Let’s get to know Rebecca Wallace, a passionate and dedicated volunteer with the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program. She’s been a steward since the end of 2023, and as Lexi Little, Operations Coordinator, says: Rebecca is a wonderful steward who brings fun perspectives and energy to the program, and “If you haven’t met her yet, you are for sure missing out!”
Rebecca first discovered UCSS at a Grizzly Gulch history-and-hiking tour, held in partnership with Alta Environmental Center and Cottonwood Canyons Foundation (CCF). She has volunteered with CCF for 10 years as a naturalist, doing snowshoe tours, ski tours, and guided wildflower trips for schools and the public; UCSS, she said, “piqued my interest. Human history is part of being a naturalist, so it’s definitely in my wheelhouse.” That interest in history was also encouraged by her late father, W.L. “Bud” Rusho. An historian, author, and videographer, his writing on and extensive library of western history books was, Rebecca says, “a wonderful resource.”
She joined us as a steward soon after that hike. As well as volunteering as a site steward and with CCF, she has volunteered with the Natural History Museum of Utah for five years. In the past, she has also been a hike and outings organizer with the Utah Sierra Club, and continues to organize hikes and nature-oriented gatherings for several groups of friends. Somehow, she also has the time to be a caregiver for important people in her life, as well as finding time to enjoy cooking, hiking, skiing, and gardening.
Rebecca says her volunteering and continued learning has felt like coming back to her baseline interests in science, plants, and history. Although she has been retired from her career as a nurse practitioner for about eight years, she only recently let her nursing license expire: “You owe it to your patients to stay up to date,” she said, referencing the medical field’s constantly changing technology and processes, “and I want to study other things now!”
When she started studying nursing, she didn’t necessarily have the choice to pursue those other interests. After spending her young adulthood living in farm communes across the U.S., she said that “the fact of making a living finally dawned on my now-fully matured brain” at about 24 years old.
“I woke up and went ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I forgot to go to college!’” she joked. She moved back to Utah with family and began school at the University of Utah.
“By that point in time I was a single mom with a boy,” she said, and so she “…had to settle on something that would make a living… I decided ‘Well, there’s enough science in nursing to keep me happy, I like helping people, and I can earn a living’, so that’s why I chose nursing.”
That choice became a career. Rebecca has since worked as a nurse for health departments across Utah, taught at University of Utah’s College of Nursing, and spent over two decades as a reservist nurse with the Army and the Navy. Her time with the military led to opportunities to help in a hospital in Germany during Operation Desert Storm, as well as humanitarian missions in Panama and Thailand.
Now retired from that career, Rebecca still helps others through her education about and advocacy for the natural world, its history, and the humans who live in it. “People will protect what they know, and if they don’t know, they won’t think to try to protect it.” Rebecca said. “We are changing the planet, and a study of where we’ve been might indicate where we’re going… These cultural sites we have are irreplaceable, and let’s all work together to protect them.”
Thanks, Rebecca, for all you do to help safeguard Utah’s irreplaceable cultural sites, and for the knowledge, perspectives, and passion you bring to the program. As Program Manager Ian Wright says, “People like Rebecca who share their passion and dedication for the preservation of history are why Utah is leading the nation in public-led heritage preservation.” UCSS truly couldn’t exist without amazing stewards like Rebecca. We hope you all enjoyed getting to know Rebecca, and that you get to meet her soon!
Rebecca hiking at Bryce Canyon National Park.