Chuck and Cathie Baldwin were caught in a flash flood as they drove to the polls. Known as “proud hippies,” they hosted a musical festival called Chuckstock on their Missouri farm.
Chuck and Cathie Baldwin were married for 54 years.
They met as teenagers at Mountain Grove High School in southern Missouri and moved to Germany when he joined the Army. Later, they worked together in construction, living in Texas and California, and then took turns driving the same long-haul truck, crisscrossing the country for about 15 years.
Nearly every summer, they threw a homespun music festival called Chuckstock on their farm outside Manes, Mo., with food, beer and family and friends playing classic rock and blues on a stage Mr. Baldwin had built.
“They were rockers, man,” said Tanisha Ledford, a friend and former neighbor. “They were children of the ’60s.”
Both were also Democrats in a conservative area, and had volunteered to serve as poll workers on Election Day. As some of the few Democrats in their area, they were often enlisted for election-related work to ensure some partisan balance, family members said.
But as the couple drove before dawn to their polling place in a music hall in Manes, their car was caught in a flash flood. As much as 8 inches of rain had fallen over the previous 48 hours, causing a nearby creek to overflow its banks.
