Twin sisters. Woman who 'shaped generations of campers': Texas flood victims remembered
A director of a Texas summer camp for girls who was known as the "heart and soul" of the program. Two sisters found together after being swept away by floodwaters. A beloved teacher from the Houston metropolitan area.
Destructive flooding triggered by unrelenting rain that rapidly overwhelmed the Guadalupe River has killed at least 81 people across central Texas. State and local officials said search and rescue efforts were still underway, including for 10 children and a counselor from Camp Mystic, a Christian girls' camp at the edge of the Guadalupe River. At least 27 children and counselors from the all-girls summer camp, which has long had ties to top Texas political figures, have died.
The river surged over 26 feet in less than an hour on July 4, carrying away cars, RVs and structures. It blew out the wall of one camp building where children slept, leaving debris-covered mud amid pink blankets and stuffed animals.
Flooding-related deaths have been reported in six counties. The victims include summer camp directors, teachers, grandparents, parents, and children.
Here are the stories of those who lost their lives:
Jane Rasgdale
Jane Ragsdale was the "heart and soul" of Heart O' the Hills, a summer camp for girls in Kerr County, according to the program's website.
She was a camper and a counselor there before becoming a co-owner of the camp in 1976. Ragsdale later served as the camp's program director from 1978 to 1987, and went on to become the camp director in 1988, the website added.
In a statement, the camp said it was "right in the path of the flood" and its facilities sustained serious damage. They noted that since the camp was between sessions when the flooding occurred, no children had been staying there.
"However, our Director and the camp's longtime co-owner, Jane Ragsdale, lost her life. We at the camp are stunned and deeply saddened by Jane's death," the camp said in the statement. "She embodied the spirit of Heart O' the Hills and was exactly the type of strong, joyful woman that the camp aimed to develop with the girls entrusted to us each summer."
The camp also paid tribute to Ragsdale in a Facebook post, saying she was "the heart of The Heart."
"Jane wasn't just our director, she was our guiding light, our example, and our safe place. She had the rare gift of making every person feel seen, loved, and important. Her kindness, strength, and wisdom shaped generations of campers and staff," the post states.
"Her legacy lives in every laugh heard on the hill, every tradition passed down, every song we sing, every manner she taught us and every life she touched, which is too many to count," the post continued.
− Thao Nguyen
Blair and Brooke Harber
Two young sisters, Blair and Brooke Harber, were staying in Hill Country over the Fourth of July holiday when their "lives were tragically cut short" by flooding along the Guadalupe River, according to St. Rita Catholic School.
The school said in a statement on Facebook that Blair was a rising eighth grader, while Brooke was entering the sixth grade.
The school described Blair as an "outstanding student" who was enrolled in advanced classes and actively involved in school activities. She played several sports, cheered for the school's cheerleading team, served as a student ambassador, and was part of the yearbook team and speech and drama program.
Brooke was an "excellent student who brought joy and energy wherever she went," according to the school. She also played several sports, and loved speech and drama, in which she had a gift for improv, the school noted.
"Blair had the kindest heart and loved to serve others," the school said. "Brooke never met a stranger and loved everyone she met."
The two girls had been with their grandparents, who remain missing, when the flooding occurred. The girls' parents were in a separate cabin and were safe, according to the school.
"Blair and Brooke were young women of deep faith, and religion was one of their favorite subjects. On the night they died, they went to the loft of their cabin with their rosaries," the school said. "When Blair and Brooke were found the next day, fifteen miles downriver, they were together. Even in their last moments, they held tightly to each other, a powerful symbol of their lasting bond and their trust in God."
− Thao Nguyen
Jeff Wilson
Jeff Wilson died in the flood, according to a social media post from the Humble Independent School District.
"Tonight our #HumbleISDFamily is grieving the devastating loss of @HumbleISD_KPHS teacher Jeff Wilson, who passed away due to the catastrophic flooding in Kerrville," the school district said, which is located in the city of Humble in the Houston metropolitan area.
Wilson had been a teacher in the school district for 30 years. He worked at both Humble High School and Kingwood Park High School.
"He was a beloved teacher and co-worker to many and will be deeply missed," according to the school district. "Jeff's brother-in-law has shared that at this time, Jeff's wife Amber and son Shiloh are still considered missing. Please continue to keep their entire family, and ours, in your prayers."
