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.

THE director of Camp Mystic desperately tried to save young girls in a heartbreaking final act before the vacation spot was ... avid Texas Longhorns fanatic, my #1 fan, and above all else: a hero.

“I always felt incredibly safe at camp,” said Meggie Orgain, 39, of Dallas, who spent 15 summers at Camp Mystic as a camper, counselor and office worker. “If it rained, you stayed in your cabin.