Category: Welcome Home

Welcome Home Summary: For Mike and Brenda Trolinger, this home was more than a house. It was family land, a retirement dream, a place they had worked toward for years, and a return to the community that had shaped so much of their lives. Mike had grown up with deep ties to the area, coming […]

Emma Pearl Cole’s new Kerrville home is more than a house. It is a hard-won place of peace after a long and frightening journey through flood recovery. On July 4, Pearl, her partner Larry, her granddaughter Anaya, and Pearl’s brother, who has special needs, were trapped inside their home as floodwaters rose fast around them. […]

Today, we gathered to celebrate a new beginning for Danny and Valerie Mares as they stepped into their new home after the devastation of the July 4 flood. Joining the welcome home blessing were Tara LaMontia with HPS, case manager Margaret White (Community Foundation/HPS), and representatives from TSAHC. Valerie shared how their story began around […]

On a spring evening marked by gratitude and celebration, two neighboring families returned home side by side. The homes of the Martinez family and their daughter Maria Kitchens’ family sit next to one another, and their shared Welcome Home gathering reflected not only the closeness of their houses, but the closeness of their lives. What […]

On a hopeful spring day in Rio Robles, friends, neighbors, and partners gathered to celebrate a true “Welcome Home” for Annette and Gary Dickson at their restored home on Chaparral Drive. Before the celebration began, there was time to tour the beautifully repaired house and hear the couple reflect on both the frightening morning of July 4 and […]

On the morning of July 4, 2025, Kevin Kearney woke in the dark to a sound no one wants to hear—the force of floodwater crashing against his home in the Hunt-Ingram area. When he opened the front door around 3:15 a.m., water was already at the threshold of his elevated modular home. Within moments, the […]

Michelle McGuire’s new home sits high on a hill, with a beautiful view and the kind of peace that once must have felt impossible. In the early morning hours of July 4, in Hunt, Texas, Michelle woke around 3:15 a.m. to the sound of water. At first, she thought she was dreaming. But when she got […]

Robert and Thelma Kimbrough were not at home on the night of the July 4 flood. As they often do for the Fourth of July, they had traveled to Missouri to visit their nephew. Early on the morning of Friday, July 4, a neighbor called to ask whether they had seen the news or heard […]

On the night of July 4, 2025, the storm was so loud that Joan Connor and David could not sleep. In the darkness of the early morning hours, David—99 years old and a proud World War II veteran—began to get out of bed. When his feet touched the floor, he felt water already ankle-deep inside their […]

On the morning of July 4, resident John Flowers awoke in shock to find floodwaters rushing into his home. In those first terrifying moments, he said his instinct was to pray—not only for himself and his nearby neighbors, but for those upstream, especially the camps. When daylight came and the waters receded, John stepped outside […]