Editorial: Chicago mourns with Texas and the parents of the Camp Mystic girls
The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes on July 4, with flash flooding killing at least 80 people statewide. As of a grim Monday morning tally, 41 people still were missing. What makes the story especially heartbreaking is that the flooding swept away young girls staying at Camp Mystic, a private Christian camp 85 miles outside of San Antonio.
'This came at night when people were asleep in bed,' Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said Friday. Herring presides over the county seat of Kerr County, which was hit the hardest by the floods. Officials said the flooding and subsequent damage were unprecedented.
There is something special about the summer rite of young kids leaving their families and heading to a bucolic rural setting, often making friends for life. Midwestern parents are very familiar with the ritual, which includes the nagging worry of leaving their kid in someone else's hands. Be it Camp Nebagamon or Camp Timber-lee, Lake of the Woods, Camp Agawak or the YMCA's Camp Copneconic and Phantom Lake, many of these camps in Wisconsin and Michigan have been around for decades and traffic in memory and tradition.
Parents often send their kids where they went themselves. Where they had the time of their lives. Where they grew up.
Many of those parents with kids at a summer camp right now felt a knot in their stomach when the news about those lost young girls broke this weekend, and that knot has yet to resolve itself. It likely won't, until the kids come back home.
You learn a lot about yourself in a crisis. The same is true of our country. Who are we in this moment of relatable tragedy?
We have a choice. In the immediate aftermath of what has happened, we can choose to politicize these events or we can choose to mourn the dead and honor the heroes who stopped death tolls from going even higher, even if it cost them their lives. Which in some cases, it did.
The time for analysis and accountability will come. For now, we choose to grieve with the families.
Dick Eastland, co-owner of Camp Mystic and the camp's director, died trying to save his young guests from the floodwaters. He reportedly was carried off by the floodwaters.
'It doesn't surprise me at all that his last act of kindness and sacrifice was working to save the lives of campers,' former camper and friend Paige Sumner wrote in the Kerrville Daily Times. 'He had already saved so many lives with the gift of Camp Mystic.'
The flooding wasn't confined to the camp that is at the center of most of the news. Torrents of water swept through towns across the region, damaging hundreds of homes, washing away vehicles, and severing power and communication lines. Flash flood warnings covered large parts of Central Texas, and the National Weather Service recorded rainfall rates of more than 3 inches per hour. Because the flood hit overnight, many families did not sense the danger until there was no time to escape.
Julian Ryan, 27, seriously injured himself saving his family during the disaster after his home began flooding – with his fiancée, children and mother inside.
His family shared Ryan's final words:
'I'm sorry, I'm not going to make it. I love y'all.'
It's hard to read his story without shedding a tear. His fiancée and son have lost not only a husband and father, but also a selfless protector.
Many could not be saved. Among them were sisters Blair and Brooke Harber, ages 13 and 11, respectively, who were staying with their grandparents in a cabin that was swept away in the flood. They were found with their hands locked together. Their grandparents are still missing. The girls' parents were staying in a cabin nearby, The New York Times reported.
Many of the youngest campers staying at Camp Mystic will never go home, including 8-year-old Sarah Marsh from Alabama. Her grandmother posted a tribute to her on Facebook, writing, 'We will always feel blessed to have had this beautiful spunky ray of light in our lives. She will live on in our hearts forever!'
We can imagine the many spunky young spirits camping at the river this past weekend; that's why the grief coursing through Texas is so intense. Many families still are waiting in the flood zone in the hopes that their loved ones will be retrieved, and, on Monday, first responders still were wading through mud and debris in an effort to find survivors. Entire communities have turned schools into shelters, church halls into donation centers and grief into action.
But many families have already seen hope extinguished. And those who lost young daughters are living every parent's worst nightmare.
We're all asking questions. What could have been done differently? Could the authorities — and which authorities? — have prevented this? Was the forecasting accurate? Were enough people on duty? Are basic safety systems adequate for riverside cabins in this most dangerous of river basins?
For now, we're just so deeply sad that a girls' summer camp, of all places, was lost to the very river that had given generations of campers such joy.
