Bill Ruskin died in early August at the age of 87 surrounded by loving family. His death brought back many memories of checking out potential “open space” for Colorado Springs with Bill back in the mid-1970s.

“Open space” was an exciting new concept at that time. Existing parks were regarded as being for heavy human uses such as playgrounds and picnic tables. “Open space” was buying acres of attractive, empty land and leaving most of it in its original natural state.

I and others had persuaded the City Council to create an Open Space Committee of nine members for the specific purpose of identifying and then preserving beautiful open spaces in Colorado Springs.

The Parks Department, for its part, appointed Bill Ruskin, a young employee, to advise and lead the work of the volunteer Open Space Committee.

I was appointed chairman of the Open Space Committee. Nancy Avila, from northeast Colorado Springs, was the vice chairman.

Nancy owned a large Volkswagen bus, equipped for her large family, and we would use it to drive members of the Open Space Committee around the city looking for potential open space to check out.

Two of the first targets selected by Bill Ruskin were Monument Creek north of Penrose Hospital and Monument Creek south of Bijou Street.

We would come out of the Volkswagen bus, form a line, and with Bill Ruskin in the lead, start exploring up (or down) the creek. We checked out the creek shore as we looked for the potential location for a biker-hiker trail.

Bill Ruskin carried a large trail knife and in places would hack open a trail for the group to use.

It was all outdoors, it was heavy underbrush in the center of a city and to be there forging through it with Bill Ruskin was an eye-opening experience.

On another occasion, we parked the Volkswagen bus somewhere northwest of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.

With Bill Ruskin leading the way, we spent the afternoon walking around a wonderland of small pine forests and high rocky ledges. Under Bill’s capable leadership, we know the area today as Ute Valley Park.

On another occasion, an elderly man had called the Parks Department and wanted to donate some land for a city park.

We parked the Volkswagen bus on a high hill overlooking a forested area on the Near West Side of Colorado Springs.

As Bill Ruskin and the Open Space Committee descended the hill to look the proposed land gift over, I remained at the bus with the elderly man making the gift.

We could see Bill Ruskin and the committee members walking around the property and sizing it up for addition to the city park system. The elderly man made it clear to me he dearly wanted his land preserved in its present state as a public park.

You know the area today as Sonderman Park.

In the early 1970s, the Open Space Committee took a special interest in buying lands around the Garden of the Gods Park in order to help preserve the park.

Critics rightfully charged that Bill Ruskin and the Open Space Committee were creating “buffer zones to protect buffer zones.”

But the committee members shrugged off such criticism, regarding the Garden of the Gods as the city’s greatest natural feature and deserving of as much protection as possible.

In many ways, Bill Ruskin’s major contribution to the city of Colorado Springs was the creation of the William J. Palmer Parks Foundation. The purpose of the Foundation was to create a permanent group to raise money and then identify ideal lands for preservation as parks or open spaces.

The members of the Open Space Committee were made the first Board of Trustees of the William J. Palmer Parks Foundation. But that situation did not last very long.

The members of the Open Space Committee were all working stiffs serving as volunteers and did not have access to large capital assets to donate to future parks and open space acquisition.

One by one, they were replaced as Foundation trustees by more appropriate persons with significant capital assets from which to make future donations for parks and open space acquisition in Colorado Springs and southeastern Colorado.

Nowadays, paid city employees do as professionals the jobs that back in the 1970s were done by the volunteer Open Space Committee.

Bill Ruskin was one of the pleasantest and friendliest people you would ever want to meet. He loved the outdoors, he readily shared that love with his fellow human beings, and he spent much of his life working to identify and preserve the beautiful open spaces he observed all around him.

I will treasure forever those early days in the mid-1970s when Bill Ruskin pioneered and established open-space acquisition in Colorado Springs.

In my view, the William J. Palmer Parks Foundation, now called the Palmer Land Conservancy, was the foremost of his many accomplishments.

Goodbye, Bill. Exploring potential open space with you was one of the highlights of my life.                                                                                  

Bob Loevy is a news columnist and a retired professor of political science at Colorado College. In the 1970s, he served on the Colorado Springs City Planning Commission and on the Colorado Springs City Charter Commission.