The Floods Have Devastated a Touchstone of Texas Culture: Summer Camp

Yomiuri Shimbun

19 hours ago

For generations, the summer camps of the Texas Hill Country have been an oasis, a call to adventure, and a rite of passage for families from every corner of the state and beyond. They are so beloved that some parents reserve spots when their children are born.
Roughly two dozen camps dot the landscape up and down the cooling Guadalupe River and its tributaries, where children have flocked each summer for more than a century to canoe and kayak, to swim and fish and learn archery, to reunite with old friends.
'Camp culture is something that people from all over the country come here for, because it's so beautiful, and it's so wonderful and unique,' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Saturday. 'It's tough. You send them there, but when you do it, that's part of growing up. You let them be independent.'
But that idyll was shattered over the weekend.
Roy began to cry as he spoke about Jane Ragsdale, the director of Heart O' the Hills, a girls camp, who died along with nearly three dozen others in raging floodwaters that swept through the area in the early hours of July Fourth. At least 27 girls attending Camp Mystic, another in the area, were still missing as of Saturday evening.
Grief and destruction had replaced the tranquility of another summer under the Texas sun. A tradition forged over a hundred summers was threatened as well. 'We need to figure out how to protect it,' Roy said.
Camp Mystic, which has been attended by the daughters of Lyndon B. Johnson and several Texas governors, as well as former first lady Laura Bush, has given many their first taste of freedom and space to forge an identity, said Claudia Sullivan, who attended the camp and later worked there.
Sullivan, who has written four books about the camp experience, said she was inspired to pen the latest after attending a reunion of Mystic alumni a couple of years ago. The women were between the ages of 40 and 82, but their memories of camp had endured.
'A lot of what we learned at camp sustained us throughout our lives,' she said.
Sullivan recalled a time when a friend who had attended Mystic was having a baby. The woman was in one of two groups – the Kiowas – that compete against each other at the all-girls camp. The husband announced the child's sex by saying: 'We had another little Kiowa.'
Those warm memories contrasted sharply with the scene Saturday.
At a reunification center in downtown Kerrville, volunteers in bright orange caps directed parents waiting for their daughters from Camp Waldemar into lines based on their cabin names: 'Swiss Chalet I and II,' 'Happy Heaven I' and 'Ranch House II.' Meanwhile, teenagers helped unload brightly colored camp trunks and black duffel bags with Waldemar logos from flatbed trailers.
John-Louis Barton, 21, came to help on his day off as a camp counselor at Laity Lodge, in nearby Leakey.
After camping there as a child for eight years, Barton was in his last of four years as a counselor. They'd trained for emergencies during the staff week before campers arrived at the start of the summer, he said, and that training paid off as floodwaters rose on Independence Day.
'We still had power, so we just did head counts and got everyone into one place, and watched movies,' he said. 'Most of camp is back to normal today, so I came in to help. Knowing that it could have just as easily happened to us – I'm grateful to be here. I hugged my mom, and that was a good feeling.'
The first Hill Country camp opened more than 100 years ago in 1921, and others soon joined. Camp Mystic is set to celebrate its centennial next year.
Young people escape hot cities such as Houston and Dallas for the higher and cooler elevations around the Guadalupe River. In the early days, they arrived by train and some traveled to camps by wagon.
'Don't wait until you are a man to be great, be a great boy,' reads the longtime motto of Camp Stewart for Boys, which sits on 500 acres along both banks of one mile of the Guadalupe River.
'A community where girls come to grow, challenge themselves, and discover their true potential' is how Heart O' the Hills, which has sat along the river for more than 70 years, describes its mission.
The camps have meant a lot to the campers but are also an engine of the economy in Kerr County.
'Over and again a new resident will tell me they first heard of our area when they were a child and attended summer camp here,' local newspaper columnist Joe Herring Jr. wrote in a history of the camps. ''I fell in love with the place then,' they'll often say. 'And I knew one day I had to live here.''
Floods have been a threat throughout the history of the camps. In 1932, many camps were swamped by floods during the summer session, according to Herring's history. Structures were rebuilt above the flood line, but a deluge hit again in 1935, raising questions about whether it was safe to locate camps in the area.
Sullivan said she helped evacuate campers from Mystic while working there during a flood in 1978.
'In 1978, I think we had a sense that we were safe. We knew we could move to higher ground,' she said. 'It was sort of exciting in a way and it wasn't terrifying. This was terrifying.'
As Barton and others waited at the reunification center, three yellow school buses and a few white vans arrived. Waiting parents cheered as girls began to stream off the vehicles, clutching pillows, backpacks and bags.
Barton said it was a bittersweet way to end his time at camp, a place that was incredibly meaningful to him as a child, just as it is to so many others.
'Camp meant the world to me as a kid. The highlight of my year was getting to be with those like-minded boys and counselors,' Barton said. 'It's kind of magical, sort of – you get to separate yourself from school and work, and reality, and just be out there.'