For thousands of visitors who have walked the decks of the USS Lexington, M. Charles “Rusty” Reustle’s fingerprints are on nearly every exhibit aboard. After 35 years as the ship’s director of operations and exhibits, the Navy veteran is retiring — leaving behind a museum he helped build from the ground up.
Reustle’s connection to the Navy started long before the Lexington arrived in Corpus Christi. His father was a Navy master diver, and Reustle had hopes of becoming a Navy SEAL — a path that changed when his father passed away. He went into the fleet instead, spending more than three years aboard the USS Coral Sea.
“When I walked down the brow of the Coral Sea, I said I will never get back on an aircraft carrier again because I was down in the boiler rooms and I was in engineering,” Reustle said.
That vow wouldn’t last. Reustle went on to work on the USS Intrepid in New York City,and when the Lexington needed someone to help turn a decommissioned Navy carrier into a museum in Corpus Christi, he jumped at the chance…