I was in Scapin at Yale and at CSC. Consequently, I have many fond memories of Rusty.

He was, of course, gifted as a composer and lyricist, but he was also brilliantly spontaneously funny.

In addition to his already obvious verbal acuity, Rusty had the ability to turn his eyelids inside out - which, during the Yale run of the show, he would often do before running onstage and delivering a line to me. I have terrible composure and probably broke up in front of the audience much more than I should have. But the memory of that comic face delivering that line with manic fluttering, as if it were laden with some kind of import, still comes to me at times and makes me laugh out loud.

During the CSC run, I asked Rusty if I could hear some more of his music. He gave me a demo tape. The content of the tape was so versatile, I thought at first it must be the work of a bunch of different composers - and that Rusty was playing the piano. I couldn't believe how talented he was.

Like all of you, I'm sure, I will miss him - but thank God his humor and his music are still very much alive.

Glad to find this website and love to everyone.

at our last show, we laughed backstage imagining how Rusty would have destroyed janet jackson and justin timberlake to close our saturday night.
sweet appreciation from all the moonworkers.

I had this feeling that it had been about a year so I stopped by the site for a visit. I barely knew Rusty, but, like so many others, was entertained and touched by him and think about him often, usually on the occasion of witnessing something which reminds me of his unsurpassed humor. Corny as it sounds, Rusty continues to inspire me to live and to laugh, while reminding me of my humanity and mortality. Sincere best wishes to his family.

On this special day how can I express gratitude for all for your words, your thoughts, your love? I peruse this site every day looking for clues re the wonder of Rusty's mystique. And for all the marvelous things I read it's still a wonderful mystery. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for caring. Thank you for writing. Thank you for remembering. Rusty loved you all so much.

It's been a year? It's been a year. It's been an hour, a decade. After the grief and shock of the last part of his life, what rises from the ashes, for me, is his joy, his peace at the end. Was he just putting it on for us, giving us a gift, letting us go with a smile, as a kindness? I wouldn't put it past him, he was a kind man, but his serenity and wit in his last days shines so strongly in my memory, I know he really did it; he found peace, he knew how loved he was, he knew where he was going. And I can't forget that last, last smile.
I want to go the way he did, with that much style and grace, but it's unlikely. For one thing, I won't have hundreds of friends paying homage, I just won't, and for another, I won't have Alison. I told Alison she has to take care of me at the end, but she reminds me that I have Todd (so.. she can be my backup...?). Alison arranged the last weeks so that he was free to accept the end of his life, free to find joy in his beloved friendships, free to say goodbye.
We said goodbye, but Rusty has never left me. I think of him everyday, and day by day, the memories hurt less. He was all about joy, and it's hard to resist coming to the same conclusion he came to, that life is good, that there's always a joke here somewhere, and that love is everything.
Forever.

Dearest Rusty, I cannot believe that a year has gone by since you left us. For me, your Mother, it is like yesterday and I still want to phone you and talk about Derek Jeter, and the silly media stuff on Janet Jackson, the Democratic primaries, the extreme New England weather, Pudge, the Marlins catcher going to your beloved Tigers. I know I will never get over losing you, but you'd be proud of my efforts in the three writing groups I attend. I've been writing up a storm, and someday, I hope I have the strength to write about you and some of the wonderful big things and the precious little things you did with your glorious life. I'm a survivor, as you know, but it's really difficult to be in this world without you. I'm close to Kathy and Jessica, and Marian Griffin and the two Ciarans, and that helps.
Your beautiful wife and your son Nat are both doing well, but I'm sure they miss you alot. I love you a lot Rusty, then, now, and forever.
Your Mom.

Dear Alison and Nat,

It seems impossible that a year without Rusty has gone by. I've thought of him so many times. At all of my gigs. Once, last summer, in Vermont, when some guy played Brown Eyed Girl sitting around a campfire, on a beautiful, star-filled night, I thought that Rusty must be thinking of all of us, too. John, who has become a drummer, if someone can do that at four years old, drums and sings along almost nightly to his favorite song: Bat Out of Hell. Rusty, again, smiling somewhere and laughing at me.

I miss him enormously--he was a bright, shining light in the lives of all of his friends. I don't think he could be forgotten when fifty years have gone by.

Love to you and to Rusty's family,

Cindy

p.s. Oh, what Rusty would have done with the Janet Jackson Superbowl to-do!

When it rains it pours and opens doors
And floods the floors we thought would always keep us safe and dry
And in the midst of sailing ships we sink our lips into the ones we love
That have to say goodbye

And as I float along this ocean
I can feel you like a notion that won’t seem to let me go

Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you’re here with me
And you make everything alright
And when I feel like I’m lost something tells me you’re here with me
And I can always find my way when you are here

And every word I didn’t say that caught up in some busy day
And every dance on the kitchen floor we didn’t have before
And every sunset that we’ll miss I’ll wrap them all up in a kiss
And pick you up in all of this when I sail away

And as I float along this ocean
I can feel you like a notion that won’t seem to let me go

Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you’re here with me
And you make everything alright
And when I feel like I’m lost something tells me you’re here with me
And I can always find my way

Whether I am up or down or in or out or just plane overhead
Instead it just feels like it is impossible to fly
But with you I can spread my wings
to see me over everything that life may send me
When I am hoping it won’t pass me by

And when I feel like there is no one that will ever know me
there you are to show me

Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you’re here with me
And you make everything alright
And when I feel like I’m lost something tells me you’re here with me
And I can always find my way when you are here

Dear Alison,
I am so sad, so sad. I just found this website by accident when I was Googling. I am sooo far away from my friends in NYC now that I live in Montana on a cattle ranch that I was unaware of Rusty's illness and passing.
Ernest Hemingway said that if you had lived in Paris in your twenties, then Paris would have been "A Moveable Feast" or something like that. That's the way I feel about my time in NYC from 1976-1990, but especially my association with the West Bank and Lew, Rand and Rusty in the 1980's. It was more than a feast, it was an all you can eat smorgasbord! Or maybe an all out FOOD FIGHT! It changed my life. I had been wandering in the wilderness of unemployed actordom when I stumbled into the Midnight Show. Hallelujah! Scary as it may seem to some, here were MY kind of people!
And to this day my favorite experience as an actress was performing "The Old Oysters" with Margo Martindale, Wayne Knight, Andy Matthews and Rusty. The only song I ever wrote was the theme song to"Old Oysters" but the funniest thing about the opening was Rusty's intro. Wish I had a tape of that. Funnily, I sang that song for the first time since then at a Christmas Eve oyster party here in Big Timber, MT a few weeks ago. Rusty was soooo talented, funny, quirky... impossible to describe with words. I just lost my dear sister Deb to brain cancer after a year's struggle. Wish I would have started a web site like this one. Awesome Alison. Rusty will always be alive in my mind. I believe that we are all light, but among all us creatures of light, Rusty was one of the beacons. He made a difference.
XXOO
Diane Kamp

It has been 2 years now since I began working on this site with Alison and Jamie. In some ways it feels like a decade has passed.
But in one very big way, it feels just like yesterday.
There are more pictures to be added, more to be done with the site, more and more and more...
As long as there is more, Rusty is still with us.
And that almost makes everything ok.
Almost.
I am humbled everytime I visit here to catch up on the latest posts; by the volume, the passions, the humanity. But mostly by how many lives Rusty touched in his short time on this earth.