Opinion

Dear Rusty: I am writing to you on behalf of my husband. His intentions are to go part time as of January 1, 2026, working 30 hours a week and take Social Security benefits as supplemental income. How can we determine what his Social Security benefit would be with him still working part time? He will be 63 and 7 months old next January and has not yet applied for benefits. We look forward to hearing from someone very soon. Signed: Anxious for Information 

Stephen F. Austin finally blinked in a tense stand-off with Strap Buckner and signaled on Jun. 10, 1831 that he would meet his stubborn adversary more than halfway. 

No one was more determined to take Texas away from Spain than the pugnacious son of a Virginia judge, who did not know the meaning of the word “quit.” Aylett C. “Strap” Buckner survived not one, not two but three doomed attempts to liberate the province.

The event is “brain-etched,” deeply embedded and validated by the calendar. It was May 1962, all “heady stuff” for a one-year-out-of-college guy invited to make a commencement address. 

The distance was 87 miles from Brownwood to London in Texas’ beautiful Hill Country, where I would speak at graduation exercises for four seniors at a school that would cease to exist a year later.

Dear Rusty: My coffee conversations among a group of friends have resulted in several questions about Social Security: 

1. What happens to the Social Security account of someone who dies before retirement age. What happens to that money and where does it end up?

2. How does the decreased birth rate of the USA affect future Social Security benefits?  

3. Is a person who has never contributed to the Social Security System entitled to any benefits from the Social Security Administration?  

By the end of May 1945, more enemy prisoners were sitting out the Second World War in Texas than any state in the Union. One out of every ten German, Italian and Japanese captives shipped to the United States for safekeeping wound up somewhere between the Red River and the Rio Grande.

For reasons of cost as well as security, U.S. officials decided in the months after Pearl Harbor to hold all Axis prisoners of war on American soil. A network of hurriedly constructed camps soon reached every corner of the country giving 44 of the 48 states at least one POW facility. 

Dear Rusty: I’m a retired Navy veteran who is going to be turning 65 years old this year. My question is concerning mandatory Medicare sign-up requirements. Why do I have to sign up for Medicare coverage at 65 when I can’t start collecting full Social Security benefits until I turn 67? My Social Security benefits will not pay for my mandatory Medicare because I can’t start collecting full Social Security benefits until I’m 67! 

For the next three weeks, there’ll be too much about me, even if I apologize in advance for citing personal experiences, but they’re the only kinds I’ve had. 

At their core will be remembrances of commencement ceremonies, mostly where I’ve been privileged to speak. For brief and shining moments, I’ve joined graduates, families and fellow educators in celebrating familial love, joy and unbounded hopes and prayers that graduates might make this world a better place. 

The sensational murder trial of 24 Texans, denied bail and held for months in an open-air stockade, began at Jefferson on May 24, 1869.

George Washington Smith was a veteran of the Union Army, whose chief claim to fame was a flesh wound sustained at the Battle of Gettysburg. He migrated to Texas with his uncle after the war and opened a store in Jefferson up the road from Marshall, the secessionist stronghold.

Dear Rusty: I just turned 65 years old in February 2025. I need to sign up for Social Security but don’t even know where to start. Signed: Seeking Assistance 

It is that time again when hundreds of thousands of us can’t get the sounds of “Pomp and Circumstance” out of our heads, often whistling or humming the melody, not even wondering why. 

For the curious--and others in the majority who couldn’t care less--Englishman Edward Elgar’s 1901 march has long been the musical gold standard for graduation music. For a century, graduates have marched in and out to this tune--part and parcel--while nervously accepting certificates and diplomas.