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My dad passed away a week ago today. It was both expected and not. He had been in poor health for twenty years after breaking his back on the job, falling backwards off stilts while holding drywall overhead. The last 20 years were a series of surgeries and battles with... 1/10
insurance and workers comp. Seven years as an ironworker and 43 as a carpenter left him with three fused vertebrae, a rod in his spine, an internal morphine pump, and on oxygen for COPD, emphysema, and asbestos in his lungs... 2/10
“Big Russ” wrought steel and drywall with his bare hands to build Cleveland. A third-generation building tradesman, he was the son and grandson of plasterers and lathers, the son-in-law of an ironworker, and a proud and skilled union ironworker and carpenter... 3/10
A man of deep faith who read the Bible mornings at 4am, his bicep tattoo of Satan swinging a hammer may as well have been a self-portrait. The 1980s saw him covered in soot and fueled by overtime in the steel mills. 4/10
In the 1990s, he was renowned for his ability to hang 2,500ft of ceiling a day. The Cleveland skyline and the day-to-day of millions of Clevelanders are better for the care and skill he put into... 5/10
...the Sohio Building, the Society Building, the Justice Center, Jacobs Field, Gund Arena, Tower City, and numerous banks, and Cleveland Clinic buildings. Only after brutally breaking his back on the job was he allowed to watch his children and grandchildren grow up. 6/10
Russ didn't follow politics or sports; he racked up overtime and side-jobs to afford two acres in Geauga County. He rarely took vacation days that could instead be sold to buy Christmas presents. 7/10
Going into business for himself felt dishonest. With the exception of lottery tickets and Newports tucked into his cheap uniform of a Hanes pocket tee shirt, he had a monk's aversion to treating himself. 8/10
No memorial service will ever pay sufficient homage to the broken backs, or the bloodied, cracked, electrical-tape-bandaged hands and lives of building tradesmen like Russ. 9/10
There will never be a more appropriate monument to their works than the skyline they bent steel and drywall to create or the lives they scratched out for their families. 10/10
