Trapped by floodwater, camp director called to say she 'can't get out'
Jeeper Ragsdale's sister, Jane, woke him up with a call at about 3:30 a.m. on July 4, telling him the water was rising.
It was already at the foot of her bed, Jane told him, he said. The cell service was spotty at the camp where Jane was a director, but Jeeper could hear that much, he said.
"And I couldn't do nothing," Jeeper told ABC News. "I was, like, get out of the house."
That was the last time Jeeper spoke to Jane, whose full name was Cynthie Jane Ragsdale, and who was one of more than 100 people who died in the Texas flooding that began early that morning.
She had been with the camp, Heart O' The Hills, for almost 50 years. She'd been a co-owner since 1978 and had served as the director since 1988.
As her brother recalled, the camp in the Texas Hill Country was "my sister's love of her life." It was in her blood.
Jane's camp was near another, Camp Mystic, which was also devastated by the flooding.
When Jane called to tell Jeeper what was happening, he told her to break a window, to get out of the house by any means necessary, he said in an interview. He said he thought she had done so, but he couldn't be sure.
"Well, she just wasn't contacting me again," Jeeper said. "So it was pretty obvious, probably, what had happened. But I just was holding on to hope that somehow she had gotten out."
Jeeper said his sister's call that morning alerted him to the danger and he was able to wake up several people at his own camp. He credited her phone call with saving at least five lives.
In the days since the flood, Jeeper has had time to reflect on his sister's life. She had worked as a journalist in her youth, traveling as far away as Argentina for work. She had been one of the "nicest people you could meet and loved helping people and wasn't materialistic."
He said he would remember her the way he always did, just as a happy person who would greet him with a big hug every time they saw each other.
The worst part about Friday was the hours that he didn't know where she was. Not knowing if she was OK, he said. It meant everything to him that she'd called him that morning, he said.
And he said she'd texted him at some point that morning, as the floods ravaged the area. In one text she said she was worried about re-opening the camp, Jeeper said, but he still hasn't looked back at her last texts to him.
"I haven't been able to look at my texts," he said. I just haven't been able to go back there. But I know I talked to her."
