Russell Ruderman: A Lifetime of Adventure and Purpose

By Lara Hughes

Many of us know Russell Ruderman as a Hawai‘i State Senator and owner of the local Island Naturals stores. What many of us may not know is Russell’s background, and how he arrived on Hawai‘i Island.

Starting at the beginning, Russell’s parents met in Palestine, now Israel. His father, Maurice, was born in Philadelphia and moved to Palestine with his family when he was three years old. He met Russell’s mother Aviva, who was a Palestinian citizen, and they were quickly married when WWII broke out. “This way they could leave together, as Nazi General Rammel was marching across North Africa toward Palestine,” explains Russell. Maurice joined the US Army, becoming a linguistics intelligence officer and speaking more than five languages. For the next 20 years they would move where the Army stationed him. For a few years they were stationed in Germany, and it was during this time that Russell was born. They moved back to the US after the war ended, eventually settling once again in Philadelphia.

Ice Cream Plus Woodstock Equals a Lifetime of Influence

Many years later, Russell would get his accidental start in retail sales with ice cream sandwiches at Woodstock. “I was an impressionable, barefoot 15 year old who loved music and community,” says Russell. “I left with seven dollars in my pocket and came home with the same amount.” After sneaking away for the weekend to roam around Woodstock and see Credence Clearwater Revival melding music on-stage in front of thousands of people, Russell came across a guy selling ice cream sandwiches by the box at three in the morning. He bought a box of six for a dollar. “I went out and sold five for 25 cents each, I had one left for myself and enough to go back and buy some more. I did that several times during the night, and that was the beginning of my food retail career,” he quips.

It was also the first time he heard the Grateful Dead play. “I had no idea who they were. They played a weird set. I remember watching them and I couldn’t really understand their music.” Although he says they had almost no effect on him that night, the whole scene would later play a major role: “My big hobby is acoustic guitars. I’m a collector in addition to being a musician.” For the past 40 years, he has played acoustic folk music on his own and now performs in a couple of bands; one is a Latin dance band called El Leo, The Jarican Express and the other is a Grateful Dead cover band called Terrapin Station. “I wound up becoming a big Dead Head.”

Whether it was coincidence or life foreshadowing the pages of his eventual future, Russell can trace a lot of what shaped him back to his experience at Woodstock. “Music brought people together and it made a big impression on me. The fact is, it was this giant metaphor for humans on Earth; we are all stuck here together, and we all have to find a way to make it work.” It was this concept, coupled with a passion for the environment that would later lead him into politics.

After Woodstock and high school, Russell went on to college and achieved his degree in biology. “I saw the environmental issues through a scientific lens; there’s ecology and there’s an environment that’s interactive—I was taught to view things as a system.” For him, life on Earth is a system that needs to be taken care of, and he wanted to be able to make a difference. Years later Russell would become an elected official because he believed that it was one way to give a louder voice to environmentalism, saying, “To me that’s the purpose for being in politics.”

A Leap of Faith Sailing Across the Pacific

Before becoming a business owner and politician, Russell originally wanted to pursue a career in biology and become a doctor; however, he decided to take a few years off between degrees. After graduating from Penn State in 1975, he moved from Pennsylvania to San Francisco. While he was trying to get a job in his field he randomly landed a position in a health food store. “I had never been a health food customer and it hadn’t been anything of interest to me, but someone hired me in their store, and I ended up being the manager,” Russell reminisces. He enjoyed the work, eventually adopting the lifestyle and philosophy that goes along with natural foods and ended up managing a group of stores in the Bay Area for nine years.

The second time Russell moved was from San Francisco to Hilo in 1985. He had attended a regional health food convention in Honolulu and decided to stay an extra week with a friend that he had worked with in one of the San Francisco stores. She lived on Hawai‘i Island and had a connection to another health food store. At the time he remembers needing a change and through a seemingly coincidental series of events he was offered a job managing the Hilo store.

“When I moved to Hawai‘i, I sailed here on a small wooden sailboat,” he says, “We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and into Hilo Bay.” The little boat was 25 feet long and didn’t have a motor, long-distance radio, or electronic navigational equipment. His girlfriend at the time, who owned the vessel, decided to captain it across the Pacific. After a few months of studying navigational books and practicing at the dock, Russell navigated to Hawai‘i Island using a sextant to pinpoint their location on nautical maps. The whole adventure took 25 days, many filled with seasickness, and the first eight, they weren’t sure where they were on the map. “The style of navigation relied on being able to see the sun, and the first eight days were non-stop cloud cover.” Russell used dead reckoning, a navigational style using a compass and nautical speed, to estimate where they were for the first week or so. Twice a freighter appeared on the horizon, and they were able to use their line-of-sight radio to call the freighter and get their coordinates. “At that point I was a couple hundred miles off.” By the end of their voyage the skies had cleared, and they were getting accurate location readings. “We found the island,” he says, smiling.

From Past Challenges to Future Legacies

Russell ended up getting fired from his management position at the health food store. He says, “Looking backwards it’s clear why I got a job in that store, and it’s clear why I got fired…although at the time, it was an extremely painful experience.” He was surviving on food stamps and his self-identity had been shattered, but there was a silver lining. “It made me go and do my own thing,” says Russell, “which I wouldn’t have done otherwise.” Career-wise, he moved into health food wholesaling while he and his wife at the time continued to note the lack of a modern natural food store in Hilo. After a couple of years, Russell decided to take a chance and open his own retail store. Island Naturals was born in 1998.

Financially he didn’t have a lot of resources, but Russell had a good reputation in his industry and people were willing to back him. “At the beginning I think I had unrealistic expectations,” he says. “I was committed to having low prices, highly paid employees, a very clean and modern store, and being profitable.”

After a year or two he realized that formula wasn’t working. “We had to make some adjustments and there was a point where it was a bit of a crisis—we had to borrow some extra money.” In fact, Russell recalls having to “max out” his credit cards to make payroll at one point. He made the necessary adjustments and got a solid base established. Ten years later he opened a store in Pāhoa and another in Kona.

In addition to being a businessman, politician, and musician, Russell is the proud father of four children. Three are college graduates in their twenties: Katie, Grace, and Zoe. The fourth is three years old. “I have three adopted daughters…and three years ago I had my first biological child.” His three-year-old daughter, Aviva Rose, is named after his mother and his wife Dina’s mother.

Russell’s mother was named after Tel Aviv, where she was born, and Aviva is the Hebrew word for springtime. “My mom’s parents had immigrated from Russia and they were so proud to have their daughter born in the holy land, so they named her after the city.”

His wife, Dina, emigrated from the Philippines and is the kitchen manager at the Hilo store. Both of their mothers have passed away, so when one of his stepdaughters suggested Aviva Rose’s name, it stuck.

Today, Russell looks at his stores as his legacy, which he hopes to leave to his children and future generations. He feels he has had more of a positive wide-reaching environmental impact as a business owner than as a politician. His hope for the future is that, as a global community, we get very serious about climate change and making a difference for the planet and the coming generations. “I just hope that we can wake up,” he says. ❖