Washington brought joy to political satirist Mark Russell, and “he brought joy to us,” Msgr. Michael Mellone, the pastor of Annunciation Parish in Washington, D.C., said at Russell’s Funeral Mass on April 12 at the entertainer’s longtime parish.

On March 30, Russell died from complications from prostate cancer at his Washington home, where he had been receiving loving care from his wife of 44 years, Alison. He was 90.

In his homily, the priest noted that people from many walks of life who had some connection to the entertainer filled the church that morning to honor Russell’s life.

Msgr. Mellone said that Russell always found “a way to laugh at himself and to laugh at the things around him, particularly Washington!”

The cover of the Funeral Mass program featured a caricature of Russell by cartoonist Al Hirschfeld, showing him with a wry smile, wearing his trademark dark-rimmed glasses and bow tie, with his finger on a piano key, as if he was about to good-naturedly skewer a politician with a song and joke.

The piano to the side of Annunciation’s church sanctuary had the star-spangled bunting along its top that was another trademark of Russell’s shows on PBS for decades and at venues across the United States. Before the Mass, his brother Dan Ruskin played a prelude piece on the piano.

Locally, Russell performed his political humor for many years at the Shoreham Hotel’s Marquee Lounge and at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Russell, a devout Catholic, was also known for his charitable endeavors, including performing for nearly four decades at spring benefits for Anchor Mental Health, a Church-sponsored outreach to the mentally ill that is now continued by Catholic Charities. He also was a master of ceremonies for galas for SOAR! (Support our Aging Religious).

“Mark loved his faith,” Msgr. Mellone said in his homily, adding, “He would sit about six or seven rows back here, on this side.” Annunciation’s pastor said Russell would be attentive to the Scripture readings, would join in singing the songs at Mass, and after Mass would tell stories to the parishioners who gathered around him. 

In a 1995 interview, Russell told the Catholic Standard, “My faith is just there – it has been there all my life, through the good times and the bad times. The Catholic Church is the one unchanging factor in my life. It is like a rock that is always there.”

He joked that his long association with performing at the Anchor Mental Health’s Festival of Hope resulted from him going to Confession years earlier with the late Msgr. John Kuhn, the outreach’s founder. “This is my penance,” he joked. “No actually, I went to him and I said, ‘I’m having a crisis of conscience – I make my living ridiculing the misfortunes of others.’ He said, ‘Can you do it for us in May?’”

Joseph Marcus Ruslander, a Buffalo native, changed his name to Mark Russell in the 1960s to facilitate his entertainment career. In Buffalo, he attended Canisius High School, an all-boys’ Jesuit school that is also the alma mater of the late Tim Russert, the longtime moderator of “Meet the Press.” After a short stint at George Washington University, Russell joined the Marines. “After the Jesuits, the Marines were anti-climactic,” Russell joked in a 2015 Catholic Standard interview.

In that interview, he was asked which were his favorite presidents for comedic material, and Russell said, “Nobody ever let me down!”

The memorial gifts that people may make in Russell’s name include donations to the Mark Russell Scholarship at Canisius High School.

After his first marriage to the former Rebekah Ward ended in divorce, Russell later married Alison Kaplan in 1978. His survivors include his wife, the three children from his first marriage, Monica Welch of Kensington, Maryland; John Russell of Providence Utah; and Matthew Russell of Tucson, Arizona; his brother; six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Three of Russell’s grandchildren read Scripture readings and the responsorial psalm at the Mass, and his two great-grandchildren brought up the offertory gifts to the altar.

In an interview before the Mass, Gordon Peterson, formerly the longtime anchor at WUSA Channel 9, said of Russell, “There’s nobody like him. He had a wicked sense of humor, but the fist was in a velvet glove.”

Susan O’Neill was among three of Russell’s friends who read prayer intentions at the Mass. The daughter of former House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill noted in an interview before the Mass that she used to go to Russell’s shows with her father, a Democrat from Massachusetts who sometimes also went to the shows with his colleague, House Minority Leader Robert Michel, a Republican from Illinois.

“He (Russell) would pick on Democrats and Republicans in a clever, inoffensive way. It was always funny. He never attacked anyone personally,” she said.

Mark Russell’s three children offered personal remembrances of their father at the end of the Mass.

His daughter Monica Russell Welch said, “My father was a storyteller in his career and in his life.”

In a household steeped in political news, she added that, “We were the only kids on the block who could name the members of the Senate Watergate committee.”

Her father went to work at 8 o’clock at night in a tuxedo and would perform about 100 shows each year across the country, but he still found time to attend his children’s baseball games, dance recitals, track meets and band concerts, she said.

Noting the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, Latin for “always faithful,” John Russell said his father was proud to have been a Marine and was faithful to the three things that mattered most to him – God, his family and his country.

John Russell noted how whenever a fan would walk up and greet his father, he treated each one with respect, like “a longtime friend.”

Reflecting on his father’s approach to comedy, he said Mark Russell “was teaching a lesson, a lesson to laugh with each other and not at one another.”

Matthew Russell joked about his dad’s longtime association with PBS. He said that while his elementary school friends “were graduating from Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, I was hooked on MacNeil/Lehrer. My first lunchbox was a PBS tote bag. I have to admit, I was the only kid in school with a poster of (PBS NewsHour anchor) Judy Woodruff in his locker.”

He noted how his father was a man of adventure, leading family trips, and a man of curiosity who liked checking facts in his “beloved encyclopedias” on the bookshelf, and who liked to joke about the differences in people who rode horses or sat on the benches on a merry-go-round.

Matthew Russell remembered a time as a youth when he questioned his dad about giving money to a homeless man who might spend it in a questionable way, and his father in response said something that reflected his life’s work, “Why should I rob this man of an opportunity to smile?”

The Mass for Mark Russell, who made many people smile over his long career, closed with a Marine in dress uniform playing “Taps,” and the congregation singing “The Marine Corps Hymn.”