Russell and Tacoma.

A company destined for international success grew its roots deep in the City of Destiny.

Intertwined in that relationship is the story of influential families uniting and the legacy of a couple who loved the city as a child and cultivated its economic success and cultural growth.

You probably know the family names. Russell. Baker. Thompson.

You may not know their connections. Or the legacies – named and unnamed – they’ve indelibly imprinted on Tacoma and Pierce County.

A short family history: In the midst of the Great Depression, Frank Russell moved to Tacoma and founded a small investment firm. His son George Ford Russell already was married to the former Mary Baker, daughter of Tacoma News Tribune publisher and co-owner Frank S. Baker. George Ford Russell worked as president of a number of companies, including the Frank Russell Co. and The News Tribune.

It was his namesake, George F. Russell Jr., who would innovate the business of pension-fund consulting, catapulting his grandfather’s firm into a financial powerhouse. He did it with Jane Thompson Russell – his wife and a member of the family that founded Mountain View Funeral Home – by his side.

They sold the company to Northwestern Mutual Life of Milwaukee in 1998 in a deal estimated at $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion. Jane Russell died in 2002.

The culture of corporate citizenship that they instilled in the business remains today, with the donation of money by the company and time by its employees to causes large and small. Their own commitment to community is chiseled in stone, etched in glass, forged in ideas and institutions.

The Mary Baker Russell Music Center at Pacific Lutheran University. The Jane Thompson Russell Cancer Care Center at St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor. The Russell Family Foundation, dispensing grants for educational and environmental programs from its Gig Harbor offices. The University of Washington Tacoma. The Tacoma School of the Arts. The Museum of Glass. The LeMay car museum-in-the-works. The Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma.

All are among the dozens of community institutions linked to the Russells, their influence, their ideas, their philanthropy in ways great and small, noticed and unnoticed.

“Their opinion drove so many changes” in the city, said Mary Bowlby, director of the Tacoma Historical Society. “The focused leadership that they gave to the community was based on a love for Tacoma.”

Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659

kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com