STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
PHOTOS COURTESY REBECCA RUSCH
Rebecca Rusch has waved plenty of trophies over her head, the sweaty dirt of a just-ended mountain bike race caked on her face.
But she’s never taken the stage before cloaked in an elegant dress, waving a statue depicting a winged woman holding an atom.
Ketchum’s longtime national mountain bike champion, Ketchum firefighters and adventure racer did just that Monday night as she hoisted a coveted Emmy Award above her head at the 39th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards held in New York City.
“Congratulations. But how are you putting that thing on your bike?” posted Rusch’s fan David Houston.
Rusch’s film “Blood Road” won the Outstanding Graphic Design and Art Direction award up against America ReFramed, CNN Digital and others.
The Red Bull TV film was also nominated for an Outstanding Lighting Direction and Scenic Design, which was won by Investigative Discovery’s “A Crime to Remember: The Gentleman Killer.”
“I never envisioned myself holding a statuette like that in a room filled with so many talented people,” said Rusch. “What’s most amazing is that this honor will continue to bring exposure to the film, which will aid in the effort to clear unexploded ordinances in Laos and Vietnam and help with the healing of the Vietnam War.”
Rusch donned an elegant top she got from Consign Design in Ketchum, along with jewelry from Article 22, which creates unique jewelry made from the scraps of undetonated bombs cleared from Laos. She and her sister also had their father’s dog tags.
More than a thousand TV and news media industry executives, documentary producers and journalists—all dressed to the nines--attended the event presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.
Honorees included Paula Apsell of PBS’ “NOVA,” CNN, CBS “60 Minutes,” A&E’s “Life Animated” and HBO’s “Vice News Tonight.”
“At a time when some seek to perpetuate politically useful falsehoods in the furtherance of partisan ideology, we have never needed our nation’s journalists and documentarians more,” Academy Chairman Terry O’Reilly told the audience.
The 90-minute “Blood Road” tells the story of Rusch’s bike ride along the rugged Ho Chi Minh trail to discover the resting place of her father, an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War. Rusch premiered it at the 2017 Sun Valley Film Festival where it was voted the audience favorite.
Rusch made the film after she and her husband—fellow firefighter Greg Martin—rode the 1,200-mile Ho Chi Minh trail in 2015 in search of the place where her father’s F-4 Phantom was shot down.
She rode the sketchy trail over handmade cobblestones, along one-foot-wide foot trails, past water buffalo plowing muddy fields, past bomb craters and through humid jungle where she saw high water marks 30 feet high.
And then she returned, riding the trail with Vietnamese bicycle racer Huyen Nguyen and a six-person film crew from Red Bull Media House in search of the actual spot where Capt. Steve Rusch was shot down in 1972.
The film showed the ability of the people to forgive as they entertained Rusch across a table sagging under the weight of spring rolls and other traditional Vietnamese foods. And it showed her being led to a strange looking tree under which Laotians had buried her music and poetry-loving father.
“I was struck by the how friendly and forgiving the people were who lived along the trail. It’s just a beautiful part of the world, and I have to imagine solders were conflicted with what they had to do,” she said, noting that her own father confided the difficulties he was having in killing people.
Since, Rusch has traveled the United States from New York to Los Angeles showing the film in movie theaters, before school groups, on military bases and even at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C.
Veterans have told her how the film helped them open up and tell their families about their experiences in the war and how it helped them feel something more than numbness. The film has also taught young people about a war and a part of the world that they knew little or nothing about.
“I’ve been able to meet people who served with my father, and it was interesting to see him through their eyes, so that was an unexpected benefit,” Rusch said. “He died when I was 3 so learning about him was like learning about a part of myself.”
Rusch also learned about villagers who still live in fear of unexploded ordinance. It’s estimated that a half-million bomb missions took place during the war as pilots dropped eight million tons of bombs. A third of the bombs did not detonate on impact—60,000 people have been killed or injured by the ordinance since the war.
Rusch has donated ticket sales from fundraising screenings to MAG (Mines Advisory Group) to help with the ongoing effort to clear unexploded ordinances in Laos and Vietnam. She also sells “Be Good” bangles, T-shirts, tank tops and other items named for the way her father closed his letters. Each purchase clears 12.5 square meters of land.
Rusch says she still gets emotional every time she sees the movie.
“But there are always people in the audience who come up and talk to me afterwards—and this is the war where people came home and no one talked about it,” she said. “I do believe my dad brought me over there to show me and teach me and ask me to help with the healing. And I just hope this Emmy Award continues to spread awareness and the story of healing and forgiveness.”
WANT TO SEE THE FILM?
“Blood Road” is being shown on Red Bull TV, Amazon Prime and iTunes. Viewers can also arrange to view it in groups by visiting www.bloodroadfilm.com.