The King of Lindsay

There he stood, with his snow-white beard and grey spiked hair.  He wore Bermuda shorts, a striped polo, and clip-on sunglasses over his prescription ones.  Gene Russ was standing in the middle of a construction site.  Workers were building a new public pool in the place where Lindsay Community Hospital used to stand.  He was not a construction worker himself.  He was not the advisor, nor on the board of directors overseeing the project.  He was not a part of the construction at all.  He walked into the construction site as if it were no big deal, dragging his two grandsons behind him.  “We’re going to get in trouble,” said Christopher to his older cousin Tom.  “Yeah,” Tom replied, “they might call the cops or something.  What’s he thinking just going in here like that?  They don’t really like people just walking into construction sites like this.  What’s he thinking?” 

Russ casually strode up to one of the construction workers that he obviously didn’t know well and started a conversation.  His grandsons were far too worried about being arrested or having the police called on them to care about what he was talking about.  When he was done talking, they packed into his beige Toyota Sienna and left the construction site as if it were an everyday occurrence.  Chris asked, “Grandpa did you even know those people?”  Gene turned to Chris in the back seat and answered, “No, they were just a bunch of guys on the City Planning Commission.”  So, what allowed him to simply walk onto a construction site that he was not a part of?  The answer is simple: he’s the King of Lindsay.

Born in Bismarck, North Dakota, Gene Russ grew up with a troubled childhood.  At the age of four he was diagnosed with polio (which he later outgrew), which paralyzed the left side of his body.  He was forced to stay inside the house, which was hard for a boy his age.  Around age five, he tried to run off with a neighbor girl, much to his father’s annoyance.  From then on, any time he wanted to play outside, his father Frank would tie him to the front porch with a fifteen-foot long rope.  “My older brother Burt used to tease me and try to get me to run after him.  He always stood just outside of the rope’s reach so when I got to him I would fly back onto my butt.”

Gene Russ moved from freezing North Dakota to sunny California when he was five years old.  His father was the head mechanic at a gas station where Gene’s older brother started to work as well.  Later on, his father and uncle bought a lumberyard and started building houses.  Gene was required to help stack wood, and later he drew up house plans.  They paid him fifteen dollars for each completed set of plans.

His dad died at the age of fifty-two, leaving sixteen-year-old Gene to take over his responsibilities.  Gene’s mother could not drive and did not know how to pay bills; and Gene’s older brother, Burt, was away in the Marines.   Gene did not do well in school.  He failed the first grade because he had trouble reading though he did fine in all his other subjects, especially math.  Gene was a nonreader until high school when he became determined to read and to prevent more children from ending up like him, so Gene set his sights on psychology.

After high school Gene married Glenda Calhoun, and he worked for Pitney Bowens while attending junior college for ten years.  Gene eventually followed his older brother Burt’s path to Sacramento State where he received his Bachelor of Arts in psychology.  The new Russ family was poor.  While Gene was a full time college student, Glenda could work only part time while raising their three children.  They even had to live in an abandoned trailer for a while.  Gene’s daughter Vicki remembers these times well.  “Us kids always drank milk at every meal, as did all of our friends, that is how it was done back then.  I remember at one point thinking that the milk was somehow different; my mom assured me that it was fine, so of course I drank it.  It just seemed a little less creamy and white to me, more watery.  My oldest brother would snicker at me every time I helped myself to milk out of the carton; I just thought he was being an obnoxious big brother.  Evidently, he already knew that my mom, in her attempt to save money, had been giving us powdered milk that she would reconstitute and put in to the regular milk bottle, hoping we wouldn't know the difference, which me and Dave didn't for quite sometime.  Powdered milk was much cheaper and you got more for your buck when you bought it.  Maybe that is why I don't really like milk anymore, I don't know.  Anyway my oldest brother didn't seem to have a problem drinking powdered milk, think he even liked it.”

Humboldt State University, a somewhat new college at the time, eagerly accepted Gene Russ into their new psychology masters program.  Gene moved his family into a two bedroom, one bathroom house in Eureka, California to attend Humboldt.  Eureka is a Northern California city along the coast, known for its heavy rainfall.  Mornings in Eureka were often cold and misty, as the marine layer had already set in.  This was one of the few special moments in Gene’s daughter Vickie’s life, when she was able to spend time alone with her father. 

