Peggy Ann (Brown) Dettmer 1936 – 2026
Peggy Ann Dettmer passed from this world peacefully on the morning of January 12, 2026, in her room in Lyle House in the Meadowlark Hills retirement community in Manhattan, Kansas, after a long illness. Peggy’s life was dedicated to the education of others, as well as to her own spiritual awareness and intellectual and artistic development.
Peggy was born on October 14, 1936, in Pampa, Texas to Robert Lee Brown and Mary Lou (Williams) Brown. Robert, whose great-grandparents had arrived in Texas from Tennessee in the 1850s and who had been orphaned in his youth, was a schoolteacher — and at the time of Peggy’s birth he was teaching at the Hopkins School, an oil-field school south of Pampa. Mary Lou, daughter of sharecroppers who had migrated to Texas from Mississippi, kept the home and supported Robert’s teaching by directing the students’ extracurricular activities.
This was the time of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Out on the flat, desolate Texas Panhandle plains, Mary Lou would sweep out the lone wooden teacherage daily and fit a damp sheet over Peggy’s bassinet to keep Peggy from choking on the dust.
To escape those conditions, Robert applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and in 1937 was offered teaching positions in North Dakota, first at a day school on the Devil’s Lake Sioux Reservation — today named Spirit Lake Nation Reservation — and later at the Fort Totten Indian Industrial School. These early childhood years in North Dakota, in close encounter with the culture and spirituality of the Dakota and Chippewa, were deeply formative for Peggy. For a time, among her playmates was her cousin Darlene, from Texas.
At the time of their move to North Dakota, Robert and Mary Lou also found and acquired a small property in rural Vernon County, Missouri, near the town of Bronaugh, so that Mary Lou’s parents finally could have a place to call their own.
In 1942, Robert, Mary Lou, and Peggy moved to Nevada, the seat of Vernon County. Peggy’s sister, Nancy, was born shortly after the arrival in Missouri. Robert taught industrial arts at Nevada High School and purchased a modest farm south of town for his small herd of Polled Hereford cattle. Peggy and Nancy grew up on that farm, Peggy graduating from Nevada High School in 1954.
At age 16, after a long, hot summer day helping her father in the field, Peggy fell ill. She was diagnosed with polio and rushed by ambulance to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City. This was just two years before the introduction of the Salk vaccine, and although in the following months she would regain all of her motor functions — becoming an accomplished organist in her teens — the legacy of this illness would forever be a part of her life.
Peggy matriculated at Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg — today’s Pittsburg State University — earning her Bachelor of Music Education degree, with emphasis in pipe organ, in 1958, and being named a Senior Scholar by the College. She also served as chapter president of Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority. Upon graduation, she and her college roommate, Phyllis Vogel, made their way to Kansas City, where they taught in the Merriam, Kansas public schools. Peggy taught the early grades and was organist for several area churches.
In 1960, mutual friends set up a blind date for Peggy Brown with a young cattle buyer whose new job had brought him to Kansas City — and although both were hesitant to accept the invitation, on June 24, 2025, Arlen and Peggy Dettmer celebrated the 64th anniversary of their happy and fulfilling marriage. Having started married life in a suburban house in Overland Park, the newlyweds soon rented a farmhouse in the countryside south of Olathe, at 151st Street and Black Bob Road. There they welcomed the arrival of their two children, Douglas and David, in 1964 and 1965.
Arlen’s work demanded that they live outside the Kansas City metro area — and after a brief interval living in Emporia, Arlen and Peggy purchased the old Dierking residence on the edge of Alta Vista, Kansas, in 1967. For the next half century this property happily provided land for Arlen’s horse and cattle, ample space for the sons to play and explore, and the privacy Peggy needed to think, study, lesson-plan, and write.
Peggy taught at Alta Vista Elementary School for six years, primarily the first and second grades, and then worked for the Flint Hills Special Education Cooperative based in Emporia. In 1976, she earned her Master of Science degree in special education from Kansas State University and in 1979 her Ph.D. in educational psychology.
