People who live in Ouray probably know Sam and Di Rushing as the couple who started and ran Ouray Glassworks and Pottery for 26 years.
They might know Sam from his time with the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team, which he signed up for after the couple moved here in 1990 and still is a member.
They might know Di from her 20 years of teaching at Ouray School – there are many of her “babies” with their own babies these days who took her English, psychology and journalism classes. They heard many of her stories about growing up in the South, before they came here.
But they probably don’t know this story about the Rushings. Not the whole story, at least.
Like others who move to Ouray, they had a life before coming here, and the reason they came to the San Juans is a complicated, terrifying tale.
During the pandemic, Di sat down to write the story. The way she tells it, the project started when she decided to clean out some boxes in the attic and found all the memorabilia from their previous lives in Mississippi. She pored over these time capsules of newspaper clippings, photographs of her and Sam when they were in their 20s and 30s running the Winery Rushing in the Mississippi Delta, and other artifacts of their former lives.
Di and Sam Rushing display their award-winning wines at the Winery Rushing in this photo, which is from either 1979 or 1980, according to Di. The couple built the first winery in Mississippi since Prohibition, and operated a successful business there including the Top of the Cellar Tea Room. Today, many in Ouray know them as the couple that started Ouray Glassworks and Pottery, and Di taught English, psychology and journalism at Ouray School for 20 years before retiring.
Photo courtesy Di Rushing
Going through those boxes jogged her memory so much, she decided to sit down and put it all together, 30 years after their lives unraveled in a matter of only nine months.
Now, the boxes full of books sit in the same dining room where she sat at the kitchen table, drafting her manuscript on her laptop during the pandemic.
“The Delta in the Rearview Mirror,” published by University Press of Mississippi, is the story of the life the Rushings built near Merigold, Mississippi, from the time when they planted the first grapevines in 1977 to when they left the Delta for fear of their own lives in 1990.
Di tells it in a straightforward, honest way revealing her self-deprecating humor at times, but doesn’t shy away from the scary parts – the reasons they had to start over in Colorado.
She remembered back to when they fled to the San Juans, far enough that a vindictive former winery employee couldn’t follow them around town. Far enough that he couldn’t shoot up their house anymore. Far enough that they didn’t have to worry about another family dog being killed by a man who would not give up his grudge against them until they and their children were probably dead, too.
The story of how the Rushings came to Ouray is full of layers, and in peeling back each layer, Di reveals an incredible tale of resilience, of people who make the best of the worst, and a story of survival.
In the book, she weaves the story of how they came to build the winery and the Top of the Cellar Tea Room, renowned for its lunches featuring Delta cuisine, from the ground up. They planted 300 acres of muscadine grape varieties, and Sam used his expertise from his agriculture degree and enology studies to build the award-winning Winery Rushing. They were pioneers in sustainable agriculture, and worked to get the first viticultural area designated in Mississippi, where they built a life for their family.
This photo from 1977 shows the beginnings of the Winery Rushing, in the Delta near Merigold, Mississippi. Sam and Di Rushing are in their 20s in this photo, at the beginning of their quest to establish a winery and tea room. After 14 years of hard work and success, all their efforts were ruined by a disgruntled former employee who made their lives hell, forcing them to leave the Delta. They came to Colorado in 1990 and never looked back. Di tells the story in her new book, “The Delta in the Rearview Mirror.”
Photo courtesy Di Rushing
But on one day in 1990, all that hard work went down the drain with 8,000 gallons of wine, after a disgruntled employee who was fired for selling drugs in the winery parking lot lashed out at them and dumped it in the river. The culprit, a man named Ray Russell, also tried to blow up the tea room, among other acts of retaliation. Even after his arrest and a jury trial, he made it clear to the Rushings he wasn’t finished with them.
The situation became so dire, they decided they had to leave.
“I had to put it behind me,” Di said, sitting in the kitchen of her Victorian home in Ouray. “I had two small children, we were flat broke, and we needed to move on.”
“You can either sit there and take it, or you can do something about it,” she said.
The Rushings, who relocated first to Norwood and later to Ouray, moved within mere weeks of deciding they had to leave Mississippi. They arrived in the middle of winter, and though the climate was much colder than they were accustomed to, they found the people warm and welcoming.
They started over, and their son, Matt, and daughter, Lizzie, grew up here, attending school and graduating from Ouray. Today, Matt lives in Eagle and works in marketing and Lizzie is a human rights attorney for the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland.
Looking at the couple now, few would guess they’ve reinvented themselves several times, out of necessity.
The Rushings refer to these different iterations as “chapters” of their lives.
They know that most folks here in Ouray County don’t know the chapters before they came here, though the people back in the Delta remember what happened, just as they remember the wine muffins from Di’s tea room. This is all new information for those who know the Rushings from the Ouray chapter of their lives – details they never shared before, things that never came up.
The book is vulnerable, and Di reopened the trauma they experienced to write the story.
“It’s kinda like we took our clothes off,” said Sam, chuckling.
After more than 30 years, Di found the courage to write the harrowing story.
When she finished the book, she felt a sense of joy looking back on the support they received from customers and friends.
“I didn’t finish it with a sense of relief,” she said. “I finished it with a sense of gratitude.”
Now that the book is published, Di describes the experience as “surreal.” She’s 70, Sam is 71, and they’ve had three decades to come to terms with what happened.
Time helps, but so does the fact that (spoiler alert) the man they were afraid of is now dead.
“I don’t think I could have written it if Ray were still alive,” Di said.
So far, the book is a success. The first 2,000 books sold out before they were released, and more are on order for the next printing. Some of the books will be for sale at her reading on Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Wright Opera House in Ouray.
Next month, she has a book tour back in Mississippi, with 20 events scheduled in 22 days. She’s especially looking forward to an interview on the “Thacker Mountain Radio Hour,” on March 2, a weekly live radio show in Oxford, Mississippi.
The book is the “talk of the town” back in the Delta, she said, and she looks forward to reconnecting with those who remember the tea room and the winery she and Sam built from nothing.
No matter where her readers are, Di hopes they get something out of her family’s story.
“If there’s anything people take away, I hope it’s that things usually get better,” she said.
Di Rushing sits at the table where she drafted her memoir, “The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery,” at her home in Ouray. Di and her husband, Sam, came to Ouray in 1990 after they fled the Delta, for fear they would be killed by a disgruntled former employee who shot up their home, tried to blow up their winery’s tea room, and killed their family’s dogs among other methods of retaliation. Photo by Erin McIntyre — Ouray County Plaindealer
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IF YOU GO
WHAT: “The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery” by Ouray author Di Rushing signing and reading, presented by the Ouray Bookshop
WHEN: Doors open at 6:30 p.m., event starts at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24
WHERE: The Wright Opera House, 472 Main St., Ouray
COST: $5, purchase tickets online at wrightoperahouse.org
