The tributes have been simple, and so is the message: the community shares the heartbreak of families who lost loved ones in the catastrophic flooding, and it will stand with them in the hard times ahead.
“It might seem silly,” Lesley McCaslin said while tying ribbon around trees. “A bunch of green ribbon, is that going to help? At least it lets them know, everywhere they go, that their community is praying for them, and they’re here for them.”
Hundreds of families worked in the days after Kerr County’s devasting flood to turn the streets of the Park Cities into boulevards of green.
Moms exchanged text messages to let each other know which streets needed ribbon, blocks came together to order enough for all their trees, and families tied ribbons around trees, signposts, and bushes themselves.
McCaslin had already been out more than once by July 8. Her third grader went to school with Janie Hunt, one of the six Park Cities girls who did not survive the flooding.
“He said she was one of the nicest girls he knows,” McCaslin said. “That sweet, precious light is now gone.”
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In tribute to Janie, Hyer Elementary student Conrad Drabinski drew a rainbow on his fence on Preston Road on July 12. His sister, Mary Collins, added “We Luv U.” Their parents placed chalk nearby for other neighborhood children.
The fence quickly became a place to share prayers, drawings, and words of love and hope. Three days later, it was crowded with rainbows, hearts, and crosses. “Fly High Angels” had been written in pink near the top of the fence.
Throughout the Park Cities, children opened lemonade stands to aid relief efforts or remembered flood victims by contributing to their memorial funds.
Girls from Camp Mystic’s Nightingale Nook Cabin raised $8,000 for the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund by baking about 550 Tweety Cookies, which are famous at the camp they love, to share with neighbors in Dallas.
At their stand on July 10, the girls remembered how much they had enjoyed Camp Mystic’s tribe games, and raved about its food, especially the chef salad and chocolate mousse.
The Nightingale Nook girls had returned home only a week before the flood took the lives of 27 campers and camp counselors, as well as the camp’s director.
Hearing about the disaster was paralyzing, said Samantha Wortley, whose 10-year-old, Miller, is a Camp Mystic girl.
The cookie stand “is so small in the grand scheme of things,” she said. “But it’s a way for us to give back.”
Local caterer Jeff Rockow had also picked his two daughters up from Camp Mystic the week before the flood. It had been his oldest, Sage’s, sixth year at camp, and his younger daughter, Violet’s, third time to go. To them, camp feels like family.
Rockow returned to Kerr County on July 6, this time as part of a team from Mercy Chefs, which was serving hot, professionally-prepared meals to those in need. He said he hoped to volunteer again, perhaps with his daughters.
“It filled my heart, it really did,” he said. “It made me feel good, about something so bad.”
-Emily Zeigfinger contributed to this story.