− Thao Nguyen
Sarah Marsh
Sarah Marsh, an 8-year-old from suburban Birmingham, Alabama, died in the flooding at Camp Mystic in Texas, according to Mountain Brook Mayor Stewart Welch.
Welch said the city of Mountain Brook was heartbroken over the "tragic loss" of Sarah, who was a student at Cherokee Bend Elementary. The mayor noted that the community would come together and support the Marsh family.
"This is an unimaginable loss for her family, her school, and our entire community," Welch said in a statement on Facebook. "Sarah's passing is a sorrow shared by all of us, and our hearts are with those who knew and loved her. As we grieve alongside the Marsh family, we also remember the many others affected by this tragedy."
− Thao Nguyen
Dick Eastland
Camp Mystic owner Richard "Dick" Eastland died while trying to save campers, the Houston Chronicle and the Washington Post reported. Family and friends of Eastland described him as a father figure for generations of girls who attended the summer camp, according to the Chronicle.
In an Instagram tribute, his grandson said Eastland was more than his grandfather. He said Eastland was his "dear friend, fishing buddy, hunting guide, golf partner, avid Texas Longhorns fanatic, my #1 fan, and above all else: a hero."
"If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for," George Eastland wrote in the post. "That's the man my grandfather was. A husband, father, grandfather, and mentor to thousands of young women, he no longer walks this earth, but his impact will never leave the lives he touched."
− Thao Nguyen
Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence
The twin granddaughters of David Lawrence Jr., the former publisher of the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, were among the dozens killed over the weekend, he told the Miami Herald. The girls, both 8 years old, and their sister, 14, attended Camp Mystic, the newspaper reported.
'It has been an unimaginable time for all of us," Lawrence told the Herald. "Hanna and Rebecca gave their parents, John and Lacy, and sister, Harper, and all in our family, so much joy. They and that joy can never be forgotten."
Contributing: Charles A. Ventura, USA TODAY
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Texas's Camp Mystic was ‘a place of joy'. Floods turned it into a site of great loss
The loss of 27 campers and counsellors from Camp Mystic to the Texas Hill Country flood may serve, at a terrible cost, to expand its considerable reputation across Texas and beyond. Even as the floods claimed more lives along the valley – at least 120 confirmed dead and 160 people unaccounted for as of Tuesday – the loss of several 'Mystic Girls' has dominated the headlines. The camp, which offers two four-week terms and one two-week term over the summer, has been the go-to summer camp for daughters of Texans for nearly a century. It's so popular that fathers have been known to call the registrar to get their daughters on the list from the delivery room. The camp, which spans more than 700 acres, has been widely described as an all-girls Christian camp, lending an image of baptisms in the river, but the religious component may be overstated: the camp is known as one of dozens along the Guadalupe River where Texan families send their young to escape the brutal heat of the lowlands. Related: Everything we know about Texas flooding – with visuals Now at least one-half of Camp Mystic, which was due to celebrate its centenary next year, lies in ruins, torn apart by raging floodwaters. The sound of song and girls playing has been replaced by the sound of chainsaws and heavy equipment as 19 state agencies and thousands of volunteers work to search and clear mounds of flood debris along the river, including the muddied personal items of the campers. Five days after the flood, the task along the valley has become a search-and-recovery operation: no one has been rescued from the river alive since Friday. In addition to the lost girls, Camp Mystic's director, Richard 'Dick' Eastland, a fourth-generation owner of the camp, died while attempting to bring five girls to safety. 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It has served generations of Texas women, often from well-to-do or politically connected Texas families, including the former first lady Laura Bush, who was a counsellor, and the daughters and granddaughters of Lyndon Johnson, former secretary of state James Baker, and Texas governors Price Daniel, Dan Moody and John Connally. *** The camp may have been incorrectly characterized as a 'Christian' camp. 'That evokes the idea of church camp but that's not the case,' said Sullivan. 'It's a private camp for girls that holds Christian values. When I was there we spent a lot of time talking about being kind to one another and having compassion, and there were people from other denominations and faiths.' Camp Mystic is better understood, Sullivan added, as being in a place free from pressure. 'You're in nature, in a beautiful setting, and really removed from the world', said Sullivan. 'It's a place of joy and innocence – or was. My sense is that it will definitely be rebuilt, but it's awfully early.' The outpouring of grief and rush to support the community have been striking. A church memorial service was held on Monday in San Antonio for the 'Mystic girls' who had been lost. Many dressed in the camp's green and white, together in song and prayer. It was not possible to get to the camp on Tuesday, a tailback of 2.5 hours extended across the seven miles from Hunt, the nearest hamlet, to Camp Mystic. At the season's peak in July and August, the camp hosted 750 girls aged between seven and 17 years old – that's more than half of Hunt's population of about 1,300. At Ingram, a riverbank town that also lost dozens from RV camps and homes to the flood, emergency workers and volunteers were pitching in, in many cases in the hope of recovering people still lost, and many bodies probably hidden under large piles of river debris, shattered homes and mangled possessions. 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Michigan summer camps want parents to know 'we are prepared'
