Cultural Weekly poet and reader Beth Ruscio has informed us that her father, Al Ruscio, died on the evening of Tuesday, November 12. This is her remembrance.
Last night, surrounded by love in his own home with my arms around him, and my brother holding his hands, my wonderful amazing father died.
He had a career as an actor that spanned the entire history of television beginning with Playhouse 90, The Untouchables, Bonanza (which he’s on this saturday), Lou Grant, Hill St. Blues, the Seinfeld pilot, Tracey Ullman Show, The X-Files and Life Goes On to name just a few of his over 400 guest appearances, as well as the movies Al Capone, Guilty By Suspicion, the infamous Showgirls (in which he plays the clothed casino owner) and Godfather III in which he uttered the immortal epithet with which he was sometimes regaled by fans, “Joey Zaza, you son of a bitch!”
But, beyond all that, he was and always will be my personal hero. He was a mentor, a colleague, the mayor of every waiting room, the life of the party, someone I talked to nearly every day of my life, an endless source of fascination, an unstoppable force, handsome and charming, the best father a girl like me could ask for.
Thank you to all of you who have reached out, to those of you who knew and loved him, to everyone in my life who didn’t know him but because you know me, can glean a tiny bit of the DNA that I inherited from this enormously winning guy, the first love of my life, whom I will honor the rest of my days.
Beth Ruscio is the daughter of actors, part of a working class family of artists, actors, teachers and writers. She is the current winner of the Brick Road Poetry Prize, and her collection SPEAKING PARTS will be published in Spring, 2020. Her poetry has been Pushcart Prize nominated and won finalist honors for several prizes and awards, including The Wilder Prize, The Sunken Garden Prize, The Tupelo Quarterly Prize, The Ruth Stone Poetry Award, and The Two Sylvias Prize. She was featured poet for the June 2019 issue of Cathexis Northwest Press, and have other recent work published in Tupelo Quarterly, Cultural Weekly, Tulane Review, Spillway, Malpais Review, High Shelf, and have poems in the anthologies Dark Ink: Poetry Inspired by Horror, Beyond the Lyric Moment, 1001 Nights, and Conducting a Life: Maria Irene Fornes, and the upcoming anthology 50 Years with Beyond Baroque. Beth is also an accomplished award winning actress, and a mentor at Otis College of Art and Design.