Sailor Steve
01-02-12, 06:23 PM
This is hard. I just lost an old friend, the first time ever that someone close to me has died.
Some of you who have been around long enough may have seen me refer ocassionally to something said by "an old friend", "a good friend", or "my friend Rocky." Rocky Russo was one of the few people who know more than I did regarding favorite subjects and could out-argue most of the people I knew. I first met him back in 1977, through a group playing a game he had designed. Like most of the people who got to know him I questioned some of his ideas and sources, and like most of them I was shown that he knew what he was talking about.
Rocky studied anthropology and archeology in college and dropped that dream when, as he put it, "I was told they wouldn't let Americans go to Turkey and dig up Hittites." He married a woman whose goal was to be a doctor, and worked several jobs to put her through medical school and then gave up several career options to follow her around the country advancing her career. She went on to become a pathologist and one of the country's leading authorities on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, going so far as to testify in front of Congress on the subject. This isn't about her, but she is important to the story.
Rocky was mainly a writer. He mostly wrote technical articles for magazines and journals, and he acted as editor for an old friend who published a Slot Car magazine out of Denver, Colorado. That was his first avocation. As a teen in the 1960s he built and raced slot cars, and was in demand for his skill as a motor and chassis maker. He chose the pseudonymn "Professor Fate", being a fan of the movie The Great Race, and he always said that he thought that character, played by Jack Lemmon, was the real hero of the film, since he had to do everything himself while Tony Curtis's "The Great Leslie" was a rich boy who just bought whatever he needed to win. Decades later I was around when somebody he raced with would find out and say "You're Doctor Fate? I raced one of your cars when I was a kid!"
Rocky also spent a lot of time building and flying rubber-powered model airplanes, and got me involved in that pastime for awhile. I actually built a couple of 'flyers' and a couple of slot cars, but they didn't grab me like they did him.
In the early 1970s Rocky developed a set of rules for miniatures army wargaming with our mutual friend Doug Larsen and they were early enough in the genre to be able to grab the copyright for Sun Tzu's 'The Art Of War'. Doug recently republished the game in PDF format.
http://www.deepfriedhappymice.com/html/rd_art_of_war.html
About that time Rocky and Doug also created a 3-D airwar game called Mustangs & Messerschmitts. Obviously this was about the time that D&D was being born, and Rocky early on playtested with that game's designers. M&M was possible only because another field Rocky studied extensively in was aerodynamics. He worked out flight statistics for the planes at first on a slide rule, then a calculator and finally on an Atari computer. A part a board game called Mig Killers, in which one played modern (for that time) jet fighters. The Air Force bought an entire print run of the game. Rocky said that he as visited by the FBI, who wanted to know where he got the information from for classified Soviet aircraft. He had to talk to people who knew people, and this led him to end up on friendly terms with aircraft designer Murray Rubenstein. It also led him to a brief career as a consultant for the Air Force.
It was through M&M and its variants, Canvas Falcons, Legion Kondor and Mig Alley (not the computer game of the same name) that I met Rocky back in 1977. Like many players of that game I argued with some of his conclusions, and as with the others he was always glad to show his sources, and the math that showed where some of those sources were wrong. I became part of the process when I started drawing floor markers to spot the players' positions when they needed to move the stands the models were mounted to. I went on to draw bomber formations, since even in game scale it was impossible to mount 64 B-17s on stands.
Another of Rocky and Doug's endeavours was The History Of Grand Prix Racing, a board game played with miniature cars run on hand-drawn tracks. What separates this game from the others in the genre, and what probably killed it, is that it isn't generic. We had tracks, car stats and driver stats that all changed with the seasons, and we could game any year from 1950 to the present. I ran a campaign in this game that covered the historic seasons from 1950 to 1973, and lasted in real years from 1987 to 1999. I took it upon myself to turn it into a real board game with counters and fully-drawn tracks, all to the same scale. I kept hoping to someday finish the project, but it's just too big. Also, several game companies looked at the game and told us that it was just impossible to make and sell something of such scope.
After my divorce in 1985 I was at a loss to know what to do with myself, when Rocky's wife approached me with a proposition: She wanted a housekeeper. He didn't like strangers in the house. What if I became their live-in housekeeper? So we tried that and it worked for a time. I cleaned their house and babysat their kids (and had a place for mine to visit). In return I got room, board and a small stipend, plus the chance to work closely with Rocky on his various projects.
