À une certaine époque, son père était éboueur, mais, au bout d'un certain nombre d'années, il a fini par devenir directeur de tout un service dans une petite ville de l'État de New York.
Russert says in his book that there is no unskilled labour and that everyone must have some kind of skill to do some kind of job. His father at one time was a garbage collector and ended up, over a period of years, becoming manager of a whole department in a small city in New York.
