COLD SPRING - Fifty-five years after he helped found this Campbell County city of 4 square miles, you name it, and Albert Rust has probably done it.
Tapped to serve as Cold Spring's first tax assessor in 1941, Mr. Rust became the city's public works superintendent a few years later and supervised construction of the water and sewer system.
He designed Cold Spring's parks, read its water meters, supervised the building of city offices, oversaw the construction of the residential community's ball fields, and collected water bills at his home.
And for 43 of those years, Mr. Rust worked full time as a chef at the former Rust's Restaurant in Newport, raising four children with his late wife, Cecilia.
''He really is just a one-man army,'' Cold Spring Mayor Clarence Martin said.
Tuesday, residents of the city Mr. Rust helped create plan to honor the man who City Clerk Carole Huber said ''has done just about everything you can do for the city.''
At age 84, Mr. Rust - who has watched his adopted community grow from 77 homes to about 1,200 - is handing his city duties over to David Picirillo, who will become Cold Spring's new director of public works on Jan. 1.
''If anything turns up, I told them I'm here to answer all their questions,'' Mr. Rust said.
Although he acknowledged his hearing is not as sharp as it once was, his memory is as keen as ever. When quizzed, he can recite the history of any Cold Spring official or landmark and explain the logic behind any city process.
''He knows everything about this city,'' Mr. Martin said. ''And if he doesn't know it, nobody does.''
The oldest of nine children, Mr. Rust acquired his work ethic from his close-knit Catholic family. As a youth, he did everything from feeding the livestock to milking the cows on his family's Campbell County farm.
He stopped his formal schooling after the eighth grade to help on the farm, and when his mother became ill, he discovered yet another talent: cooking. At 16, he became the cook for the family of 11.
Because of his talent for cooking, Mr. Rust soon went to work for his uncle, who ran the former Rust's Restaurant in Newport. For more than 40 years, he would serve as chef, serving up everything from roast beef to spaghetti and meatballs.
In 1941, Mr. Rust began his long association with Cold Spring, when he was asked to serve as the new city's first tax assessor.
''I didn't know anything about being a tax assessor, but I told them I'd give it a try,'' he said.
Initially, he worked for free, but he received a $100 a year raise soon after.
For more than four decades, Mr. Rust would leave Rust's Restaurant at 3 p.m., rush home and change clothes, and be ready an hour later to put in another full work day handling his city duties.
After he helped lay the pipe for Cold Spring's first water system in the early 1940s, Mr. Rust read the meters and was called out nights to repair water main breaks. He and his late wife also accepted payment for water bills during the first 10 days of the month at their Chapman Lane home, collecting $20 a month for their efforts.
''My house was the unofficial city office,'' he recalled. ''The city mail came to me.''
About that time, he also became a charter member of Cold Spring's fire department, watching it grow from one truck in 1943 to ''one of the best fire departments in Campbell County.''
Besides serving in various supervisory positions in the fire department, including assistant chief and temporary chief, Mr. Rust also found time to juggle a variety of city duties.
Shortly before his wife died of a stroke in early 1977, he retired from his restaurant job, but he continued putting in full-time hours at his city jobs, which ranged from overseeing a federally funded summer jobs program for youths to looking after roads, mowing the city's recreational fields, and cutting weeds.
He also continued to supervise the city's water and sewer systems until 1982 and 1995 respectively, when they were turned over to county and regional authorities.
Now that he's retiring as public works director, Mr. Rust hopes to spend more time traveling with his present wife, Rita M. Rust, and enjoy visits with their combined family of nine children and 19 grandchildren.
Even though he's no longer driving city vehicles, the only Cold Spring employee who was around for the city's founding insists he'll still take an occasional spin on the city tractor, mowing the public parks that he helped design.
''God put us in this world for a reason,'' he said. ''You only go around one time, and you better make it good.''
