and child abuse.
Scully’s protege and successor, Anne Marie Schubert, was an early champion of DNA evidence to solve notorious cases that had gone cold.
That belief led to the arrest of a suspect in the East Area rapist case in 2018. Schubert had been deeply affected by the string of unsolved rape cases when she was a girl growing up in 1970s Sacramento. Schubert stood before scores of TV cameras, at the center of national and international news, announcing the arrest of a suspect.
Sister Libby Fernandez raised the alarm on homelessness long before Steinberg made it a major policy issue when he was elected mayor in 2016. Sacramento State President Robert Nelsen raised the profile of the institution he leads, for speaking out against intolerance and bigotry and for fostering pride in Sac State by ending every public appearance by shouting, “Sac State is No. 1, Stingers up”!
The late Art Savage brought baseball back to Sacramento in 2000 with the arrival of the Sacramento River Cats, the reigning champions of minor league baseball.
Kevin Johnson became the first African American mayor of the city and played a key role in preventing the Kings from relocating to Seattle
Who else makes the list?
This list could go and on, so tell me: Who did I miss? Send me your suggestions. Clearly, many other people made a mark in Sacramento between 1980 and 2020. They should be celebrated, especially now as Sacramento enters a new era of changed forced upon the capital city by COVID-19.
Biba Restaurant recently shut down, in part, because of the coronavirus stay-at-home orders. Nordstrom, the cornerstone of the Friedman’s vision for Arden Fair, closed for good. Everything that was built or improved in Sacramento in the last 40 years is threatened by a global pandemic.
Who will be the people who lead us out of danger and into a new era of growth and change? Hopefully, they will do as well as those leaders who made Sacramento better in the last 40 years.