It was at this time that Rocky turned me on to flying models and slot cars, as well as his other passion: Guns. He had a fair collection of replica weapons, old-west pistols and older muskets, plus original Sharps and Remington rifles. I have a lot of good memories shooting with him and other friends.
I moved on to other pursuits, mostly getting back into music after far too much time away. I found the band I'm still with, and that started taking up more and more of my time. We still had our Sunday Race Game campaign and Thursday night M&M sessions. I showed up for a Race Game one day and he wasn't there. His wife told me he was in the hospital. It turned out that he had stepped on something at home, and didn't take proper care of it. The wound turned toxic. Rocky lost his right leg almost to the knee, and almost lost his life. He did make a full recovery, and life picked up again.
In 1999 Rocky's wife's job took her to Pittsburgh, and we corresponded, but not a lot. In 2001 they moved back to Salt Lake City, and we started gaming again. Then in 2003 his wife died in a car accident, and it was awhile before he felt like picking up the pieces again. Rocky and Doug started a tradition of meeting at Rocky's house to watch movies. I showed up as often as I could, but having no car it was hard to make it every week. Then in 2009 things started picking up for my band, and of course the only nights we could practice were Tuesday and Thursday, so movie and game nights both suffered. While I was homeless they would kick us out of the shelter during the day time, so I'd take the bus to visit him a couple of times per week, but once I got a place again it was easier to not hassle with a trip involving two buses and a train, plus a mile walk.
A few months ago one of Rocky's cats went crazy and mauled his right hand. Once again things went wrong, and they ended up taking most of his right arm. I only heard about it in an email from Doug, and I was torn between sorrow for him and anger that he would let this happen twice. Couple that with the fact that two of his sons don't exactly like me, and I thought it a good idea to wait until he was better before trying to visit.
That's never going to happen. My friend Rocky Russo died sometime during the night of New Year's Eve, December 31, 2011.
[edit] Rocky would have been 64 on March 6th.
Rocky engaged in one of his favorite pastimes.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/Rocky.jpg
Some of you who have been around long enough may have seen me refer ocassionally to something said by "an old friend", "a good friend", or "my friend Rocky." Rocky Russo was one of the few people who know more than I did regarding favorite subjects and could out-argue most of the people I knew. I first met him back in 1977, through a group playing a game he had designed. Like most of the people who got to know him I questioned some of his ideas and sources, and like most of them I was shown that he knew what he was talking about.
Rocky studied anthropology and archeology in college and dropped that dream when, as he put it, "I was told they wouldn't let Americans go to Turkey and dig up Hittites." He married a woman whose goal was to be a doctor, and worked several jobs to put her through medical school and then gave up several career options to follow her around the country advancing her career. She went on to become a pathologist and one of the country's leading authorities on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, going so far as to testify in front of Congress on the subject. This isn't about her, but she is important to the story.
Rocky was mainly a writer. He mostly wrote technical articles for magazines and journals, and he acted as editor for an old friend who published a Slot Car magazine out of Denver, Colorado. That was his first avocation. As a teen in the 1960s he built and raced slot cars, and was in demand for his skill as a motor and chassis maker. He chose the pseudonymn "Professor Fate", being a fan of the movie The Great Race, and he always said that he thought that character, played by Jack Lemmon, was the real hero of the film, since he had to do everything himself while Tony Curtis's "The Great Leslie" was a rich boy who just bought whatever he needed to win. Decades later I was around when somebody he raced with would find out and say "You're Doctor Fate? I raced one of your cars when I was a kid!"
Rocky also spent a lot of time building and flying rubber-powered model airplanes, and got me involved in that pastime for awhile. I actually built a couple of 'flyers' and a couple of slot cars, but they didn't grab me like they did him.
