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BOERNE, Texas – In the proximity of great tragedy there often lies an eerie stillness, as if any loud noise or sudden movement might trigger nature’s wrath again. Such is the feeling here this week in this town about 25 minutes outside of the Kerr County flood zone where more than 100 souls have perished.
Within hours of the flash floods on Friday, Boerne (pronounced like Bernie), along with nearby towns such as Fredrickburg, and Welfare, were already assembling supplies and arranging volunteers for their flooded neighbors. That’s just what they do here.
TEXAS FLOOD SURVIVORS SHARE HARROWING STORIES, SEARCH CONTINUES FOR THOSE STILL MISSING
I met Dick outside the Black Rifle Coffee cafe on Main Street. He’s retired, has lived in the town for 25 years and he told me, “Everybody feels it. If this doesn’t make you sad, then you aren’t human.”
When I asked Dick if he was surprised by how aggressively the community responded, he told me, “Not at all, it’s how we are,” adding, “Did you know this area was founded in the 19th century by German freethinkers? They wanted to be free, and we still do, so we take care of our own.”
As we spoke beneath the unparalleled beauty of the same Texas skies that wrought such devastation last week, we saw and heard massive equipment on the backs of flat beds, heading to Kerr County.
Dick wasn’t the first person to raise these Hill Country roots to me. Even on my plane, the woman next to me, who lives in the area, gave me a short history of the free thinkers and their impact, and she was an immigrant from Colombia.
Later in the day, I spoke with Kristen who lives in Fredericksburg, and told me that she knew things looked bad early on Friday. She was annoyed at first by the initial lack of news coverage, “then we heard about the camp, that girls were missing, it was a gut punch.”
By Saturday morning, she and her friends were bringing supplies to the town of Comfort, which had turned what was supposed to be a legendary local fireworks show into an emergency center.
This was also about when Rabbi Yosef Marrus, of the Chabbad of Boerne, began not only collecting supplies, but contacting the organization’s headquarters in Brooklyn to begin a national fundraising campaign.
“The Jewish community in the Hill Country is small, Marrus told me, “but we are proud to be here and had to help. We are all Americans.”
Marrus stressed to me the importance of finding out what specifically is needed in the area. In one case, a fire department was flush with food donations but didn’t have enough refrigerators to store them. Not long after, the Chabbad bought two fridges and had them delivered.
One of the central locations where Marrus and others have staged supplies is Bunker Branding in Boerne, owned by Clint Sanders and his wife Jenna, and it was abuzz with activity on Monday morning.
“We do branding for a lot of websites,” Clint told me, “so we had a way to get word out and we needed to do something, and we have this warehouse space.”
He walked me through the facility. There were different items staged around and trailers outside to be packed. Sanders also told me that finding out what is really needed is key. “We have a ton of donated clothes upstairs, but they don’t need clothes right now. Next week maybe they will.”
Impressed as I was by the operation, I said to Sanders, “How do you and your wife know how to do all this?” Without missing a beat, he smiled and said, “We don’t.”
That really is the most impressive part of all of this. No regular person really knows what to do after 20 feet of water rises in 45 minutes, taking with it scores of lives, but with the help of the state, local and federal authorities, they learn on the job with incredible speed.
Maybe, given the particularly horrible loss of life of so many children from this area, people need something to do, to stay busy.
On the couple of occasions when the loss of so many kids came to the fore of my conversations, a thousand-yard stare would emerge in their eyes; How does one even comprehend?
Being here in Boerne, seeing the selfless efforts of these tough Texans, I trust that the German freethinkers who settled this land 175 years ago would be very proud today of the communities they created.
And as Americans, we should all be very proud of them, too.
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