Before the flood, Wren Bates was working on a memory wall. She had tacked photos of her father in his prime — piloting a plane and smiling on a sailboat — on a wall in his shop next to Big Sandy Creek.
Her father, Marcus Bates, was a machinist and an aviator. Wren grew up helping him fix airplanes and big machines, with the soundtrack of Jimmy Buffett playing in the background. The last thing he gave Wren before he died of Stage 4 stomach cancer in January was a custom cast iron stove he restored. She kept it inside the shop, where she practiced woodworking.
"I felt so much connection to him inside the shop when I was working," she said.
Then came July 5.
Torrential rains turned Big Sandy Creek into a fast-moving river. The floodwater rose overnight, lifting her dad's shop off its foundation and pulled it downstream. Wren's photos of him, his tools and possessions were all swept away and scattered across the creek.
"I was always daddy's girl, so that was hard," she said. "It's just like losing him all over again."
In the weeks since, volunteers have been scouring Big Sandy Creek for memorabilia to return to Wren and others in the neighborhood.
Hundreds of old family photos have been found, as well as stuffed animals, toys and books.
The Austin Disaster Relief Network moved the items to a climate controlled room and is treating them for mold and decay before beginning the tedious process of returning them to their owners.
But most of the sentimental items lost in the flood are likely still tangled in heaps of debris, buried deep in mud or miles downstream where the floodwaters took them.
"I know what's missing, but I don't know what's in all these piles," Wren said, as she scanned the creek with the airplane tattoo she got for her dad visible in the Texas sun. "I know I'm going to be finding things for the next couple of years."
But for now, Wren is not alone. A group of volunteers has been showing up day after day to help her find anything of her father's. It took multiple people to pull his 60-year-old toolbox out of a deep pit in the mud. It resurfaced, bent out of shape and caked with sediment. The bottom half of the cast iron stove Wren's father gave her was found buried in three feet of mud and had been run over by tractors.
It's missing one leg, but Wren said she wants to restore it.
"I've honestly been trying to look at this as an adventure, because that's the way he would see it," she said. "Whatever's meant to come back will come back, and whatever's not, maybe I didn't actually need it."
Copyright 2025 KUT 90.5
