Richard “Dick” Eastland, the hero director of Camp Mystic, had battled floods on the grounds for decades and even once saw his pregnant wife airlifted from the Texas property because of a deluge, prompting him to repeatedly urge better warning systems in his flood-prone Kerr County.

A Camp Mystic program director said she went from sleeping in her bed early Friday morning to standing on the rooftop less than an hour later.

Eastland had been part of the private Christian girls' camp since purchasing it in 1974 and had served as its director.

A few specific sounds punctuate summer evenings in rural Iowa. A chorus of spring peepers, for example, or the shrill conk-la-ree of a red-winged blackbird on the side of a county road. But only one demands a response: the hostile, metallic beep of a NOAA weather radio.

In the early morning of July 4, floods ravaged the Texas Hill Country. In less than an hour, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet, taking and altering the lives of countless Americans with every inch it climbed.

Camp Mystic director’s tragic final act to save girls from Texas floods as wall of water tore through cabins killing 27. ... avid Texas Longhorns fanatic, my #1 fan, and above all else: a hero.

Tweety, now one of the owners and executive directors of Camp Mystic, was taken to a Kerrville hospital, where she gave birth to her fourth child. This month's flooding shattered records.