Isabel & Patrick

Like so many, we have been devastated by the flooding in Central Texas in early July. The stories that have come out of Camp Mystic, Hunt, Comfort, and the surrounding areas have been heartbreaking. Some of Isabel’s most treasured memories come from the 13 summers spent as a camper and counselor at a YMCA summer camp on the Guadalupe, just a couple miles from Camp Mystic. This special part of Texas has been home to some of the Martin family’s and friend's most formative experiences. The stories of loss and tragedy have been relentless and personal over the last few weeks, and the road ahead to rebuild will be long and exhausting.

There is little solace for those grieving loved ones and displacement. But we encourage you to consider chipping in to help on that long road to recovery by supporting the Kerr County Flood Relief effort in lieu of purchasing something from our registry. 






The nature of these disasters can feel overwhelming and isolating, at times. After Hurricane Harvey, one of Patrick’s favorite writers wrote about how that can also forge bonds between people:

“Flood waters recede. There is a wide, mean plain of agony to follow and a future that will look different from anything you can predict — but they will subside. There are LSU people out there right now, children born out of the great flood of 1927, who are sleeping in their trucks, rerouted from a football game to drop a boat in the waters of a Texas flood to rescue complete strangers. They are doing it because tragedy and its legacy is a universal human inheritance that varies only in its sum from person to person. They are doing it because kindness is a practice that pays off that inheritance an act at a time…
It wasn’t an accident. It was something they practiced. It’s mesh, parting clouds and shining bright as the sun. What’s left is what’s practiced, what’s passed down, what is carried along when everything else is left behind.”