“Guy wasn’t just Guy,” Fish Robinson, lead pastor at Community Church Oxford, said at a memorial service held for Reynolds Russell, known to many as Gaetano “Guy” Catelli.
Though many may not know his name, you probably have heard his songs. Russell was frequently spotted on the Ole Miss campus and around Oxford playing recorded music as he cruised the streets on his bicycle.
Originally from Westchester County, N.Y., Russell was a beloved member of the Oxford community and died in the town he loved on Dec. 12, 2023. A funeral service was held on Dec. 20, 2023, at St. John’s Catholic Church followed by a community memorial service in Bryant Hall at the University of Mississippi.
“What I’m thankful for about my bicycle friend, Guy, is that he was able to bring us together when we wouldn’t come together ourselves,” Robinson said at the beginning of the memorial. “And it took a New Yorker to do that.”
While many know him as the man with the musical bicycle, Russell had many passions. He studied economics, he was a photographer and he was enthusiastic about Latin and history.
Molly Pasco-Pranger, a friend of Russell’s and UM chair and professor in the Department of Classics, revealed the origin of Russell’s chosen name.
“I met Guy for the first time in 2011. When I told him I was a Latin professor, he just lit up,” Pasco-Pranger said. “Then he explained to me that he had written a whole book about the Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus and that his chosen name Gateano Catelli was because he had named himself after Catullus.”
Pasco-Pranger shared why she thought Russell connected with Catullus.
“In his late 50s, Guy began reading through Catullus and developed a deep connection with his work,” Pasco-Prager said. “Catullus is a poet of love, of friendship, of daily life, and all sorts of things. I think what drew Guy to Catullus was the sense that Catullus feels like a human being. It feels like you know Catullus when you read his works.”
Pasco-Pranger explained that their friendship developed through the love of Latin and the value of education.
“Guy came to our classics events pretty regularly and began to talk in our public readings of classical literature where he would do these incredible performances of some of the Catullus poems,” Pasco- Pranger said. “He always closed those performances reminding our students how important education was and that education was a privilege and a gift that once you had it, nobody could take it away from you. He definitely lived that out in his life.”
Larry Morris, another friend of Russell’s, reminisced about how excited Russell was to join his friend in becoming a member of the “University Greys,” a Sons of Confederate Veterans group.
“I knew he was from New York, and he wanted to come to our meetings,” Morris said. “He would give me a list of names to look up to see if he had a Confederate ancestor so he could join. One night he came to a meeting and said, ‘Check this person out,’ and I checked him out. Sure enough that guy served honorably in the Confederate army.”
Morris explained that Russell had been so excited to join the organization that he immediately called up the national organization to ask where he could send the membership check.
Robinson elaborated on how Russel touched the lives of many in Oxford.
“You’ll notice how this is not even a drop in the bucket of the lives that he touched as he serenaded us with his music, as he challenged us with his questions, as he shared his art with us, as he lived his life, as he loved complete strangers and as he welcomed everybody. This is Guy,” Robinson said.
