It was arduous to imagine there was something left that might shock the tight-knit group of girls who had attended Camp Mystic, one of the beloved summer time applications for ladies in Texas.
After enduring practically 10 months with the heartache of disastrous flooding that killed 28 people on the camp – 25 campers, two counselors and the camp’s director, Dick Eastland – days of hearings resulted in an sudden choice by Camp Mystic’s leaders.
“Just the incomprehensible devastation that this place of pure joy and laughter and innocence has been the focus of this horrible tragedy,” stated Claudia Sullivan, who first got here to Camp Mystic in 1964 and have become pals with Eastland and his spouse lengthy earlier than they, and finally their prolonged household, have been operating the camp.
For months, the surviving Eastland relations have made the survival of the camp their prime precedence, insisting it may continue this summer on increased floor and with extra security precautions.
In response, they’ve confronted a very totally different deluge – investigations, lawsuits, criticism and concern it was too quickly to maneuver on.
Thursday, camp leaders introduced an finish to their pursuit of a brand new license for now, marking the primary time in a century the campground will spend a summer time unoccupied.
“No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,” the Eastland household stated in a press release saying their decision to halt the 2026 summer time season.
The announcement is a fork within the highway for a Texas establishment and likewise the household whose identify has change into inseparable from the camp for 3 generations.
“Our special bond with our Camp Mystic families does not change or end with the announcement,” the household assertion stated. The Eastlands didn’t say whether or not they intend to restart Camp Mystic subsequent 12 months, and representatives for the household didn’t reply to a request for extra details about their plans.
Even after deaths, Camp Mystic had excessive demand
The camp’s official brochure didn’t listing costs and even methods to apply. There was no want. Camp Mystic was continuously at capability with a waitlist so backed up, many hopeful dad and mom utilized shortly after their ladies have been born.
“This was, you know, wives telling their new husbands that if we have a daughter, she’ll go to Mystic,” stated Casey Garrett, an investigator employed by the Texas House committee investigating the flood response. “It was a known thing. It was a very traditional culture.”
Alumnae included the daughters of a number of Texas governors and former president Lyndon B. Johnson, a Lone Star State icon in his personal proper. Laura Welch was a counselor at Camp Mystic many years earlier than she turned higher often called first woman Laura Bush.
Until Thursday’s choice to cancel camp, greater than 800 ladies have been nonetheless signed as much as be a part of a scaled-down Mystic expertise this summer time, the Eastlands stated.
Plans for a centennial celebration with tons of of former campers in Kerr County final month fell aside within the wake of the tragedy, Sullivan instructed NCS. Instead, about 18 individuals got here collectively in a reunion that also had pleasure and recollections however couldn’t keep away from being overshadowed by uncertainty.
“It was a little more somber,” she stated. “Each one talked about their personal pain and their worry about what will happen not only to the Eastlands, but to camp.”
This was presupposed to be a 12 months of celebration – the one centesimal anniversary of the founding of Camp Mystic. The Eastland household’s connection to the camp – nestled alongside the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill County – predates World War II. Dick Eastland’s grandmother, Agnes, turned a director in 1934, and she or he and her husband William Gillespie Stacy purchased it 5 years later, in response to the camp’s official history.
“Ag and Pop,” as they have been recognized, expanded Camp Mystic’s measurement and schedule, in search of to show the principally well-to-do younger campers right into a mirror picture of Ag herself – privileged, however fiercely unbiased.
“The give and take of camp life tends to offset overindulgence at home,” stated an early camp brochure, according to Texas Monthly.
As Ag and household pal Inez Harrison, who helped run the camp after Pop’s demise, grew older within the Nineteen Seventies, Ag’s youngest grandchild, Dick Eastland, moved to the camp, steadily taking up operations alongside his spouse Willetta, often called Tweety.
“They were much beloved,” Mimi Swartz, a Texas Monthly editor who has chronicled Camp Mystic’s ups and downs for greater than a decade, instructed NCS. “A lot of these (campers) came from wealthy families, but they weren’t always happy families.”
Mystic supplied an annual refuge for ladies nonetheless trying to find independence, and plenty of who had frolicked at Mystic felt aid to see the camp stay in household fingers with a brand new era of Eastlands.
“They were an absolutely perfect match,” stated Sullivan. “Not everybody can work together and live together with the extended family, but they did.”
Dick and Tweety turned a formidable staff in operating Camp Mystic – he the unquestioned chief who oversaw all operations and she or he the delicate surrogate mom for campers.
“You became part of the family when you went there,” stated Swartz.
By the time of the 2025 flooding, the camp was such a household affair it was practically inconceivable for ladies to go a day with out encountering an Eastland. Hundreds of breakfasts have been ready every morning by Dick’s son Richard. The Guadalupe camp’s infirmary – often called Heaven Can Wait – was run by Dick’s daughter-in-law Mary Liz, a former Mystic camper and registered nurse who handled many sick and injured kids herself.
The aftermath of the tragedy isn’t the primary time the Eastland household was caught up in a legal controversy that regarded prefer it may threaten the way forward for Camp Mystic.
In 2007 Dick Eastland was sued by his brother Stacy, an legal professional, accusing him of shortchanging the family-run company that owned Camp Mystic’s property hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in lease, a part of an advanced authorized association Ag’s grandchildren arrange to make sure all of them acquired a share of ongoing revenue from the multi-million-dollar enterprise they’d inherited.
Six years of countersuits, appeals and authorized wrangling adopted, with ideas that the one strategy to resolve the matter is likely to be to separate up the property, Texas Monthly reported. Family members lastly agreed to a settlement, which turned closing in 2013. It paid $7.2 million to Dick Eastland’s siblings and cousins who had a share of the Camp Mystic property, the San Antonio Express-News reported, after either side racked up authorized charges that collectively exceeded the whole worth of the enterprise.