After a flash flood killed dozens of children attending summer camp in Texas, Michigan camp leaders want to remind worried parents that safety is always their priority. The flood happened early morning on July 4, when heavy rainfall caused the Guadalupe River to rise at a deadly speed. The death toll for Kerr County, Texas, is 120 people and counting, according to USA TODAY. Of those deaths, 27 are children and counselors from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian sleepaway camp located on the banks of the river. Summer camp is a beloved tradition for many families, and a sacred coming of age ritual for children and young adults. To continue that legacy, camp leaders in Michigan say that safety must be a priority. Jill Laidlaw worked for Camp Cavell in Lexington for 37 years. Laidlaw often played out emergency scenarios in her head when she was a camp director. When she heard about the tragedy at Camp Mystic, she said she immediately thought about what the young camp counselors tried to do to keep the kids safe. "(They were) probably trying to put the kids up on the top bunks, thinking it was going to just be a small flood, and somebody would come and help them, and then realized that they were going to have to try and get those kids out," said Laidlaw. Laidlaw said that thinking about it keeps her up at night. "I'm having a hard time dealing with it," she said, " I don't think we'll ever know the stories." Laidlaw said any emergencies she experienced as a camp director were nowhere near as devastating as what happened at Camp Mystic. But there were instances that challenged the staff. One time, Laidlaw said, the camp lost power for three days while hosting 200 children living with muscular dystrophy. "We had to deal with electric (wheel)chairs, trying to charge them," Laidlaw said. 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Some of those requirements require specific health and safety training for camp staff members, and thorough documented plans and frequent rehearsal for emergency situations for staff and campers. DeHart wrote that Camp Mystic in Texas is not accredited by the ACA. Laidlaw said that even with the added regulations from the ACA, there's no way to plan for every possible situation. "No matter what kind of protocols they had there, I can't imagine they had anything that could have dealt with something so quick," said Laidlaw. DeHart wrote that the ACA is providing financial support to the cause and mental health services are available to neighboring camps in Texas. "We recognize that tragedies anywhere can heighten anxieties everywhere. We encourage open, ongoing dialogue between camps and families, and we stand ready to support camp professionals as they navigate these difficult conversations with compassion and clarity," DeHart wrote. Contact Emma George-Griffin: EGeoreGriffin@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Camps continue to prioritize safety after Texas flash floods
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Home of the Brave
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. A few specific sounds punctuate summer evenings in rural Iowa. A chorus of spring peepers, for example, or the shrill conk-la-ree of a red-winged blackbird on the side of a county road. But only one demands a response: the hostile, metallic beep of a NOAA weather radio. For 25 years, my mother ran Camp L-Kee-Ta, a small Girl Scout camp in the southeastern part of the state, which meant that, every summer, she was responsible for the safety of 64 girls and a staff of 20 young adults. At the first declaration of a tornado warning, Mom would walkie the counselors, instructing them to move their campers indoors. She'd ring the camp's cast-iron bell as the wind began to howl. And, because my family lived on-site, she'd toss me in the truck before driving from the cabins at Hickory Hills to the huts at Trail's End, checking for stragglers. Within minutes, we'd all convene in the basement of the Troop House, the largest camp building, a few dozen girls sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor with snacks and songbooks. I don't recall much crying in these moments as the storm raged above us. Mainly, I remember singing. Camp felt safe, in the literal sense but also the figurative one; there, girls could challenge themselves, free from the judgment of the outside world. At camp, we—for several summers, I was a camper too—learned to dive, to build a fire, to make friends. We practiced our courage and resilience, how to skin our knees and keep on hiking, how to carefully extract a tick. Even when disaster sent us underground, we were always ultimately okay. It was good for campers to be a little uncomfortable and homesick. These moments were and are the purpose of camp—preparation for the trials of real-world life. [View: Deadly flooding in Texas] And what I haven't been able to stop thinking about is the unfathomable tragedy that, last week in the Texas Hill Country, at least a dozen little girls lost their lives while they were learning how to be brave. Camp leaders across the country can't stop thinking about it, either. 