Before the Central Texas Floods, the Owners of Camp Mystic Were a Fixture

For generations of girls at Camp Mystic, Dick Eastland was a fixture of the landscape — like the high rocky bluff with the big “Mystic” sign that welcomed campers, or the Guadalupe River winding through the cypress trees. Mr. Eastland, the camp’s executive director, had moved to its grounds in the Texas Hill Country in the 1970s with his wife, Willetta, who everyone calls Tweety.

Mr. Eastland, 70, died there on July 4, after his truck was swept into the river as flash floods pushed through the camp in the middle of the night. Twenty-seven campers and counselors also died in the flood, according to Camp Mystic. Kerr County officials said on Thursday that five campers and one counselor were still missing.

State inspectors approved the camp’s disaster safety plan just days before the flood. But multiple cabins lay within the river’s flood zones, including the structures where the camp opted to house its youngest campers. Teenage counselors were left to communicate with flashlights and screams as the waters quickly rose. Unlike several other summer camps along that stretch of the river, Mystic was not accredited by the American Camp Association, a national body that maintains standards on camp safety and emergency preparedness.

Parents of children who died have not spoken publicly about the Eastlands, and lawsuits are all but certain to follow. For now, many Mystic alumni, counselors and even parents of campers who survived the horrors at the Christian girls’ camp have continued to express fierce loyalty to the Eastlands.

For many, to doubt the family’s judgment would be to question everything they held dear about the place, including the joyful childhood memories and the network of ambitious, accomplished women who make up the Mystic alumni network.