Good-bye, Rusty.

Gay called me last night about eight to tell me that Rusty had died.  She was at his bedside in the hospital all day; perhaps he waited until she was gone to let go.  Gay and I have known Rusty Hevelin since the sixties, and have been close since the seventies.  He was one of a small group who trekked down to Florida during the Apollo Program, to watch the rockets go up and benefit from the hospitality of fans Banks Mebane and Joe Green.  I think the earliest picture I have of us together is Tricon in 1976; I remember we were pals when he was Fan Guest of Honor in Denvention in 1981.We traveled around a lot together, camping in the warm months and conning in the cold ones.  Rusty drove our support vehicle, a ramshackle RV, when Gay and I bicycled across the country in the nineties.  He was one of the rare science fiction fans with whom I could share memories of combat.  He was in the Marines in the Pacific in WWII, flying weather-report missions.  One morning he was shaving on some island, perhaps Peleliu, when a Japanese sniper fired at him.  The bullet went over Rusty’s head and killed a soldier in the tent behind him.  (He never confirmed this, but maybe that convinced him that a beard might be a good idea.)He was a vastly accepting man, with endless patience for the young and foolish (and the old and clueless); everybody’s grandfather figure, but much more fun to be with than your actual grandfather.  Many of us loved him, and he loved in return.He used to say of old people when they died, “Well, he had a good long run.”  Rusty had that himself, not quite reaching ninety.  Selfishly I wish he could have made it into triple digits – but he did have seventy years of bonus time, as they said in his war; the bullet that missed him gifted us with a shared lifetime of camaraderie.  We shared a lack of belief in the supernatural, and also a wry sense of our loss in that lack.  It would be nice to think of Rusty up there somewhere cranking a ditto machine or sitting at a card table with Bob Tucker, Waddie, Mike Glicksohn, Lou Tabakow, Gordy Dickson, and my brother Jack, looking down at us and pitying our everyday mundane trials while they relax eternally in a con suite that never runs dry.  Perhaps we may hold that image for just a little while, in fond memory.Joe