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
These Mexican camp counselors put on 'brave faces' to protect girls during Texas floods
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo recognized Garza and Zarate for protecting Camp Mystic girls. Two 19-year-old Camp Mystic counselors knew tragedy had unfolded in other cabins early in the morning hours of July 4. But they were responsible for the girls in their own bunk, who knew enough to be upset and worried. So the two teens hid their own fears and focused on distracting and entertaining the younger girls from the moment they awakened until they were evacuated by military vehicles around dinnertime. 'We had to put on brave faces so the girls wouldn't know,' Silvana Garza told the Mexican news outlet NMás. Garza and fellow counselor María Paula Zárate, both Mexican nationals at the camp for the summer, have been recognized for their heroism by Mexico's president. Their story has also gone viral on social media. Their crisis began in the early hours of July 4, as heavy rainfall knocked out the camp's power. The storm sounded like a scary movie, Garza said later. The camp, nestled between the banks of the Guadalupe River and its Cypress Creek tributary, had just begun its monthlong term for hundreds of girls. Attending Camp Mystic is a summertime ritual for generations of Texas families. The Christian camp is remote, about 90 miles northwest of San Antonio. Garza and Zárate were watching girls in the camp's newer site, up in the hills and away from the original campsite down by the Guadalupe River. It wasn't until hours later that the teens realized the original campsite, where they had slept just the week before, had been destroyed. At least 27 campers as young as 8 were swept away in the raging floodwaters. Nearly a dozen more remain missing. For hours, as Garza and Zárate waited for more information, they sang songs and played games with the girls. They instructed the girls to pack their belongings to prepare to evacuate. They had them put on name badgesand wrote their names on their skin where it was visible, Zárate said. If they had a favorite stuffed animal, counselors instructed them to bring it along with suitcases. Though the counselors tried to remain positive, the girls were scared. 'They wanted to be with their parents,' Garza said. Finally around 6 p.m., the counselors were alerted that more flooding was on the way. They had to evacuate. They passed through the original campsite by the Guadalupe River. Mattresses and clothes hung in the trees, Garza recalled to Univision 41. Tables floated along the river. 'I felt like I was in a dream,' she said in Spanish. 'I didn't think it was real.' In an evacuation center, 19 miles away in Kerrville, they saw similar damage of houses uprooted and turned aside. Cars were lodged in trees ‒ a sign of how high the water rose, Garza noted. Eventually, their campers were reunited with their families. Garza and Zárate also saw parents whose children were missing. "That was the worst part of the day," Garza told Univision 41. She later added, "I couldn't explain the feeling of being a parent and not seeing your daughter not being there." Garza had planned to stay for weeks at Camp Mystic, but she said she would return to Mexico early. From one day to the next, everything can change, Garza said. On the morning of July 7, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo expressed condolences for the lives lost in the floods. She also recognized Garza and Zárate for their efforts helping save camp attendees. 'They make us proud,' she said. Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@ or on Signal at emcuevas.01.
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
'She saved my life:' Houston woman lost to Texas flooding was selfless to the end
Randy Schaffer met his wife Mollie in June 1967, just weeks after they graduated from high school. They'd been together ever since, with two sons and several grandchildren. In the end, the Houston criminal defense lawyer wrote in a moving post on social media, only the raging waters of the Guadalupe River could separate them. In the early morning hours of July 4, the river swelled to historic and deadly proportions as heavy rainfall doused central Texas, producing massive flooding that so far has claimed the lives of more than 100 people, with at least 161 still missing. The floodwaters tore through homes, riverside campgrounds and hotels and a beloved Christian girls camp in Kerr County, where 27 children and counselors perished. In Hunt, Texas, where the River Inn Resort and Conference Center advertises its waterfront location as a "serene escape from the outside world," the surging Guadalupe swept through the complex, taking vacationing travelers by surprise. Among them were Randy and Mollie Schaffer. Mollie would not survive. Kent Schaffer, who like brother Randy is also a criminal defense attorney in Houston, described his sister-in-law as 'an incredibly nice person' who never had a bad thing to say about anyone and always followed through if someone asked for help. A devotee of the theater, she was an ardent arts supporter, he said. The Schaffer brothers, while Jewish, were not practicing, but Mollie, who had converted to Judaism, would nonetheless cook elaborate Passover dinners. 'She became more Jewish than all of us,' Kent Schaffer told USA TODAY. 'Everything she made was pretty. She didn't serve food in tin pans. It looked like a work of art.' Still, being a good person was Mollie's specialty, he said, a beacon of warmth who all the kids rushed to hug at holiday gatherings. 