The fatal floods on the Guadalupe River wiped out valuable belongings, but volunteers helped reunite their families with their own property.
See the extent of Texas flood devastation via satellite imagery
Satellite images show the devastation left behind by flash floods in Carville, Texas.
Items range from everyday to extraordinary.
Jewelry and kids toys. Blankets and photos, great China, trophies and plaques. Keychain and stuffed animal. Clothes and dolls. Church Pugh. Canoe.
Some were found miles from their homes after being transported to the Guadalupe River flood. They are remnants of homes, cars, cabins, trailers and campsites. They are also people’s lives, family heirlooms, and sometimes retain memories that span generations.
But thanks to volunteers and social media detectives, the family is reunited with their property after the river flooded on July 4th, killing at least 135 people. Facebook groups connect people who find something along the river. A few new items are added every day after the flood.
Some items clean the mud and dirt that stained them. Others do not look the same after being washed away, buried, submerged, and reappeared a few days or weeks later.
Here are some of their stories.
“Women pick up their personal belongings”
Dondi Voight Persin of Born, Texas wanted to help with the aftermath of the flood. There she joined other volunteers in the recovery along the Guadalupe River. The first day was “overwhelming,” she said. “The kids were still missing, the people were missing.
“I made up my mind. I let the professionals do my job and started collecting garbage and personal influences. By the end of the day, I was picking up the personal influences of women.”
However, the amount of debris was so great, Persin knew many of the items she and her fellow volunteers had found. Along with several friends, she currently manages a manager discovered on the Guadalupe River. The Guadalupe River is a Facebook group with over 47,000 members who share photos, information and tips about items found during cleanup and recovery. The group grew “exponentially” within days, she said.
“It was shocking how organized and effective we were in such a short time,” she said. Fellow administrators Deanna Kaye Lindsay and Persyn “we have been friends for 40 years and our life experiences have prepared us for this moment,” Persyn said.
“Because we are grandmothers, we wanted to handle everything for our children and grandchildren,” she said. Their “heart-driven” missions therefore involve working with family members and local agents to verify ownership and verifying that the recovered items go to the legitimate owner.
She recalled giving the best of her life back to a man who saw the photo on her Facebook group. “He just needed one thing,” she said. “It was a connection to the past, his life before him.”
The retired teacher lost her trailer and all of it, but both she and her grandchildren were able to reach safely. Persin spoke about returning some of her jewelry: “I know these are something, but she said, “This was when my grandchild played,” and “I remember this from when we all went to the beach.”
“We’ve also had many behind-the-scenes reunions with people who lost loved ones,” she says, and she protects those stories to herself from the respect and respect for their loss.
“I’ll bring them closer to my heart.”
The family heirlooms have returned
The Deupree family is on the receiving end of what was found in the kindness of the Guadalupe River Group.
Taylor Deprey lives in Houston, and many of her extended family are in Dallas. But all Dapley is the home of my grandmother Penny in Hunt, Texas, near the Guadalupe River, just two miles from Camp Mystic.
Deupree said it has been a family gathering for decades, and Penny Deupree is the family head who maintains “scrapbooking to the scrapbook” for Deupree Family Lore, her granddaughter said. Penny Dupree was one of nine families rescued from the roof of the house as the floods became furious around them. Taylor Deupley said the house had been severely damaged, but the garage, which held many of the family memorabilia, was destroyed.
Items discovered and returned by the family include photographs, fragments of heirloom silver, and memorabilia for Lost Family members, including pocket watches of pediatric surgery pioneer Dr. Tagueticharm, and painted portraits of Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden.
Deupree said that the people who contributed to those discovered at the Guadalupe River Group and the way the community stepped up to help people, even after such a defeat, is a “real silver lining.”
False oars and “hope comes to mind”
Andrew Diggs was one of those who responded as part of the Texar and Heroes for Heroes Joint Search and Rescue Team to help them find those who had disappeared in the flood. While he was searching, he came across an old wooden paddle with markings that gave him a pause: a Greek letter in 1962.
“It was one memorabilia lost in chaos,” he wrote in a social media post entitled “Hope Floats: It Wasn’t Paddles in Never About.”
“In the beginning, it was just an artifact,” he wrote. “A personal item in the wreckage. But the more you see it, the more it feels like a message. Somewhere, someone loved enough to hold onto it for 60 years. It meant something.
That mission and Facebook group led him to Tom Schulze, who gave it to his wife when he went to the University of Texas Sigma Nu Formal in 1962. It was hanging at his daughter’s house – over three miles from where it was found – but the house was heavily damaged by the flood.
Diggs shared a text message from Schulze with USA Today, thanking Diggs, sharing his vow that “we will never clean it and we will do something to remind us of the infamousness of the night.”
“When we reunited Tom on the paddle, he called it “a bright spot in an era of great loss and suffering,” Diggs wrote. “For him, it wasn’t just trees and painting. It was family. History. Resilience.”
Diggs told USA Today that he was not very sentimental about the material. He was a “minimalist” and believed that “memories live in your heart.”
But that changed: “When I heard the stories behind the paddle and the web of stories of those stories, I realized it was physical things that can remind you of so many good times.
A photo of a family from a house called “kerplunk”
Mille Kerr’s family called the “Kerplunk” villa, which has been in over 50 years.
On July 4th, they returned from the river, away from the ground, despite what they thought was safe.
“We lament the loss of the special gathering location built by our grandparents, but we count the lucky stars as a large group of families who were on the property during the flood escaped on Nick of Time, as many others suffered unimaginable losses,” Kerr wrote in an email to USA today.
My aunt saw several family photos posted in the photos of Fadd on the Guadalupe page, including one of Kerr’s mother and grandmother at her wedding at Kerplunk.
“We have a lot of mixed feelings about the fact that we are reunited with undamaged photos and that others are waiting for the body of our missing loved one,” she wrote.
“I am very proud of the community that has come together to lament this tragedy and find out what good things remain.”
