My Brother
Russell Allen Ross was born August 19, 1962 in Knoxville Tennessee to a young Air Force Officer and his wife both of whom had been born and raised in Knoxville. Mom and Dad might have guessed that he was going to be an adventurous kid when he decided that he didn’t want to be born the standard way; he was apparently trying to see the world before he got here and presented his forehead instead of the top of his head. No amount of guidance from the doctor could get him to change his mind, so Mom had a cesarean. According to all reports, Rusty had reddish hair and resembled a baby orangutan. Fortunately, he grew out of that.
I joined the family 27 month later. Rusty’s response to being to that he had a new baby sister was, allegedly to ask, “where’s my pony”. Like all 2 - 3 year olds he wanted a pony more than a younger sibling. He never got the pony.
My earliest memory of Rusty is from a day at the beach in North Carolina. I think I was around 3 or 4 at the time. Dad was stationed at Siemore Johnson AFB at the time. I was on the beach looking out at the water where my dad and brother were swimming. I remember that I couldn’t see them and was scared that a fish or something had eaten them. Apparently, I had recently heard the story of Jonah and the Whale. I vaguely remember a presence, but I have no clear images of him from that age.
The next real memory is from a few years later when we were at Minot AFB. Rusty was in the 3rd grade, I had just started Kindergarten. I remember him telling me about the snakes around the school and how he had caught one. I wanted to catch one too, but never saw any. His best friend at the time was a boy who lived on the same street. Matt had lazy eye and wore a patch on one eye for a while. That didn’t matter to Rusty, he liked Matt and they played together all the time. One of their favorite things to do was build a long Hot Wheels track, take it to the top of the 6-foot privacy fence, and run the cars down. I think half of them fell off or were launched. They ended up testing the aerodynamic property of Hot Wheels cars a bit before Mattel came out with the planes. I remember that he would push me on the swing set in the back yard. Mom once told a story about one of the neighbor kids who had come over and wanted to use our swing. I was in the swing at the time so he tried to push me out. Rusty took after him and beat him up. It was okay, in his mind, for him to push me around and roughhouse with me, but not some other kid.
We moved to Merced California in 1971 when Dad was transferred to Castle AFB. For the first time in my memory we had a house off base. And what a house we had. This was a large, single story ranch style with a small front yard, a massive reverse “h” shaped driveway, and trees. But the prize was in the back yard: a swimming pool. This pool would be the gem and the bane of our lives for the next 7 years. We learned to swim in that pool. Rusty was a pretty good swimmer, me not so much. I learned enough to get by. When we were both in scouts, that pool was where our troops earned their swimming and water safety badges. The pool didn’t have a diving board since it was only 8 foot deep at the deep end. Dad got one of those portable diving boards for us. Rusty took to diving like a fish to water. He learned to do some of the basic dives off that board into our pool. He was good enough to consider joining the HS dive team, once he was old enough. I recall that he decided not to join because diving was fun, he didn’t want it to become a task.
As a young child Rusty was anbisinister. While he was left dominate, he could use either hand to write, draw, or do pretty much anything. Mom and Dad never tried to make him do things right handed, they let him chose. It was only in the 4th grade that he became predominantly left handed after his broke his right arm in the school yard. Because he was naturally left-handed, I ended up picking up some ambidextrous skills. I inherited his old baseball glove. At that age, neither of us knew that gloves were specific to right and left hands. By the time I knew, I had already learned to throw left handed and could bat from either side of the plate.
Rusty was very intelligent, but he sometimes had problems understanding what he was reading. It was in the 5th grade that Mom and Dad finally found out why. Their son was dyslexic. Once they understood that, and accommodations could be made, Rusty’s grades came back up. He had a very good teach that year, a man who cared about his students and made an effort to get to know each one of them. That was also the year that a love of reading was instilled in him. A love that would stay with him for the rest of his life. This love of reading was passed on to me. I didn’t read in the first grade, which was Rusty’s 4th grade year. I could read, I just didn’t like it. Rusty’s 5th grade teacher, Mr. Anderson, always took the first half hour after lunch to read to the class. It was his way of getting the class to calm down after lunch. It also got many of his students interested in reading on their own. In fact he had his own class room library.
