I write this on behalf of the surviving members of the Rusteberg family, descendants of the late Frederick Henry Rusteberg Jr. (RIP, July 20, 1968) and the late Frederick William Rusteberg, my beloved deceased husband (RIP, July 19, 2020). I speak for the Rusteberg family when I say we also stand with the UTRGV students who have classes at Rusteberg Hall.
Shame on you for the thoughtless wording of the headline of your April 16 edition, smearing our family’s hard-earned good name in your front-page headline. It was thoughtless and insulting to our family. Your headline should have been directed at the cause of the problem – TexasSouthmostCollege.
Shame on you, TexasSouthmostCollege, for allowing Rusteberg Hall, the building dedicated in honor of my long-deceased father-in-law, to deteriorate to such an abhorrent state of repair! Apparently, the article is accurate, but the headline was beyond hurtful and was disparaging to my family’s good name.
The Rusteberg family arrived in the Brownsville area in 1905 and have a long and consistent history of supporting education for students of the Rio GrandeValley. My father-in-law was a founding trustee of TexasSouthmostCollege, serving on its founding board for 18 years. After his death, the TSC board at that time named the new vocational/technical building Rusteberg Hall in his honor, as he had worked very hard to establish the vocational/technical program. In his later years, my father-in-law would stop by the original MercyHospital each morning on his way to work in downtown Brownsville. Ironically, he would walk the halls, visiting sick patients, handing out Brownsville Herald newspapers, bought with his own personal funds. The chapel at MercyHospital was dedicated in his name at that time.
As for my late husband, Fred, there are too many boards, councils and awards to mention. However, any time a school or city bond issue was needed, my husband, Fred, was the person called upon to chair the campaign: the 1998 BISD bond campaign for $100 million; the 2006 BISD bond campaign for $135 million; the 2004 treasurer UTB/TSC bond campaign for $68 million. Fred served on the UTB development board for 11 years, chairing it for two consecutive years.
Scholarships established in the Rusteberg name have supplemented funding for deserving students and faculty. The Rusteberg family personally established the very first Dean’s Scholar Endowment in the name of Jessie Cabler Rusteberg in 1995 with the hope that other families would follow suit, which they did. Later the Fred W. and Frances H. Rusteberg Faculty Fellowship in Science and Technology Endowment was established by IBC Bank in Fred and Frances’s honor and in 2002 the Fred and Frances Rusteberg endowed Scholarship for Business was established.
Fred thought it unfair that our lower RGV students were not eligible to participate in the state program for university funding as all other higher education public universities in Texas enjoyed. He had the courage to initially publicly rock the boat, which eventually led to the two UTs of the Rio GrandeValley finally being included in state funding! At last, our lower Rio GrandeValley students would have comparable facilities to other Texas state universities.
Which brings me back to the Rusteberg Hall building! All students deserve clean and functional facilities. TSC, please clean up that building!
Frances Rusteberg lives in Brownsville.
