When Claudia Sullivan arrived at the front gate of Camp Mystic for the first time in 1964, she thought, “I’m going to be there for the rest of my life.”
And she did.
The Paschal High School student traded Fort Worth’s cityscape for a summer in Texas Hill Country, her spiritual home nestled in sky-scraping cypress and pecan trees along the bank of the Guadalupe River.
As Sullivan grew up, her roles within Camp Mystic grew, too — from camper to counselor to program director. The Fort Worth native moved to Kerrville in 1977 to become a theater professor at Schreiner University.
Eventually, Sullivan captured her girlhood experiences — and voices of other alums — in four books, weaving together the time at camp, stories of faith, sportsmanship and memories from the private all-girls Christian summer tradition.
Of those memories, she says, “I had found what I had always been looking for: a sisterhood, a community and a group where I felt like I belonged,” Sullivan said.
Now, the “pristine paradise” Sullivan remembers looks different. Muddied Camp Mystic shirts, soiled bunk beds and damaged cabins covered in debris is what’s left from the flash floods that swept through the campgrounds and the Central Texas county during the early morning on the Fourth of July.
Camp Mystic lost 27 campers and counselors following the catastrophic flooding according to a statement published on its website. As of July 8, five campers and one counselor are still unaccounted for, Kerr County officials said.
“Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” Camp Mystic said. “We are praying for them constantly.”
Dick Eastland, Camp Mystic co-owner and executive director, died while trying to save some of the youngest girls from the flood waters, which rose over 26 feet within 45 minutes. Cynthie “Jane” Ragsdale, who grew up attending Camp Mystic and later served in a leadership role of another all-girls’ summer camp called Heart O’ the Hills, also died from the flood.
“They were pillars of the community, both of them,” Sullivan said. “I can’t recall either one of them not having a smile on their face. They were people that were very present.”
In ‘flood country’ this experience was different
Flooding is common in Texas Hill Country.
In 1932, six years after Camp Mystic was built, torrential rains fell upon the upper watersheds of the Nueces and Guadalupe rivers. Seven people drowned and the flooding brought property losses exceeding $500,000 — equivalent to $11.8 million today, according to The Texas Tribune.
The camp built relationships with nearby ranchers who would call in to warn of rising water levels, Sullivan said. She remembers moving about 200 girls to higher grounds during a 1978 tropical storm that caused flooding in the Guadalupe and Medina rivers.
“This is flood country, and I think we always knew that we were safe,” Sullivan said. “We always knew where to go.”
With all the floods Camp Mystic has seen over the years, the waters on July 4 — reaching over 26 feet high – “came to places that it’s never come before,” Sullivan said.
‘This faith, this love, this resilience, this sisterhood’
In the aftermath of the flood, a video posted to social media has gone viral of Camp Mystic evacuees singing the hymn “Pass It On” while driving through the destroyed campgrounds and rushing waters.
It brought Sullivan to tears, she said, and speaks to the culture that she and hundreds of others girls cultivate at camp.
“You learn who you are and who you can be,” Sullivan said. “And a part of that growth is that I am a child of God, and God is all around me, and I pray with my sisters, and I talk about faith.”
The lessons she and other women learned from their time at Camp Mystic have helped guide them through pain and success, she said. Sullivan was inspired to pen these sentiments in her 2024 book “Since We Were There: The Influence of Summer Camp on Adult Lives.”
“We look back over our lives and when we try to navigate the things that life brings up, it was Camp Mystic that was the through line in my life,” Sullivan said. “And I think that would probably be true for lots of women.”
Now, the faith she cultivated through Camp Mystic is what’s carrying her through the grief and loss she and others are experiencing.
“The last thing they did at Mass was, at the end, everybody said, ‘We are one, we are one, we are one together.’ If that doesn’t uplift you and give you courage, I don’t know what does.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.
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