One of Rusty’s first loves was Edgar Rice Burrows most famous characters: Tarzan. He would watch or read anything Tarzan related. He learned to mimic the famous Tarzan yell from the movies. When he got tired of his pesky kid sister following him around, he would grab one of the Tarzan books, hold it in his teeth, and scramble up the Chinese Elm tree in our side yard. In that tree was a branch that was just perfect for a 10- 12-year-old boy to lounge. I could not climb trees, so up there he was safe. Eventually I wanted to know what was so fascinating about books and started to read myself. In time I even read some of his beloved Tarzan books.
At that age I wanted to do everything my brother did. There were no kids my age on the street, so he was only real playmate. So we watched TV, tossed ball, played basketball, played cops-and-robbers/cowboys, and swam together. When we had our annual vacation to Knoxville to see the grandparents, we would sit on top of the tool shed, hike in the near-by woods, and shoot BB rifle at soup cans.
Russ liked science, and at a young age wanted to be a Vet. When he was in 6th grade he was taking Zoology class, instead of biology. He loved it.
He played clarinet in band. By the time he was in 8th grade he had moved to Bass Clarinet in the Jr. High School band.
He joined the Boy Scouts in the 6th or 7th grade and made it up to Life Scout before we left Merced. He was within a year, some badges and a project of making Eagle.
Like all siblings we argued, even fought a few times, but we always made up.
Dad was transferred to Wright Patterson AFB in 1977. We spent a week in the back-seat of a Chrysler Imperial, with a travel trailer hitched to the back, as we traveled across country. We were both teenagers, or soon to be in my case, and were starting to go our own ways. Russ settled into Dayton better than I did. He found new friends much faster than I. Our paths started drifting apart.
The new school had been less accommodating to his learning disability and he lost a good part of his love of science. But he found a new love in art. That made Mom very proud since she was an artist herself. Now he drew Tarzan instead of just reading and watching.
A diving accident the summer between his sophomore and junior year broke a tooth and made it impossible for him to properly hold the mouth piece of a clarinet so he dropped out of band his junior year.
He never found a scout troop that he was comfortable with in Dayton, so he never got his Eagle.
He found that he was a fair hand with cars, so he started helping Dad work on our cars in the garage. It was logical; our grandfather was a mechanic and Dad was a decent shade tree mechanic.
Russ graduated High School in 1980. He took a year of college at our local community college then drifted away.
Everyone has a rebellious stage. Russ’ started around 18. It lasted, off and on, for 20 years.
In the mid 80’s Russ joined the U.S. Marines and did a short stint, ending up in San Diego and then Arizona. For the next several years he moved around, barely a blip in my life. We’d hear from him, talk on the phone for a bit, then he’d move somewhere else. Sometimes in the Dayton area, other times in Tennessee or some other state.
Russ got married in the early 90’s and we all thought he would finally settle down. But she wasn’t a good fit and they separated in 99.
Mom’s death in 1999 hit Russ very hard. Even though he hadn’t been home in years, he was still close to her emotionally. He was living in Tennessee at the time and was angry with himself that he had not come back to Dayton when she had had her surgery. When Dad decided to sell the house in Dayton, he had Russ come up to help do the painting and lay new tile. Russ and I took the time to reconnect.
At the time, I owned a Ford Crown Victoria that had developed a habit of stalling while I was driving. It only happened in the heat of the summer. I’d taken it to the local shop twice and they had not been able to find the source. I was lamenting to Russ how much I had spent and that it was still stalling. He walked out to my car, had me start it and looked at the engine. A few moments later, he asked me to get him a spray bottle or something to hold water and then proceeded to wet down the engine. When I tried to start the car, it wouldn’t go. The film on the initial module had melted exposing the wires to heat and humidity. We ran to the parts store and got a replacement ignition module and within an hour, my car was running fine. Like that, he’d found the problem using only his eyes and ears.
We got the house on the market and Russ went back to Tennessee. We tried to stay in touch by phone, but life kept getting in the way. He still bounced around, but now he was staying in Tennessee.
In 2002, I lost my job in Dayton and moved to Virginia. A dear lady of Cherokee blood had adopted me as a grand-daughter and her biological daughter took me as a sister. I’d never had a sister before. This new sister and her family opened their home to me and accepted me as family. Russ never blinked an eye at the idea of a new sister. He’d always felt the call of Native American ways, even though we could never prove the blood, so adult adoption was not a new idea.
