The Rust Family

Let’s keep sharing our stories, asking questions about our family history
and caring for our Island Paradise!
by Wendy E. Rust

I moved to Key Biscayne in 1990 less than a year after living in Florence, Italy. I love a good nature walk and watching the sunset. There really was only one option for me – Key Biscayne!

Key Biscayne has always been a special place for me and my family, including my father’s wife Theresa and her son Brandon Walsh. Five generations of Rusts have enjoyed the island, especially at family gatherings at the Key Biscayne Yacht Club and the Silver Sands.

When I was asked to share our family’s Key Biscayne story, I started researching and asking my father and older siblings questions. I’m thrilled to learn our roots go back further than I originally thought. It all began in 1953 through our paternal grandparents. Dad grew up on Long Island and our grandparents Adolf Rust and Helen Dauth were native New Yorkers. Our grandfather Adolf was the son of hardworking German immigrants Adolf Rust of Einbeck and Angelina Jungvogel of Tjüche. Adolf worked for the Eagle Pencil Company in NYC as a machinist. “Lena” was a skilled dressmaker and had eight children to support when her husband died in 1903.
Our grandfather Adolf went to work at the same pencil company where his father had worked to help support his family after he graduated from the 8th grade. He later worked his way up from being a clerk at Chase National Bank on Broadway to eventually owning his stockbrokerage firm Rust & Co. on Broadway!

Our mother Mary was raised on a farm in Idaho during the Great Depression. Her father Benjamin Duncan was a coal miner from Kentucky. Later he became a dynamiter and farmer in Idaho. Folks called him “Dynamite Duncan!” After he passed in 1950, Grandma Duncan would visit us in Florida.

Our parents Robert Rust and Mary Duncan met in Coral Gables at Jimmy’s Hurricane Restaurant in 1952 and married in January 1953. They purchased a house at 621 Harbor Drive and stayed there from about 1954 to 1955 with their eldest children Ben and Lani.

Our father was able to buy this home using the GI
Bill for financing. Both our father and grandfather proudly served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Dad entered the USMC Reserves in 1947 and served as a tank and amphibian tractor leader. He retired as a colonel in 1980. His father enlisted in the USMC in 1917 and was a veteran of World War I.

This is where our Key Biscayne connection begins. Our grandparents Adolf and Helen Rust came from New York for an extended stay to meet their beautiful daughter-in-law and grandchildren. They rented a house at 335 Pacific Road in late 1953.

While going to UM Law School during the day, at night
our father was a full-time police officer on marine patrol for the City of Miami from 1953 until 1954. He was one of the first of two to be assigned to marine patrol on Biscayne Bay, Government Cut and the Miami River. Key Biscayne was his home and Biscayne Bay was his job. Later he was hired as the assistant auditor for First National Bank of Miami while living on the Key.

A decade later he was elected state representative in the Florida Legislature for Palm Beach and Martin counties. This was from 1966 through 1968. In 1969 our father became U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in Miami. His most memorable experience is receiving the Award of Merit in 1964 from the Chief of the U.S. Secret Service. He was recognized with this award for assisting in preventing the assassination of President-elect John F. Kennedy on December 15, 1960, in Palm Beach, just a month after JFK was on Key Biscayne with Richard Nixon. At the time, our father was an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami. In 2013 the Smithsonian Channel produced a documentary about this little known history called “Kennedy’s Suicide Bomber.”

After living in Palm Beach for five years, our family grew from five to six children with my arrival. The Rust kids are Ben, Lani, Debbie, Bonnie, Randy and Wendy. Even though our home at the time was on Brickell Avenue, our family spent a lot of time on Key Biscayne with our wonderful grandparents.

I am the youngest, so my earliest memories on the Key began with them living at the Island House in the late 1960s when we moved back to Miami. Before retiring to the Island House as snowbirds, our grandparents rented a two- story Jamaican-style wooden house on Harbor Drive near the KBYC. They bought two lots on Harbor Drive with a dock on Hurricane Harbor where they kept their Chris-Craft boat as well as our father’s boat named the “Buccaneer.” My older siblings recall collecting coconuts when they would visit the property. Lani remembers helping to secure one of the boats with dad before Hurricane Donna when she was 8 years old.

In earlier years when our grandparents came to visit, they would stay at the Key Biscayne Hotel. My older siblings took swim lessons there. My sister Debbie remembers leaving leftover dinner scraps on the beach near the villa and waiting in the well-lit porch for the raccoons to feast! Other childhood memories are putt-putt golf, the delicious almond macaroons with coffee ice cream, Shirley Temple “cocktails” with colorful umbrellas and the chewy potato rolls that our grandfather loved! Our grandmother loved the gift shop and always went in to look at the costume jewelry and purses.

In late 1960, our grandparents stayed at a villa across from Richard Nixon. My brother Ben and sister Lani remember meeting him when they were young kids. During the winter holidays, we went to the hotel for family dinners and for the older kids to have sleepovers. Later in the 1970s, my grandfather would twirl my mother (and us kids) around the dance floor on a number of occasions to live big band music. Our mother loved to dance!