'It is quite literally our worst nightmare,' Georgia Del Favero, a co-director of Camp Birchwood, a Minnesota summer camp for girls, told me. Right now, hundreds of camps, including Del Favero's, are in the middle of a summer session, or are about to welcome a new busload of children for three days or a week or a month. Moving forward requires accepting that, at camp as in life, we can make plans and follow guidelines, but even then, 'we can't always prevent tragedy.' Camp Mystic is a Christian camp, and one of several summer camps dotting the Guadalupe River in central Texas. It's a century-old, sprawling complex with two campuses and a range of activities on offer, including horseback riding, riflery, and synchronized swimming. Last week's flood came only a few days into a month-long summer session, and hundreds of campers were spread out across several cabins. When the rain began in earnest, early on the morning of July 4, most of those campers were still asleep. [Elizabeth Bruenig: An inhospitable land] Details about what happened next are murky, and news reports are difficult for those unfamiliar with the camp layout to follow. What comes through most clearly, at least to me, is the charm of Mystic's site names, instantly recognizable to anyone with camp experience: Senior Hill, where older girls stayed and were safe from the rising river; the Giggle Box and Wiggle Inn cabins in the lower part of camp, where girls were able to ride out the flood or evacuate; the Bubble Inn cabin, full of little girls who couldn't. What comes through, as well, is the heroism of Mystic's staff, who smashed cabin windows to push their campers outside, carried girls on their backs, and wrote campers' names in Sharpie on their arms in case they were swept away in the flood. Dick Eastland, a longtime co-director of the camp, navigated his truck through the dark water and died trying to save the girls at Bubble Inn. Many children currently attending summer camp still have no idea that any of this has occurred. Lots of camps follow a no-phones policy that provides kids a psychological haven from the noise of modern life. But their parents have seen the news, and camp-office phones nationwide have been ringing for days. It's hard to know what to tell parents, Ariella Rogge, who oversees the High Trails Ranch camp for girls, in Colorado, told me. You can help to calm a parent's fears by outlining the stringent safety standards most camps follow or the staff's extensive disaster-preparedness training. Still, 10 girls from Texas are set to attend Rogge's camp this week, and some of their parents are understandably unnerved, she said. 'My husband didn't go to camp, I didn't go to camp, and I am incredibly risk-averse,' one mother told her, according to Rogge. Then again, the mother said, 'this is what my daughter has been dreaming about all year.' Rogge isn't sure whether that mother will still send her daughter to camp next week. But she hopes so. She's trying to help anxious parents recognize that two things can be true. 'You can know this is going to be a really great experience for your daughter, and that she's going to have all this personal growth,' Rogge said, 'and you can be really nervous and scared.' Camp directors like Rogge and Del Favero will use this moment to review their safety procedures and communicate them to concerned parents; they'll train counselors on how to comfort anxious campers. Some camps might need to reevaluate cabin locations or work with local officials to install effective weather-warning systems, which didn't exist near Mystic. But my hope is that people won't use this tragedy as an occasion to bubble-wrap their kids, or to take away from their child the chance at a life-changing summer. [Stephanie Bai: The Texas-flood blame game is a distraction] This week, I called my mom to ask what she would say to parents if she were still directing camp. 'I'd show them how we mitigate risk,' she told me. But then, she said, she'd tell them all the stories: of the girls who'd been shy before camp and who, by week's end, bloomed with confidence; of the campers who cooked themselves dinner for the first time under a starry sky; of the little girl who fell from a horse, went to the hospital, and demanded to immediately be brought back to camp. When Mom and I spoke about the Mystic campers, we talked less about the tragedy itself, and more about all the times when we were sure that they'd been brave. How, woken by the sound of thunder, girls might have climbed down from their bunks and gathered their bunkmates with urgent voices. How they might have waited one extra minute for a new friend to grab a flashlight or a teddy. How afraid they probably were, but also how determined, as they waded together into the muddy water. Article originally published at The Atlantic