“On Sunday mornings, very early because him and I were early risers, we would quietly leave the house and go for a walk to the sea or just downtown.  My favorite walk was when we would head for the coastline and stop at a bakery a few blocks away from it.  You could smell the fresh warm French bread before you ever got to the bakery.  Eureka is always slightly cold, so the warm aroma was very comforting and enjoyable.  We would walk up to the back door of the bakery, which was on the street where we walked; a rush of warm air would greet us at the doors.  The smell of fresh bread would sweep over me and make my mouth water.  My dad would talk to one of the workers, a small amount of money was handed over and a large loaf of French bread right off the cooling rack was given in return.  We would continue our walk, tearing off pieces of the warm bread to eat along the way.  We never seemed to talk much at this point as we continued on our way.  Just savored the bread as it melted in my mouth and the peaceful time.” 

One of the Russ family’s favorite ways of relaxing was going on camping trips.  “This is because it was cheap, and we were poor.  Camping was a great escape that all of us could enjoy for less than $10 a day, Vicki said.”  On one camping trip in the coastal mountains, it was raining so hard when they got there that they were forced to pack up and go home early the next morning.  Glenda made pancakes in the pouring rain while Gene packed the car.  Unfortunately, Gene had already packed the syrup in the car and was forced to dig through the car to get it.  On his way from the car to the table, he tripped and broke his leg.  Glenda and the three little kids had to finish packing the car and drive Gene to the hospital that was nearly an hour away.

Gene moved to Tulare, to work for the department of education as a school psychologist.  Soon after, Gene worked as a school psychologist in Lindsay, where Gene really shook things up.  Lindsay is a very poor school district with very poor students; Gene was the first school psychologist the school district hired.  That made him in charge of the entire district.  He had to oversee every school in the district and handle far too many cases.  “One case was a teacher who complained to me that one of her students came to school smelling very bad.  I did a lot of home visits in those days and found the boy lived in a two room shack with the only running water being a hose faucet on the outside of the house. There was no running water in the house, which had beds in both the bedroom and living room. The only heat was from a barrel in which they burned wood to keep warm. The smell coming from the boy was due to the wood smoke. This family was living in poverty.”  This led Gene to write up a grant for the Healthy Start Program, which provides healthcare for children whose families could otherwise not afford it.  “I wrote a grant and started up a clinic for students which we named Healthy Start.  This was and is still in operation. We started out with a three-year grant funded at $100,000 each of the three years, and had three employees. Today it has twenty some employees and a budget just over 17 million dollars.”

Gene Russ started many programs that dramatically changed Lindsay from a poverty-stricken shantytown to a thriving community.  Gene noticed a trend throughout the community.  Many people were using drugs and alcohol to escape from their problems.  Gene founded the Alcohol and Drug Prevention Task Force (ADAPT) to combat the drug problem in schools.  It started out with ten school employees including teachers, counselors, a board member, and the superintendent.  It was one of the first programs to teach drug and alcohol awareness from kindergarten to twelfth grade in the state of California.  In 1988, the Lindsay Chamber of Commerce named it ‘Organization of the Year.’  “The California Legislature passed Resolution No. 121 in 1988 recognizing the work of ADAPT.  The resolution includes my name as the ADAPT committee chair and is signed by the four leader of the state legislature. The next time you are over you can find the framed resolution hanging on the wall in our garage,” said Russ.

“As the grants became more numerous and we became more successful in winning them; I developed a team of about three or four teachers and other school personnel to work on the grants writing process with me. We brought in millions of dollars for the school district and in the process a large numbers of grants.  I would include in some grants the cost of hiring a person to run and oversee the grant to insure its success. This in turn built a small empire for me that I needed because I was unable to keep up with all the grants we had in operation.”  For many years, under the careful attention of Gene, the Lindsay School District brought in more money than the Tulare or Visalia School Districts (which were at least three times as big).

Without Gene Russ, Lindsay would have been so small and poor that it would not even show up on most maps.  Gene has been retired for several years, and lives in Visalia now, but frequently visits Lindsay to make sure things are still up to par.  Everybody in town knows Gene or knows of him.  Most people have seen him in school, in the newspaper, or hanging out around city hall. 

At seventy-one years old, Gene is enjoying his retirement.  He plays golf every other day, preferably dragging his grandson Christopher along for the ride.  Recently, Gene has traveled across the country twice with his second wife Judy in their thirty-six foot Dolphin RV.  He enjoyed his travel so much that he joined a travel company and is now one of its senior directors.  If you ever need to book a vacation, just go to jagescapestravel.com.  Gene will be sure to hook you up with a good deal.