'People would say, 'she's a saint' – mostly because she could put up with all of us,' he said. 'Especially in a family of lawyers. We're very contentious, passionate people.' The weather had seemed fine, Randy Schaffer wrote on Facebook, when the couple turned in for the night on July 3 at the River Inn Resort, where they were marking their 46th year visiting the riverfront area with an ever smaller group of law school friends. 'They'd meet there every summer for an extended weekend,' Kent Schaffer said. 'It was always the same hotel. They'd float around the river and have barbecues. That's the way they'd stay in touch with each other.' Around 3 a.m. Friday, the couple awoke to loud banging on their door, Randy Schaffer wrote. It was the manager, telling them they had to evacuate immediately 'because the river was about to overflow the banks.' 'I looked out the window and saw the river raging like Niagara Falls,' he wrote. At the manager's direction, he wrote, they got into Mollie's SUV and began driving toward a nearby hill. Instead, they saw cars ahead of them turning around to rush back the other way. They stopped on the shoulder of the road as the water quickly rose around the vehicle, sweeping it into the current. The car hit a tree, he wrote, then spun onto the road again. 'We knew that we had to get out of the car,' he said. 'However, the doors wouldn't open.' Mollie lowered the SUV's front windows and told him to dive out feet first, he said. It was difficult; the seat was too low, the window too high. He fell back onto the seat. 'You have to push harder,' Mollie told him. Those were the last words he ever heard her say, he wrote. He pushed as hard as he could and went out the window. The current pulled him underwater toward the river, propelling him into a pole. 'I wrapped my arms around the pole and climbed up until my head was above water,' he wrote. 'I looked for and called to Mollie but didn't see her or the car. She had been swept into the river.' He held onto the pole for an hour until the water finally began to recede and his feet touched ground. His wife's body was recovered on July 6. 'Mollie died in a manner consistent with how she lived – selflessly taking care of someone else before she took care of herself,' Randy Schaffer wrote. 'She wouldn't leave the car until she was sure that I had done so. She saved my life.'
The Hill
3 hours ago
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Kansas City Chiefs owner's family mourns loss of 9-year-old cousin in Texas floods
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) – The family of Clark Hunt, the chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs, is mourning the loss of a 9-year-old cousin, Janie Hunt, who died amid disastrous flooding in central Texas over the weekend. Tavia Hunt, the wife of Clark Hunt, confirmed the girl's death on Instagram following the catastrophic flooding in Kerr County at the site of a Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls. The flooding has killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children. Search and rescue efforts still underway. 'Our hearts are broken by the devastation from the floods in Wimberley and the tragic loss of many lives — including a precious little Hunt cousin, along with several [friends'] little girls,' reads a statement posted to Tavia Hunt's Instagram page. Tavia's Instagram post also included several Bible passages. In the caption, she wrote, 'If your heart is broken, I assure you God is near. He is gentle with your wounds. And He is still worthy — even when your soul is struggling to believe it. Trust doesn't mean you're over the pain; it means you're handing it to the only One who can hold it with love and restore what was lost. For we do not grieve as those without hope.' Clark and Tavia Hunt's daughter Gracie Hunt, frequently referred to as the Chiefs 'heiress,' also shared her condolences for the families of victims on Monday. 'My heart aches for our extended family and friends who lost daughters — for every life lost and every family shattered by the floods in Texas. I don't have easy answers, but I do know this: following Jesus doesn't spare us from pain — but it means we never face it alone,' she wrote. Gracie, too, included several Bible passages in her Stories and Reels. Janie Hunt's mother, Anne Hunt, had earlier confirmed her death to CNN, while her grandmother Margaret Hunt confirmed it to The Kansas City Star, identifying Janie as a camper at Camp Mystic. The Star reported that Janie Hunt was the great-granddaughter of William Herbert Hunt, brother of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt. Clark Hunt is one of Lamar's children; the Chiefs are currently owned by the families of Lamar Hunt's four kids. The Chiefs franchise did not comment on the girl's passing. Flash-flooding emanated from the Guadalupe River on Friday, pulling people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. More than 100 people were killed, including dozens of campers and counselors. Officials said Monday that 10 campers and one counselor still have not been found. The flood and its devastation appear to have, for the moment, tamped down talk by President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of scaling back the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps states respond to natural disasters by providing water and other supplies and federal assistance. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
