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.
"The cost of living in New York, especially on Long Island, and the 2.5 hour commute I had to take from the city every night and every morning pretty much sealed that I was gonna go somewhere else, and I came down here three times for job interviews," Reustle said.
He got the job — but his early days were far from glamorous.
"When I first got here, there was only two of us, myself and Leon Route, and we swam the cable over to the generators so we had some electricity and they put porta potties on the ship, but then they realized they had no way to get the porta potties cleaned off," Reustle said.
After that salvage work came the first exhibit Reustle ever built on the ship.
"The very first exhibit would have been the machine shop where I had to take down bulkheads and put up plexi glass because all of the equipment that's down there except for one piece of equipment is still operable," Reustle said.
His resourcefulness would shape every exhibit and restoration that followed. When asked how much of what visitors see today he had a hand in, Reustle didn't hesitate.
"Everything. I have a hand in everything. I could show you where my social security numbers are written on as serial numbers on different parts of the ship. I'm in multiple videos and that's just the way it was. I was handed a blank canvas and said see what you can do with it," Reustle said.
His presence on the ship goes beyond what visitors can see. His voice is built into the exhibits themselves — part of the experience thousands of visitors walk through every year, without ever knowing who's behind it.
The work has not gone unnoticed. Last year, Reustle received the Historic Naval Ships Association's Casper J. Knight Award, the highest maintenance honor in the organization. He was also named an admiral in the Texas Navy.
"It was quite an honor to be called up and be given the four-star admiral award and they had, they had the pipe boys and they had the guys up on the mast and they flew my flag and it was very, very cool," Reustle said.
After 35 years, Reustle says the ship he helped bring to life has become inseparable from the city itself.
"I'm absolutely sure that the Lexington has made a tremendous impact on the community. From the lowest point down to the highest," Reustle said.
Now, as he steps away from the ship, Reustle says he's looking ahead to what comes next.
"It's like you're stepping into the unknown. You have no idea what's gonna happen the next day, but I have three grandchildren, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on, and taking care of the, home and everything that over the years we've built," Reustle said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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