Remembering Rusty Crook, 1933-2023

Rusty Crook, 89, died peacefully in his sleep Thursday morning March 23 next to his beloved wife of 45 years, Susie Crook, at his cherished home since childhood, Thisisit Ranch.

As a teacher, coach, athlete, business owner, civic leader, cowboy, farmer, father, son, husband, and friend, he impacted the lives of virtually everyone he knew. His passion for skiing, coaching, pole vaulting, teaching, the mountains, woodworking, Thisisit Ranch and the day camp he ran there for 50 years all contributed to the person he was and the larger-than-life memory he leaves behind. His resume reads like a laundry list of accomplishments in a dizzying array of categories, and he was proud of it all.

Rusty won countless ski races over the years. He was the 1948 Junior Ski Program champion. In 1954, while on the University of Denver Ski Team, his team won the NCAA championship and was given All-American status. During his junior year at DU, Rusty was injured during a race, was hospitalized with broken bones, went blind for several days, and missed several months of school. He returned home and finished his senior year at UNR. As captain of the UNR ski team, he led his teammates to a victorious season, culminating in their winning the Tresidder Memorial Cup. Rusty’s other wins include the 1955 Squaw Valley Turkey Race, 1957-58 All Army Giant Slalom Championship at Camp Hale in Colorado, 1960 and 1961 Silver Dollar Derby, 1961 Pheasant Slalom at Heavenly Valley, and 1980 Far West Recreational Club Championship at Mammoth. During his army years, he participated in several races on the World Cup Ski Racing circuit with four finishes in the top 10.

Rusty moved on to ski instructing and coaching, which brought even more success. He was a United States Ski Association certified coach and a member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) for 50 years as a Level III instructor. Through it all, he spent over 50 years with Mt. Rose Ski Area from its inception. He helped cut and prepare runs for international competitions at Mt. Rose, taught, coached, served as Director of Skiing, and started a senior skiing program, which gained national attention and led to certification standards for instructors of the program. He was head coach of the Falcons ski team until 1972, then restarted the Falcons in 1990 and ran the program for three more years until it became so big that he asked Mt. Rose to take it over, though he remained director of the Falcons for several years after that. He was head coach of the Far West Junior Ski Team. He coached the Nevada State Junior Ski Team, which included multiple years of coaching racers in the American Legion Western States Championship at Sun Valley before they began moving the championship to different states (in 1967 it was held at Mt. Rose). He coached nine athletes who later joined the US Ski Team, some of whom medaled in the Olympics, won four World Cup Globes, won over 20 World Cup races, won the World Championship Combined, and won 17 National Championships. He coached one of the first women to make the US Demo Team. Among his former athletes, the world speed record was broken three times. Rusty coached the Reed High School Ski Team for many years, during which they won the 1977-78 and 1991 state championships. He was on the Board of Directors and served as Technical Director of the Sky Tavern Junior Ski Program from 1991 to 1993. Before that, in 1989, he was instrumental in helping Sky Tavern Ski School become a certified PSIA ski school. In 1989 Rusty was appointed to the newly formed Nevada Sports Commission and Olympic Committee. In 2006 he published the first article on senior skiing in Skier Magazine.

Rusty skied all over the country and the world throughout his lifetime, chaperoning groups of skiers as their private traveling coach, helicopter skiing with fellow adventure seekers, meeting some of the world’s best skiers of different nationalities, and following the snow year-round with trips to New Zealand and South America during western summers, and North America and Europe during western winters. Even into his early 80s, when the toll on his joints made walking difficult, skiing remained effortless.

In addition to skiing, pole vaulting brought Rusty nearly 50 years of coaching joy. He coached one pole-vaulting success story after the next from 1960 to 2007. Several of his vaulters, many of whom were named All Americans, won state championships and set a total of 14 records. The 2007 record of 17 feet is still unbroken. Rusty had a gift for breaking down complex concepts into digestible pieces, helping his athletes to understand the mechanics of the sport and how to hone their skills. He believed that anyone could become a successful athlete, and this belief permeated his coaching style. He was always positive and encouraging, while also providing the technical and tactical information students needed to help them achieve their goals.

Rusty has been inducted into the following Halls of Fame: 1999 University of Denver Athletic Hall of Fame for the 1954 Ski Team that won the first NCAA Championship; 2006 Northern Nevada Track Coaches Hall of Fame; 2006 Veteran Ski Instructors Hall of Fame; 2013 International Sports Hall of Fame presented by Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition.

Teaching was another passion of Rusty’s. He worked for the Washoe County School district for 32 years, starting as a PE teacher at Billinghurst Middle School, where he taught for 12 years. He took a brief leave of absence to coach the US Ski Team, but when the season was over, he returned to teaching after filling in the summer months with a casino job dealing craps. That fall, he was asked to pilot a program for elementary PE at Glenn Duncan Elementary School. It was successful, but the district didn’t have the funding to continue the program. Rusty was placed in a classroom setting teaching 6th grade, but he longed to get back to teaching athletics. In the fall of 1974, he got his wish and moved to Reed High School to teach health and PE for the next 17 years until retiring in 1991.

Rusty was never one for complacency, so “retirement” meant a run for the school board. At a time when only 20 percent of the district’s student population was going to college, he wanted to see more emphasis on vocational education. It was time to “put a Crook on the board,” he decided, and that year he was elected Washoe County School Board Trustee from 1992 to 1996. His vision was for elementary schools to offer alternative education and middle schools to serve as a place to explore various career fields, so that by the time students reached high school, they would be offered a multi-track system with different requirements depending on if they chose to go to work after high school or go to a 4-year college.

