BRADY FLANIGAN
Editor
This is a story of loss that stretches from the Texas Hill Country up the railroad line and fiber optic cable all the way to Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Josephine Hardin, a 2015 graduate of The Webb School, and her mother, Alyson Hardin, are presumed dead after being swept away in the devastating floods that struck Kerr County, Texas, over the July 4th weekend.
The Hardins had traveled from their homes in Georgia and Florida to their vacation house in Hunt, Texas, when a surge from the Guadalupe River struck late that night, washing away the house with the family still inside. Josephine’s father, Bill Hardin—also a Webb School alumnus—survived by clinging to a tree for seven hours until he was rescued by helicopter.
In an interview with the San Antonio Express-News, Josephine’s sister, Kimberly Crouch, said, “The water just came so fast, there wasn’t anything anyone could do.”
It wasn’t the first time the home had flooded. Though it was built 10 feet above the 100-year floodplain, it had already taken on water twice before. On July 4th, the family woke to the sound of furniture crashing around as the water rose. By the time they were putting on their shoes, the water had reached waist level on the second floor. Josephine was the first to try and escape, attempting to climb out a window—then the house gave way.
Josephine and Alyson were both counselors at Camp Mystic, the all-girls Christian summer camp, which saw deaths approaching 30 the same night. That’s the story as I’d tell it in a newsroom. But it’s harder to write this one with that same practiced detachment.
Journalists often suffer from the affliction known as “newsroom humor.” It’s professional opium that, through cynical humor, builds a barrier between a writer and the misfortunes of their subjects. Journalism often involves encountering people on the crests of mountains, regardless of whether they come down or not. This makes a circumstance such as Josephine’s particularly bizarre. See, I too am a Webb graduate. Though I cannot say I knew her in the way so many other mourners did, she is a face I recall. She graduated one year before me. This marks the second person from my four high-school years there who’s passed. And knowing a face my memory recalls modestly well, simply is a face no longer, is alien to a mind which will only ever be able to comprehend things that are, not things that were.
