Blakely McCrory was that sort of a child who made a room laugh. She was the funniest person to emerge in any room her mother had her pet turtle and hid it inside the purse or even played fun and mischievous tricks on her family members, she was the sunshine of any room she walked in.
It was something special that she was over the moon about in this summer- her very first year at Camp Mystic, the Christian girls summer camp that was located along the Guadalupe River in the surroundings of Texas Hill Country.
Her mom, Lindsey McLeod McCrory said,
“She could not wait to be in the outdoors. It was like having the biggest sleepover you can imagine as a little girl, because you’re in a cabin with 11 girls who become your best friends, right?”
As a lifelong third-generation camper herself, Lindsey gets the excitement of the locale, know the cabins, the horseback riding, the sports, the lifetime friendships. To Blakely it was the Summer of her dreams.
So followed the rain.
When the Guadalupe River started on the rise it was on the 4th of July, when abrupt and violent rain showers were assaulting various sections of central Texas. Camp grounds were flooded and the routes were blocked and even those in the low height cabins were stuck.
Lindsey at the time was in Europe on a trip. She did not panic when she heard that there was a flood.
“They’re probably having a blast,” thought Lindsey.
I remembered: ‘Oh, rainy day, stay in your cabin, play board games, or listen to music, whatever. It’s going to pass. ”
However, hours after, a phone call of good friend altered everything. Part of the campers was missing.
Trying the voicemails, Lindsey browsed through them. An email from Camp Mystic made it official: Blakely was one of the missing.
In Texas, Blakely older half-brother Brady and his mom hurried to the local evacuation centers. In the meantime, Lindsey took a flight to be home by hoping that her daughter would be safe. Hope was alive days up.
“I thought, ‘Oh, maybe she and one of those counselors are somewhere dry, but they’re just lost.’ … ‘Maybe they’re just lost, and I don’t know, they’re surviving together somehow.’ I mean, of course, you want to think these things,” Lindsey says.
But by Monday night reality came knocking. Too late Blakely was found.
“I think the most terrifying part of this ordeal was the confirmation that she was unaccounted for originally,” the mom tells. “Because I always had this fear of someone kidnapping her, and just not knowing what happened to her. That was the biggest, the fear of the unknown.”
“And I guess I had prepared myself mentally for that phone call, that I might get that call, that she has passed,” Lindsey says. “So I was calm. It gave me some closure, and I knew she was in a safe place, with her daddy, in heaven. I knew that it was going to be okay.”
She told about the ranger who informed her on call.
“I know she’s tough to do that job,” she says of the ranger, “but to make those phone calls to the families, I can’t even imagine just the trauma that she’s going through, call after call, you know, have to bear witness to all this.”
Her daddy, Blake McCrory, had died only some months before fighting c@ncer. The brother of Lindsey had died not so long ago. And Blakely had managed to be hearty through the sorrow and rascally and good-humoured.
Lindsey found something amazing the events shortly after the incident, when there were heartbreak and open questions, it turned out that Blakely had left a letter before her death.
“Dear mom, What is up? I am fine.”
it said in that nice round-fingered childish handwriting of the camp with the forms already filled out. She referred to her days as amazing, discussed tennis and horseback riding.
It was not only a letter to Lindsey. It was the voice of her daughter, sounding back to her.
She replied, It is really very special since I really knew that she was experiencing the best time of her life.
Lindsey was also told by a counselor how Blakely had gone around consoling other people during the flood that they should not be afraid, as she did not fear at a time when even the adults would have been scared.
The Camp Mystic flood also caused the death of at least 27 people: campers and staff. Search parties are still searching the scene. The incident has posed a lot of concerns on maps of flood zones by FEMA and cabins being constructed too close to water.
However, Lindsey gets confidence with religion and remembrance of her daughter in face of the destruction.
She said, “I want to be that kind of mom who will respect my daughter and be glued to her spirit. She is close to me. I know she is staring at me,”
Lindsey believes Blakely is at peace. She said, it means, she is in heaven. “She’s okay. She looks down to us.”
And for the grieving mother, that final letter — written in innocence, sealed in love — will forever be her daughter’s voice whispering back: “I’m okay, Mom.”