When Russ told us a few years ago that he had found someone, I could not have been happier. He said she was a good woman, a God loving woman, who had two children. He was already fond of the children, so it sounded like a great match.
After they were married, Russ and Misty settled in western Tennessee. We kept in touch by phone and on-line now. By all reports, they had a good life. Their first Christmas I play a bit of a prank on Russ. I bought Misty a stuffed Orangutan. We were on the phone when she opened it. I told her that she now knew what Russ looked like as a baby. Once she stopped laughing, I told her to hold the Orangutan up, facing Russ, and to tell him “Left Turn, Clyde”. I could hear Russ’ howls of laughter. He’d forgotten about a movie he’d loved in the 80’s, “Every Which Way by Loose”, which had had an Orangutan as one of the stars.
We started calling and texting each other during Tennessee football games, sometimes during a Lady Vols game and at the start of NASCAR season. During Football season, it was common for Russ to start the conversation with the phrase all Vol fans know: “It’s Football Time in Tennessee”. All the dark days that had passed between us during those 20 years were gone and forgotten. I had my big brother back in my life, even if 800 miles away.
In March of 2015, Russ went to the doctor in extreme pain and showing blood in his urine. The diagnoses came back as Stage IV Metastic Bladder Cancer.
My brother did not take the news lying down. He was a Marine at heart and he was determined to fight. Fight he did. He had a good team of doctors and the love and support of a good woman. She stood by him through chemo, and whatever else they did, helped him through the nausea and pain. They tried some very aggressive chemo and the cancer shrank. It looked like Russ was going to be in the 18% who beat the odds. They switched him to a less aggressive form of chemo, one that was kinder to his body.
Through all of it, the calls and texts continued. When Pat Summit, head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols, passed away in 2016, Russ called. He knew that Pat was one of my idols and wanted to offer his condolences.
I tried to remain positive from the day we first got the news in 15. I found some old Bill Cosby albums and made copies for him. Laughter is good medicine, right. In 2016 I learned that season 1 of “Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle” was coming out. I preordered two copies. When they arrived, I threw a disk on and called him. When he answered, I turned on the disk and held the phone to the TV speaker. I could hear him reciting the opening dialog, remembering it just like he had heard only yesterday. When it came time for the yell at the end, he joined in loud and strong. The second copy was sent down a few days later. A week after that, I got a phone call and a “wait a minute” followed by the sound of the opening dialogue. He had gotten the set and was already watching it again for a second time. For one brief moment he was 12 years old again watching his favorite show. I tracked down a copy of Bill Cosby’s “For Adults Only” and made him a copy. From what I heard later, he had laughter until he hurt. Good, I had succeeded.
In December of 2106, just before Christmas, they got the news that Russ’ cancer was back, and it had spread. I think Russ knew that time was running out, but he still kept fighting. He went back on the aggressive chemo. He asked if I wanted his beloved Tarzan books. We both hoped it would be a long time before I got them.
He called me during the Daytona 500 when he saw that the son of my all time favorite driver was leading. Yeah, he was that kind of person. He was excited that my driver was leading.
On Friday, June 23, 2017, Russ lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. His hemoglobin count had dropped and he was having problems breathing. He was taken by helicopter to the hospital in Nashville where he was placed on a ventilator in ICU. Dad drove back and forth from Sevier County to Nashville several times to help Misty. For a brief period of time it looked like Russ would get better, but God had other plans. On Wednesday, Misty and Dad made the very hard decision to remove Russ’ ventilator.
If you listen to the full Marine Corps Hymn, it says that if the Army and the Navy ever look on Heaven’s Shores, they will find the gates are guarded by the United States Marines. Apparently, they needed a good mechanic who knows how to use his eyes and ears, and not just a computer. So, with orders in hand, he answered that call.
At 05:15, EDT, on June 30, 2017 Russell Allen Ross walked into the arms of Jesus. He leave behind a beloved wife, two step children, his father, one biological sister and one adopted sister.
My Big Brother is home with God and the family that has gone before us. For me, Tennessee football will never be the same.
Rest in Peace Russ.
