By Pamela Kain She won’t get home until 2:30 or 3 in the morning, and her son has learned not to expect her any earlier because she’s usually at the bar that late. She knows who’s playing each night, and the waitresses call her by name. They know what she wants. This vivacious regular talks to her friends and meets new people not just on good nights, but every night. She wouldn’t have it any other way though. She’s been doing this for years. Never ceasing, but for the occasional get-away. This is her life.

A story of a woman, her love of music and her dedication to bringing live jazz acts to the Toledo area for nearly 40 years.

Her life is in a bar called Rusty’s, and she is Rusty. “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. I just work here,” she said.

Nicknamed Rusty by friends, Rusty Monroe, now 82, has been running Rusty’s
Jazz Café in Toledo since 1963 at the urging of area jazz musicians with the itch to play. “There was a need for jazz,” she said.

“Rusty is jazz, and jazz is Rusty,” said Jerry DePrisco, a local musician who directs and plays with Rusty’s Thursday night regulars, the Big Band Bash, as he has for the past 10 years.
But, she’s not just a figurehead for jazz. She also runs a business.

On a Thursday near midnight, she works under yellow lights in a remote corner of the smoky and dimly lit yet still-lively jazz venue handwriting paperwork like the old days. She’s doing the payroll just like any other manager might, except most others rely on the efficiency of modern technology.

Besides payroll, she schedules hours for her staff of about 15 and answers all of their questions. She manages musicians for performances, and always pays close attention to her customers.

She just won’t quit. She’s outlived two husbands and outworked three sons. Now a grandmother and soon to be a great-grandmother, it would seem that Monroe should be ready to settle down. But she’s not. “My sons have all retired, but I’m not ready. This is what I like to do, so they let me do it.”

Having lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Industrial Revolution, and a myriad of other historical events, Monroe said she feels like she’s pretty much seen it all.
Through it all, she said she’s very blessed. Monroe stays active, she said, through the young lives that frequent her business. “ I’m always learning something new.”

Monica Cuevas, a 20-year-old waitress at Rusty’s, said it’s not like work to work for Monroe. “I cannot leave this place. I just like working here,” she said.

Cuevas, who is also an exchange student pursuing an International Business degree at Owens Community College, began coming to Rusty’s with friends when she was in high school at Ottawa Hills. “I love jazz. It’s the main reason I work here,” she said. Cuevas said that she likes that it’s a cozy place and it’s open seven nights per week with live performers every night.

Monroe draws people in from all walks of life. On one night, people wear tee shirts and jeans while others don ties or dresses. Rusty’s is a place where people can feel comfortable. Some customers come to eat or drink or chat with friends, and some even come to do homework, all while listening to professional live jazz, a rarity in the area.
Walls at Rusty’s are full of pictures and posters, and mirrored walls reflect the smiling faces of patrons.

Relics from the past are scattered amidst booths and tables with chairs. An old cash register sits idle behind the bar. And table lamps are stuck where there is space. A fireplace and fake flowers bring a home-like quality.

Conversation buzzes low beneath the electricity of guitars and pounding of hand-drums on Thursdays and the big brass horn blowers on Tuesday nights. Other nights bring other sounds, but it’s still the same old Rusty’s.

“We’re always open and there’s always live jazz,” Monroe said. In fact, she even opened one day after a small fire broke out in the kitchen early in her career as a café owner. “The musicians and my staff really didn’t want to shut down, so we cleaned it up and opened the doors,” she said.

And the jazz musicians just keep on coming.
She said she’s booked up until next March with bands playing every night and they keep coming to her.

DePrisco said his friends first brought him to Rusty’s and he just kept coming. “They just don’t come any better than Rusty,” DePrisco said. “She’s the first lady of jazz.”

Tony Ben, a hand percussionist for Cookin’ which plays on Thursdays, said “Rusty gets major acts, and she does it all alone. She’s an amazing woman.”

Ben, who won a Grammy, said she’s someone to admire. “She toughed it out when women weren’t in fashion.” She was a working mother when it was unpopular. She stepped in to protect and share responsibility for her family.

Monroe said she has always loved jazz and she has always had music. As a little girl, she would crank up her family’s Victrola and play records. Her father would play Viennese waltzes on his violin.

Her mother died when she was 10, but Monroe learned from her a lot about life and being a successful person. “We were taught to make our own decisions,” she said. “Work was not a bad word when I was growing up, it was a challenge.”

The challenges get easier with time because everything’s history, she said. “ My sons would’ve liked to make life easier for me, but this is what I want, and they let me do it.”