During his summers, Rusty operated a small business on his 15-acre ranch that incorporated his love of teaching, athletics, woodworking, and being outdoors. Thisisit Ranch Day Camp provided a summer camp experience for Reno families spanning 50 years, from 1964 to 2013. Multiple generations of families attended his highly sought-after camp, which focused on athletics, teamwork, sportsmanship, healthy competition and arts and crafts, with plenty of swimming built in at places ranging from Lake Tahoe to Bower’s Mansion to Thisisit Ranch once Rusty built a pool on the property. It was a family affair for Rusty, too, whose six children attended camp themselves and often went on to become junior counselors, senior camp counselors and even camp managers. Rusty could be counted on to make kids smile, whether drawing his iconic monsters on the back of their camp t-shirts or showing them how to carve willow whistles. Rusty’s pride in the camp showed, and families often returned year after year for fun summers at Thisisit.

How it all began

Rusty was born Russell Ballard Burbridge on July 9, 1933 in Manchester, New Hampshire. He never knew his birth father. His mother, Edith, who went by Edie and was a well-traveled, well-educated woman from Wellesley, soon divorced Rusty’s father, and she and baby Rusty moved to Syracuse, New York to live with her parents. In December 1941, when Rusty was 8, Edie married Peter Crook, who adopted Rusty, and they moved to Reno in search of a ranch. In Rusty’s own words, it was the first time he felt like he had a family. The minute they laid eyes on the 35-acre property, Edie looked at Peter and said, “This is it,” which is how the ranch got its name. They purchased it in March 1943.

Peter and Edie were busy making a living on the ranch, so it was up to Rusty to find ways to occupy himself. Rusty thought it was fun for a city kid from Syracuse to go out west and live the cowboy dream in the grassy pasturelands of the south Reno countryside. He refused to wear his city clothes because he wanted to be a cowboy. He learned to ride horses, use a bow and arrow, and whittle pretty much anything he could think of out of wood.

Rusty went to a private school in town and sometimes rode his horse to school. For junior high and high school, Rusty moved to public school and had to ride the bus, which didn’t allow him to participate in school sports because practices were after school, and he had to catch the bus home. He saved his money, and once he was old enough to drive, he bought an old Model A and fixed it up so he could drive himself to school. He went out for ski team and track, becoming a pole vaulter and winning state in both his junior and senior year.

He had initially started skiing back in Syracuse at age 4. When they got to Reno, he would hitch a ride up to the mountain to ski. During the war, it was hard to get gas, but his parents had gas coupons because they were farmers on the ranch. Rusty learned he could trade gas coupons for rides, enabling him to keep skiing.

He quickly became a superior skier and started racing. He was offered a scholarship to ski for University of Denver, but in his senior year of high school, he got mononucleosis and missed the whole ski season. DU backtracked and said he had to prove that he could still ski well enough to make their team. He also needed to raise his GPA, so instead of heading to Denver, he accepted a track, diving and football scholarship to Menlo Junior College. He did well in track, won the Nevada State diving competition, and survived football. His grades were just good enough to get by, so to show DU that he was still a great skier, he entered and won Far West Class I, II and III. DU expressed interest again and he started school there that fall as a sophomore.

In June 1956, Rusty married his high school sweetheart, Dixie. The following month he was drafted into the army and disappeared for two years as he took part in the Cold Weather Mountain Training Command. His job was to teach skiing and rock climbing. The army also let skiers compete in international races that were held in the US. Rusty loved the competition, the camaraderie, and being with some of the best skiers in the world. Initially he resented having been drafted. The injuries he sustained in that ski racing accident his junior year at University of Denver had classified him as 4F (unfit for duty), but suddenly he was cleared and sent to Colorado’s Camp Hale. He went on to say those two years were among the best of his life.

Camp Hale eventually closed. Rusty’s two years with the army were almost up, and back in Reno, his father, Peter, was ill, so he was released from duty to return home. That was when he started his teaching career with the Washoe County School District (by now he held an undergraduate degree in education from UNR and would go on to receive a master’s degree in administration from UNR in 1975). He served in the army reserves for another four years and was honorably discharged on July 31, 1962.

Rusty met Susie in the fall of 1973 when she started her first job as a special education teacher in the classroom adjacent to Rusty’s 6th grade classroom at Glenn Duncan Elementary School. They became close friends, and Susie described Rusty as a mentor. Eventually they fell head over heels for one another and were married April 29, 1977.

Rusty is described as a dedicated friend, an adoring spouse and a master storyteller. He could captivate an audience and people gravitated toward him. He played guitar and sang beautifully, often serenading Susie. His students at Reed High School have described him as the most popular teacher in school, who delighted them with his yodeling up and down the halls. His house is practically handmade with his jaw-dropping woodwork featured from floor to ceiling in every room.

Rusty leaves behind six children, Vicki, Ray, Ron, and Cathy Crook from his first marriage to Dixie, and Debbie and Laura Jordan from his second marriage to Susie, plus 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A celebration of Rusty’s life will be held at Thisisit Ranch, 11900 S. Virginia St., Saturday June 3, as a come-and-go open house, 12-4pm. Anyone who would like to attend is welcome. Parking is limited, so please park in the shopping center next door and walk over.

This recap of Rusty’s life was written by his stepdaughter, Debbie Jordan, who lives in Dallas, Texas and can be reached at 214-808-0384.

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