Richard “Dick” Eastland, the owner and director of Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas, died while helping campers get to safety during the devastating floods that impacted the area last week. Eastland, who was the third generation from his family to manage the camp, was 74.

The emergency weather alert had come early Fourth of July morning: There would be life-threatening flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas. And Camp Mystic – an all-girls Christian camp situated along the Guadalupe River – housed about 750 campers on the flood-prone site as heavy rains started pouring.

For decades, Dick and Tweety Eastland presided over Camp Mystic with a kind of magisterial benevolence that alumni well past childhood still describe with awe.

Hero Texas camp director Richard “Dick” Eastland battled floods for decades and even saw his pregnant wife once airlifted off the grounds to a hospital because of a deluge.

Bubble Inn saw generations of 8-year-olds enter as strangers and emerge as confident young ladies equipped with new skills from the great outdoors and lifelong friends – bonds that would one day prove vital in the face of unfathomable tragedy.