Bishop John Harvey Taylor named Geoffrey Claflin Rusack – an active lay member of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles whose father, the Rt. Rev. Robert C. Rusack, was its fourth bishop – an honorary canon of the diocese on June 14. Taylor presented the canon’s cross and certificate during his Sunday visitation to All Saints by-the-Sea, Santa Barbara, where Rusack and his spouse, Alison Wrigley Rusack, are longtime parishioners.
Paying tribute to the new canon, Taylor noted Rusack’s life-long involvement in congregations and schools of the diocese, dating from the 1950s when Rusack’s father was called as rector of St. Augustine by-the-Sea, Santa Monica, and then in 1964 elected the diocese’s bishop suffragan and in 1973 its bishop diocesan until his death in 1986. Rusack, 70, and his sister, Rebecca Rusack Waycott, also followed the example of dedicated diocesan service set by their mother, the late Canon Janice Morrison Overfield Rusack.
Rusack was 2 years old when the family moved from his native Montana to Southern California where he grew up enjoying surfing, skiing, scuba diving, and sailing. He attended the Harvard School for Boys (now Harvard-Westlake) and went on to Bowdoin College in Maine and then to Pepperdine Law School. He practiced law in Los Angeles and, after obtaining his commercial, multi-engine instrument pilot’s rating, specialized in aviation law. In May 1985 Rusack married Alison Elizabeth Hunter Wrigley, whose father, William – president of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the world’s largest manufacturer of chewing gum – inherited a controlling interest in Santa Catalina Island.
Through the years, Alison and Geoff Rusack – who in 1991 acquired 48 acres in the Santa Ynez Valley and established Rusack Vineyards – have been held management roles in the Santa Catalina Island Company, of which Geoff Rusack is currently president and CEO. In 2007 the Rusacks planted a five-acre vineyard at El Rancho Escondido, in the center of Catalina Island, and in 2014 took an ownership interest in the 80+-year-old ranch and began an eight-year restoration project of it, also building the Bishop’s Chapel at a high point on the property. With renovation work recently completed, the Rusacks are now welcoming island residents and visitors to the site and highlighting its historic features including the Catalina Island Arabian horse program.
Parents of three sons, the Rusacks celebrated the baptism of their first grandchild with Bishop Taylor officiating at rites held in the Bishop’s Chapel on June 16, the 100th anniversary of Bishop Rusack’s birth.