Long-time fan Rusty Hevelin died 27 December 2011, following a brief hospitalization. Born James on 16 February 1922, he was known far and wide as Rusty, for his once-red hair (I didn’t know his first name until I started writing this obituary). He was the Fan Guest of Honor at Denvention Two, the 1981 WorldCon (he attended the first Denvention 40 years earlier), the recipient of the Big Heart Award (for service to the sf community) in 1986, and First Fandom’s Sam Moskowitz Archive Award in 2003. [The photo at right, by Andrew Porter, was taken at a Boskone in the 1970s.]
He was active in fandom beginning in the 1930s, and remained a presence to the end. He was a fanzine publisher (he took over StefNews, and later published Aliquot, H-1661, and Badly) and a contributor to many others. He was also one of the founders of PulpCon.
Hevelin joined the Marine Corps during World War II, and served in the Pacific as a meteorologist.
File 770 talks about Hevelin in this obituary, while PulpFest says goodbye to him in this piece.
Hevelin was close friends with Joe and Gay Haldeman, and frequently traveled with them in recent years. Gay delivered this description of him for his 2009 stint as Toastmaster at DemiCon.
The last time our paths crossed was at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. I was up late one night, talking with a bunch of (I now realize) much younger fans and upcoming writers, telling stories of my early days in sf. It was a shock to realize I remembered Gardner Dozois as the one telling those stories when I first started going to conventions. At breakfast the next morning, I grumbled about getting older to Gardner. Rusty was also at the table with us, and he said “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m still telling stories about fandom in the 1930s.” I’m sad he won’t be telling those stories anymore.