A Way Forward After the Tragedies at Camp Mystic

This post is dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the Texas floods last weekend, including Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, 8-year twin sisters from Dallas who were campers at Camp Mystic.

Hanna and Rebecca were the grandchildren of my long-time friend and deeply admired colleague, David Lawrence, Jr., former publisher of the Miami Herald and the inestimable founder of The Children’s Movement of Florida and his beloved wife, Bobbie.

The twin’s parents, John and Lacy Lawrence, said:

Hanna and Rebecca brought so much joy to us, to their big sister Harper, and to so many others, We will find ways to keep that joy, and to continue to spread it for them. But we are devastated that the bond we shared with them, and that they shared with each other, is now frozen in time.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, Dave Lawrence said, that “It has been an unimaginable time for all of us,” continuing:

They and that joy can never be forgotten.

Unimaginable. Devastated and devastating. A flood of biblical proportions. A flood that strikes terror, unfathomable fear in all of us.

Yet joy. The joy the children found in each other and their families. The joy they brought to others. The joy they found at camp.

As a child who loved summer camp, as a parent who sent both of my children to camp, and as a grandparent with a child who’s at camp right now, I wanted to run away from the news.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

And I didn’t want the joy of camp to be forgotten in this tragedy. I wanted to look for what I could learn.

Erin Paisan, who went to Camp Mystic for six summers beginning when she was ten-years-old in 1975 recalls how she felt when she first got there in an interview with Michael Barbaro on an episode of The Daily podcast, loving called A Love Letter to Camp Mystic:

So let it be known that I packed my trunk in December for a summer that was many, many, many, many months away.

When the day finally came, she got on a bus with a lot of older girls who’d gone to camp for ages:

You’re heading down toward the Hill Country. The best part is that you’re looking for the Mystic sign….

And as soon as you start to see that Mystic sign…everyone starts screaming because they are so excited to go through those gates.

And people get off that bus and they go running for their friends from the summer before.

When Michael Barbaro comments on how long ago that experience was but how present it feels as she tells it, Erin Paisan turns to why camp mattered so much to her:

It was a very, very safe space, you know. It was a clean slate. No one knew that I was the geeky kid. I was just a Camp Mystic Girl.

Camp: An Equalizer

Her mother was divorced at a time when that was rare and she felt her childhood at home was less than idyllic but at camp, nobody cared about her background:

I didn’t know what anybody else’s father did or how much money or the size of the house they lived in. It was a space that people could come and it was a level-playing field.

She felt different from others at home, but the camp created a culture where everyone felt valued. She explains:

I think a lot of the kids were grappling with themselves and they came to Mystic and it was a place to be a child.

Not everyone has that kind of experience at camp. My sister, my son and I did—but my daughter and husband didn’t—so camps obviously differ, but at best, they give young people an opportunity to go out into the world—away from their families—and feel accepted, valued for whom they are and who they’re becoming; where they build a tight bond with others, campers and counselors alike; and where at least at Camp Mystic and the camp I attended, you sing together all of the time:

It was a place where you can just be silly.

A Place for Taking Positive Risks

Erin Paisan remembers acting like a little kid at camp:

We rolled around in the mud and we threw mud at each other and you know, you were free to be exactly who you wanted to be in that moment.

Yet like young adults, they learned to do hard things together, like the 8 a.m. swim class when the river was bitterly cold.

This is the age when young people have to begin to figure out who they are. That’s what so special about the best camps—and the best schools and out-of-school activities—they give adolescents safe opportunities to explore their identities, which is a developmental necessity.

And these places enable them to take positive risks—something I also see as a developmental necessity. Taking positive risks enable young people learn how to be brave, how to take on a challenge and overcome it.

Not All Risks Are Positive

Most of the time, the Guadalupe River was serene, a place Erin Paisan returns to in her mind when she can’t sleep, but it also turned into a place of danger in 1978.

She remembers that it was raining so hard that it awakened her. She and her cabinmates were evacuated to a cabin high on the hill called “Angel’s Attic.”

She remembers the river raging like the Pacific Ocean, of being without food, and of a staff member riding across the fierce waters on horseback to bring them peanut butter sandwiches.

What really struck her, she says, was how devoted the adults were to keeping the kids safe.

From everything I’ve seen and read, the adults at Camp Mystic this summer were similarly heroic in their efforts to keep the campers safe and saved countless lives.

Family and Community

As a culture, we depend on—we even expect, we even singularly focus on—the adults in children’s immediate lives to keep them safe. But if we ever needed a reminder that this is not possible, it’s the Guadalupe Floods of 2025. Our children don’t just live in families. They don’t just go to schools. They don’t just go to camps. They live in the larger world, even in the remote Texas Hill Country.

If we want to give them positive risks and prevent negative ones to the best of our abilities, we need to remember that we are all responsible—the adults in children’s lives, the adults in children’s communities, the adults in children’s states, and the adults in children’s country.

When things like this happen, we turn to the blame game—blaming OTHERS—but I think we all need to take responsibility too because it's our expectations that are at fault.

It’s not an either/or. It’s family and community.

Here the Lawrence family is an inspiration. Amid their unimaginable loss, they spoke out against either/or. It’s not grief versus joy; it’s both. It’s not holding on to what’s frozen in time versus moving forward; it’s both. As David Lawrence shows us in the creation of the Children’s Movement in Florida, it’s not the family versus the larger community; it’s both.

In these children’s memory and honor, we need to listen and learn from them. Family and community. ALL OF US.

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