Deceased July 9, 2015
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In Memory
I am sad to report that Troy Rustad died on July 9, 2015. He was 54 years old. Troy sang with the glee club and the Zumbyes and is remembered fondly for his great sense of humor and his beautiful tenor voice. After graduation, Troy continued singing with the Amherst Alum Master Singers.
Troy went to George Washington University for medical school and did residencies in internal medicine and dermatology at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota. He was board-certified in both internal medicine and dermatology and was the director of the Psoriasis Center and the Skin Cancer Center.
At the time of his passing, Troy practiced medicine with his father, Dr. Elliot Rustad, in Lincoln, Neb., and volunteered at Clinic with a Heart. By all accounts, he was a great doctor. We extend our condolences to his mother, Carol Rustad; his father and stepmother, Elliott and Lynne Rustad; and his brothers, sister, nephews and nieces.
Tony Quinn ’84
I was shocked and saddened to see the obituary for Troy Rustad, who began his Amherst career in our class, a freshman resident on the second floor of James. We also crossed paths in Minneapolis, where I ran into him in the early and mid-‘90s, when he completed his final dermatology rotations before mobbing back to his home state of Nebraska. He was a serious guy with an irreverent streak, and he had a deep, passionate interest in music and singing, roses and orchids, and all things Japanese. I remember he kept bottles of sake in his Minneapolis apartment, and often little else in the alcohol line, so his apartment was the first place, somewhat in desperation, that I tasted sake. My last memory of Troy, and perhaps the last time I saw him, was on a golf course in San Diego in the days preceding Lee Ralph’s wedding. He was a rank beginner—this was perhaps his first real round ever—and for hole after hole we forced him to pick up his ball before the hole was concluded so we didn’t slow down the whole course. Then, by some miracle on the back nine par three, he hit a ball in the air with some force behind it, and after deflecting off a greenside eucalyptus tree, the ball went in for a regulation hole in one—a multimillion-to-one shot given his golfing skills. How we all laughed at the vagaries of life that day.”
Dave McIntosh '83