Fred Teichert

Biography

Dr. Fred Teichert was raised in Sacramento, attending David Lubin Elementary, Kit Carson Middle, Arden Middle and El Camino High Schools before leaving for college. From high seventh through senior year, he was a student at San Juan Unified School District schools.
 
 Following high school, he graduated from Pomona College (1970) and later attained a teaching credential from UC Santa Cruz. He taught at Santa Catalina High School before returning to Sacramento and going to work for A. Teichert and Son in 1977. He received an MBA in 1994 from CSU Sacramento and an honorary doctorate from the CSU system in 2009. He heads Teichert Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the company that supports the communities from Truckee to Fresno, where Teichert operations do business. The foundation is supported from profits earned through sales of construction materials and construction services, so it is a means to ensure the communities that support the business are also supported by the business.  
   
He is currently active in the community as president of the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness and a board member of the Sac State Foundation. He has been awarded numerous civic honors, including the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce “Sacramentan of the Year.”

SJUSD Experience:
 Some highlights from San Juan Unified School District days include his being cast (type cast, perhaps) as the lead in the Arden School play, The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither. In shop class, he made a serving dish that he still has and a letter opener he does not. That year he was also elected Student Body President of Arden, and a good case could be made that his life has been all downhill from that year (1962).
   
Teichert’s four years at El Camino included the challenge by his Algebra II teacher, Mr. Saylor, to help build an analog computer, whose name he believes was DEBIAC. One of many “if only’s” from those days! This computer must have been important to Mr. Saylor, as well, for it was on display at his funeral a few years ago.
 
The math and English teachers especially tried to make some progress with students who were discovering the pleasures of surfing, the Beatles and beginning to drive. The German teacher, Mr. Warkus, bravely undertook to organize and chaperone a trip to Germany for his classes, a high school highlight for many of us. Making the material relevant to our lives was a task many of our teachers took very seriously, good models for many things later in life. El Camino High school provided a solid foundation in language and math, such that success in college and future endeavors was possible, if not easy.

Memories of Student Government with Mr. Kelley, subversive English assignments by Mrs. Moulton that kept us interested in reading, philosophical discussions in English classes with Miss Thomas, enjoying learning proofs in Geometry from Mr. Otter were but a few of the academic offerings that competed successfully with learning to drive, coming to terms with the assassination of President Kennedy and the escalation of the Vietnam War, burgeoning civil rights and other social unrest in the world around us, and just figuring out who we were in the world as high school students. Little did he know that his proud graduation in 1966 was just the beginning.