Recognizing Those Who Give: Richard Anderson

Tags: Volunteering

Richard Anderson fell in love with the Sierra as a child, when his recently divorced mother moved him and his brother and sister from the East Bay to a little town high on the west slope. Just down the hill from their cabin ran a small stream, much like Trout Creek here in Truckee, and Richard quickly became entranced with its rainbow and brook trout, and entranced too with the challenge of hooking these fish. “And really,” he says, “I became entranced with the woods surrounding me, which invited exploration and play — idyllic terrain for childhood.”

Those years were formative amid the trees and beside the water. They led Richard first into the profession of city planning, then into publishing, when he launched California Fly Fisher magazine. Eventually this led him to Truckee, when he returned a full-time resident to the mountains he loves.

Having lived in very small towns and very big cities, he appreciates the value of community and the need to give back to it. Richard’s service as an elected official has allowed him to learn the limits of government intimately, so he supports a range of nonprofits that assist the disadvantaged and protect our environs. He also created the Truckee Tahoe Trout Fund, a donor-advised fund within the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation that provides grants specifically for improving our local fisheries.

Philanthropy, for Richard, represents a form of home maintenance, except home, extends beyond the walls of the house, to include the broader area we inhabit daily and its people and creatures. “How lucky,” he says, “how extraordinary, that many share a similar desire to invest themselves in this place. In so doing, ‘they’ become ‘we.’ ”

This article first appeared in our 2014 Annual Report.