The human heart craves routine, especially after it has been battered by chaos and inconsolable loss. So it’s hardly surprising that on any given day, as Clarke Baker drives from his home in Beaumont, Texas, on his way to the golf course, he swings by the cemetery where his 8-year-old daughter, Mary Grace, is buried — after floodwaters tore through the grounds of Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, and swept her away on July 4, 2025.
“I’ll stop by her gravesite,” Baker, a 41-year-old financial adviser, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, “just to check in and make sure it doesn’t need to be cleaned up or anything like that.”
In the year since Texas Hill Country was hit by a catastrophic deluge that claimed the lives of 139 people — while also damaging thousands of homes and causing more than $18 billion worth of economic losses — debris still flutters from the branches of cypress trees, bent from the storm, lining the riverbank.
Twelve months after it became a storm-swollen torrent, the Guadalupe is calm now, flowing languidly as families can be seen splashing in the cool waters.
But countless Texans are haunted by the deadly flood and struggling to find a path forward.
Some, like Clarke and his wife, Katie, have have thrown themselves — with broken hearts still full of love — into public advocacy, determined to make sure through “common sense” safety reforms that what happened to Mary Grace can’t be repeated.
“Our daughter’s death could have been prevented,” Clarke says.
“I know that she was thriving … and so we want kids to be able to have that right,” he continues, “but we want kids to be dropped off at camp, and we want kids to go home from camp.”
Faith, in many of these communities, has been crucial.
“There’s been real conversations with God. There’s a plan, and I know that … She’s where we all hope to be,” Mary Grace’s dad says, “and why she’s there too soon, I don’t know.”
Though he says “there’s good days, bad days and everything in between,” he does know this: “The amount of love and support that we’ve gotten has been crazy, and it is not forgotten, nor is it ignored. It is embraced and loved.”
Indeed, it’s with the help of strangers that some survivors have focused on rebuilding their homes and starting over.
“This tragedy touched all of us,” says Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, a nonprofit that raised a staggering $150 million in donations — used to cover everything from funeral expenses and grocery money for survivors to down payments for new homes. “So many people wanted to help.”
For Clarke, Katie, 38, and Mary Grace’s 6-year-old brother, Jeb, the passage of time is one of the few things that has helped soothe their unbearable pain.
“It’s so raw, it’s so new,” confesses Clarke, who plans to travel with his wife and son out of the country to avoid the anniversary date.
“We’re still in the processing of, you know, how are we here? How did we get here?” he says, noting that therapy for all of them — including what’s known as RTM therapy — has helped.
Looking back at last July, Mary Grace “was having the time of her life there,” Clarke says of his daughter’s stay at Camp Mystic, which has become mired in controversy amid revelations about its poor disaster response.
His last memory of his daughter is a photo showing her wishing him a happy birthday.
She “was full of life, full of energy, she never really came across a stranger,” Clarke says. “She was very in tune with her faith and loved God. She loved being outdoors, absolutely loved being outdoors. And if it were the summertime, she would not be inside the house.”
Treasured memories spring easily to mind: how Mary Grace made a small quilt for her father while he was recovering from surgery, hand-tying together the various pieces; or how she spent time with a classmate who was being bullied.
“She was,” Clarke says, “perfect.”
As a student, she received the highest honor from her Catholic school, named for Elizabeth Ann Seton. Only later did her parents learn that Seton is the patron saint of grief.
Since Mary Grace’s death, her parents have poured their energy into persuading lawmakers to make camps safer by banning cabins in active flood plains, mandating 24-7 weather monitoring and requiring rigorous annual evacuation training.
Known as the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act — named for the 25 girls and two teenage counselors who perished at Mystic last year — it was signed into law in Texas in September.
Alabama passed a similar law months later, and several other states are considering their own legislation. (One day, Clarke says, his son may go to camp himself, once it’s safe.)
It’s a bitter balm. Clarke recalls what another victim’s father said to him in March: “Use our grief. Use me as a way to tap into how terrible this can be, because nobody else should have to experience this.”
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