Most exceptionally for that time, the university hired its own degree-holder, and Dr. Dettmer served on the faculty of the KSU College of Education for 22 years, teaching courses in educational psychology, special education, classroom assessment, and creativity. She chaired the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology for four years and directed the College of Education Honors Program.
Peggy’s research and professional work included writing textbooks, book chapters, and journal articles, directing federal and state grants, and conducting in-state and out-ofstate in-services and staff development activities. In 1991, the year she was elevated to full professor, Peggy received through student selection the Conoco Outstanding Teaching Award. In 1994, she was honored as The Kansas Association for the Gifted, Talented and Creative Advocate. She was promoted to Professor Emeritus upon her retirement from K-State, in 2002.
For decades, Peggy was organist and director of children’s and adult church choirs in a number of Kansas and Missouri churches. She was a long-time member of the United Methodist Church and the Delta Kappa Gamma teachers’ society. In the 1980s, the family also rescued the local newspaper, the Alta Vista Journal, from closure and published it for a few years, with Peggy writing a weekly column.
Peggy continued to study, play music, and write into her retirement years. A condition known as post-polio syndrome began affecting her health in her forties, and she spent the last five decades of her life in daily physical pain, having missed the vaccine by two years. Even though in the last several years of her life post-polio syndrome and Parkinson’s disease exacted their terrible toll on her physically, she always remained positive, confident, and determined — book in hand, fingers on the keyboard, thinking, learning, and creating.
Peggy Ann (Brown) Dettmer was a person of remarkable abilities and empathy. She could play several musical instruments; she painted in oils. Her Southern heritage was reflected in her excellent cooking. She enjoyed collecting rocks and fossils, gardening, and caring for a series of beloved pets. She expressed her care for others through gift-giving — in the pre-internet days subscribing to dozens of mail-order catalogs. She was religious in a deeply personal, private way, inhabiting a faith that recognizes a higher power while also embracing the practical gifts of science and liberal human progress. She possessed the extraordinary capacity for work and penchant for achievement that is well documented among polio survivors — their offering in recognition of the fact that others were not as fortunate.
Forever the educator, Peggy’s life embodied the power of public education — the notion of the common weal of a fair and lawful society providing every student, regardless of their ability or circumstance, the opportunity to share communally in the labor of learning and improving. The arc of her life leaned forward, to the end.
Peggy was preceded in death by her parents, Robert and Mary Lou Brown; and by her mother’s twin sister, Madie Sue Motte, and Madie’s daughter, Darlene Santos, among the many aunts, uncles, and cousins who predeceased her.
She is survived by her husband, Arlen Dettmer, of the home; son Douglas Dettmer and daughter-inlaw Chloë Dettmer, of Bovey Tracey, England; son David Dettmer, daughter-in-law Clara Irina Rivero, and granddaughter Pilar Dettmer, of Austin, Texas; sister Nancy Ruggles, of De Pere, Wisconsin; first cousin Michael Motte, of Salem, Oregon; and a number of nieces and nephews, including Nancy’s sons Scott Ruggles of De Pere and Mark Ruggles of Corinth, Texas.
The family would like to thank the staff in Lyle House at the Meadowlark Hills retirement community for the expert and compassionate care Peggy received over the past five years.
A memorial service will be held this summer, on Friday, August 7 at 11:00a.m., at Yorgensen-Meloan- Londeen Funeral Home, 1616 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, Kansas. Interment of Peggy’s ashes will be in the Fancy Creek-Randolph Cemetery in northern Riley County, Kansas.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Dr. Peggy A. Dettmer Memorial Fund, established through the Kansas State University Foundation by Peggy’s family. This fund will provide scholarships for students in the KSU College of Education. Contributions to this fund may be sent to: KSU Foundation, 1800 Kimball Avenue, Suite 200, Manhattan, Kansas 66502, indicating “Fund M47517” on the gift. Gifts may be made online at www.ksufoundation. org/give/memorials by selecting “Dr. Peggy A. Dettmer Memorial Fund (M47517)” in the drop-down menu of the “Designation” box.
The Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home, 1616 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, Kansas 66502, is assisting the family with service arrangements. ymlfuneralhome.com.