In the early 1970s Rocky developed a set of rules for miniatures army wargaming with our mutual friend Doug Larsen and they were early enough in the genre to be able to grab the copyright for Sun Tzu's 'The Art Of War'. Doug recently republished the game in PDF format.
http://www.deepfriedhappymice.com/html/rd_art_of_war.html
About that time Rocky and Doug also created a 3-D airwar game called Mustangs & Messerschmitts. Obviously this was about the time that D&D was being born, and Rocky early on playtested with that game's designers. M&M was possible only because another field Rocky studied extensively in was aerodynamics. He worked out flight statistics for the planes at first on a slide rule, then a calculator and finally on an Atari computer. A part a board game called Mig Killers, in which one played modern (for that time) jet fighters. The Air Force bought an entire print run of the game. Rocky said that he as visited by the FBI, who wanted to know where he got the information from for classified Soviet aircraft. He had to talk to people who knew people, and this led him to end up on friendly terms with aircraft designer Murray Rubenstein. It also led him to a brief career as a consultant for the Air Force.
It was through M&M and its variants, Canvas Falcons, Legion Kondor and Mig Alley (not the computer game of the same name) that I met Rocky back in 1977. Like many players of that game I argued with some of his conclusions, and as with the others he was always glad to show his sources, and the math that showed where some of those sources were wrong. I became part of the process when I started drawing floor markers to spot the players' positions when they needed to move the stands the models were mounted to. I went on to draw bomber formations, since even in game scale it was impossible to mount 64 B-17s on stands.
Another of Rocky and Doug's endeavours was The History Of Grand Prix Racing, a board game played with miniature cars run on hand-drawn tracks. What separates this game from the others in the genre, and what probably killed it, is that it isn't generic. We had tracks, car stats and driver stats that all changed with the seasons, and we could game any year from 1950 to the present. I ran a campaign in this game that covered the historic seasons from 1950 to 1973, and lasted in real years from 1987 to 1999. I took it upon myself to turn it into a real board game with counters and fully-drawn tracks, all to the same scale. I kept hoping to someday finish the project, but it's just too big. Also, several game companies looked at the game and told us that it was just impossible to make and sell something of such scope.
After my divorce in 1985 I was at a loss to know what to do with myself, when Rocky's wife approached me with a proposition: She wanted a housekeeper. He didn't like strangers in the house. What if I became their live-in housekeeper? So we tried that and it worked for a time. I cleaned their house and babysat their kids (and had a place for mine to visit). In return I got room, board and a small stipend, plus the chance to work closely with Rocky on his various projects.
It was at this time that Rocky turned me on to flying models and slot cars, as well as his other passion: Guns. He had a fair collection of replica weapons, old-west pistols and older muskets, plus original Sharps and Remington rifles. I have a lot of good memories shooting with him and other friends.
I moved on to other pursuits, mostly getting back into music after far too much time away. I found the band I'm still with, and that started taking up more and more of my time. We still had our Sunday Race Game campaign and Thursday night M&M sessions. I showed up for a Race Game one day and he wasn't there. His wife told me he was in the hospital. It turned out that he had stepped on something at home, and didn't take proper care of it. The wound turned toxic. Rocky lost his right leg almost to the knee, and almost lost his life. He did make a full recovery, and life picked up again.
In 1999 Rocky's wife's job took her to Pittsburgh, and we corresponded, but not a lot. In 2001 they moved back to Salt Lake City, and we started gaming again. Then in 2003 his wife died in a car accident, and it was awhile before he felt like picking up the pieces again. Rocky and Doug started a tradition of meeting at Rocky's house to watch movies. I showed up as often as I could, but having no car it was hard to make it every week. Then in 2009 things started picking up for my band, and of course the only nights we could practice were Tuesday and Thursday, so movie and game nights both suffered. While I was homeless they would kick us out of the shelter during the day time, so I'd take the bus to visit him a couple of times per week, but once I got a place again it was easier to not hassle with a trip involving two buses and a train, plus a mile walk.
A few months ago one of Rocky's cats went crazy and mauled his right hand. Once again things went wrong, and they ended up taking most of his right arm. I only heard about it in an email from Doug, and I was torn between sorrow for him and anger that he would let this happen twice. Couple that with the fact that two of his sons don't exactly like me, and I thought it a good idea to wait until he was better before trying to visit.
That's never going to happen. My friend Rocky Russo died sometime during the night of New Year's Eve, December 31, 2011.
[edit] Rocky would have been 64 on March 6th.
Rocky engaged in one of his favorite pastimes.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/Rocky.jpg