The deal ended squabbling that was painful each to the household and to campers watching it play out in courtroom. With its future safe, it additionally cemented Dick Eastland and his kids because the undisputed leaders of Camp Mystic going ahead.
“There’s no question he was considered the leader of this family and the leader of this camp,” stated Garrett, the investigator employed by the Texas House committee. “Tweety told us he was ‘large and in charge.’”
Aftermath of flood takes toll on household’s respect and status
In the instant aftermath of the lethal flooding, which killed a complete of 119 individuals in Kerr County, Dick Eastland and his son Edward – a camp director who was briefly swept downriver whereas attempting to avoid wasting campers from the floods – got reward for his or her efforts to personally save campers and counselors from the floods.
“It is not surprising to those who knew him that he gave his life trying to save the lives of those girls,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn said on the ground of the US Senate.
But households of many younger victims, each residing and useless, later filed lawsuits towards the camp and the Eastlands claiming nothing had been carried out to organize for evacuations within the case of flooding and climate warnings had not been handed on to the kids, who weren’t allowed to have digital gadgets on the camp.
The household of Cile Steward, the one sufferer who has by no means been discovered however is presumed useless, efficiently acquired a decide in Austin – greater than 100 miles away from the camp – to ban the Eastlands from making any changes on the Guadalupe campsite whereas there may nonetheless be proof to gather.
A listening to in that lawsuit final month proved devastating for the Eastlands, with Edward acknowledging he had slept through a flood warning that had been texted to his cellphone because the waters rose.
“I think it should have been a more urgent alert,” he stated.
Mary Liz later acknowledged she had not reported the deaths to state regulators as legally required and agreed with an legal professional for the Steward household that she had “abandoned” Cile.
The choice to shut the camp for the summer time doesn’t change the pending lawsuits nor the open prison investigation being performed by the Texas Rangers. It additionally didn’t get any reward from Cile Steward’s dad and mom.
“Camp Mystic did not withdraw its application out of grace,” the Stewards stated in a press release. “It withdrew because the State of Texas was prepared to deny it.”
Sullivan, who was program director at Camp Mystic in 1978 when flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Amelia pressured them to maneuver to increased floor, stated she considers the robust questioning of the Eastlands an tried “crucifixion” of a household that did one of the best it may, however she additionally understands why so many individuals are combating how to reply to the deaths of the younger individuals now often called Heaven’s 27.
“It’s tragic. It’s horrible, and it has torn this community apart,” she stated. “I know it’s torn families apart and friends apart.”
The Eastlands’ central place within the lives of well-connected Texas households – together with the monetary energy of their operation locally – has historically given the household a whole lot of political energy, in response to Swartz.
“The camp is part of the economic life of Kerr County,” she stated. “All those camps are crucial to the economic life of that area.”
A report from the Kerrville Convention & Visitors Bureau in 2012 claimed greater than $30 million in financial profit from the network of summer camps within the space, the Hill Country Community Journal reported. That included cash spent by households on the native municipal airport, the place some campers have been ferried to the distant great thing about Hill Country in non-public planes.
Their financial impression gave the Eastlands essential ties all through the group, making it awkward and painful for native residents when a facet needs to be picked. During the authorized dispute between relations, three judges recused themselves, Swartz reported on the time. The closing settlement got here after the venue for a second civil trial had been moved out of Kerr County, according to the San Antonio News-Express.
Camp Mystic’s announcement to carry off on the 2026 season got here after months of reassurances from the Eastland household {that a} scaled-down model may very well be operated from its Cypress Creek campus on increased floor, which was by no means touched by the floodwaters.
Just two days earlier than their choice, the household that was synonymous with Camp Mystic supplied to show over the reins to avoid wasting their summer time.
“I will say, I think we’re willing to take a step back if camp can go on. That’s OK with us,” Mary Liz Eastland instructed the state House committee on Tuesday. “We are willing to take a step back and take a pause. As this family, I think that’s appropriate and OK.”
But a household accustomed to reward and lodging from these in energy in Texas as a substitute was met with excessive skepticism from many lawmakers – together with a demand from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that state regulators deny their license.
“I think that was their last-ditch try,” Swartz stated. “It’s just too many little girls that died on their watch.”
Future of household and camp now unsure
Sullivan, who lives in Kerrville and nonetheless sees members of the Eastland household round city, has not spoken to them but about their choice to drop this summer time’s plans. Instead, she heard about it through a sequence of texts from pals and different camp alums.
Despite her assist of the Eastland household and powerful emotional ties to Camp Mystic, Sullivan stated her preliminary response to the suspension was sudden: Relief.
“I just felt an exhale, and my shoulders kind of dropped when I heard the news because everybody has had this emotional tension of holding a ball in the air,” she stated.
She hopes younger ladies nonetheless get the chance for a formative summer time expertise at one other camp if not at Mystic.
For households of victims who say the Eastlands should take extra accountability, there was a unique kind of aid. A way that extra change is coming in response to their private tragedies.
“Such immense loss and raw grief cannot co-exist with business-as-usual,” stated Jill and Patrick Marsh, whose 8-year-old daughter Sarah is one in all Heaven’s 27.
But the uncertainty about Camp Mystic’s future can also be uncertainty for the household who made it their life’s mission and principal supply of revenue. In their assertion Thursday, the Eastland household stated they’re ready to take heed to the voices calling for change.
“Respect for those voices requires that we step back now,” they stated.
NCS’s Pamela Brown, Shoshana Dubnow and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.