Friends, family and neighbors in the Texas Hill Country are remembering the lives lost and the people still missing after flash flooding over the July 4 holiday weekend.
More than 100 people were killed in the floods, and at least 160 people are still missing, according to authorities in Texas. On Wednesday night, the community held a vigil at the local high school football stadium in Kerrville with worship, prayer and songs.
One of the people trying to offer solace was Ricky Pruitt with the Kerrville Church of Christ. He led hundreds in prayer at the vigil.
“We’re looking towards times still of just silence and mourning together,” Pruitt told Here & Now, “but also saying, ‘OK, what opportunity do we have in the middle of this darkness to be a light?’”
4 questions with Ricky Pruitt
What was your message to folks who had gathered at the vigil last night?
“ Our message is the same that it has been, which is we are together and that Jesus is what brings us together, whether it be something that we’ve done in the past five years ago, or whether it be in the middle of the storm.”
What are you doing today?
“This morning, I was invited to come help with some of the cleanup out at one of our local camps, Camp Mystic. And there’s just a lot of cleanup that’s happening out here. So, I’ve been given a post to grab some trash and throw it away, and every little bit helps. And there’s other people that are in the same house and cabin with me. And just little by little, trying to tear out all the trash and put it in dumpsters.”
You were the former youth pastor at the Kerrville Church of Christ. Are there folks you know who may have lost family members, who are just really in a moment of grief?
“Yeah, so on Friday, when all this started unfolding, we heard very quickly that Reece Zunker and his wife were missing. And coach Reece Zunker is the Tivy High School soccer coach and has been since we’ve arrived here. And my son plays soccer for coach Zunker, and my daughter is one of the girls’ coaches, so he’s her coworker. And so very quickly, his life was something that we became very thoughtful and prayerful about on Saturday night.
“Every Thursday night during the soccer season, our group gathers, our soccer team gathers at the Kerrville Church of Christ and has a time in the chapel to hear a message, and then they eat a meal together.
“And on Saturday, we decided let’s gather the boys tonight. And so within four hours, we got the message out and about 25 to 30 current and former players gathered, and about 200 other folks gathered. And the point was we wanted the boys just to have some time in the chapel to pray together and to encourage each other.
“And as we were beginning, Mr. Danny [Zunker] and Mrs. Caroline Zunker walked straight towards me, and I had never met them. And they are the parents of Reece Zunker, the soccer coach.
“And he came and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, ‘I’m Danny Zunker, and this is my wife, Caroline. And we’re here because Reece is our boy, and we wanted to be with Reece’s kids. These are his boys, and we want to be with you.’ And I was like, ‘Man, we are so grateful that you’re here.’
“Then what I had feared was going to happen is he looked straight at my eyes and said, ‘They just found Reece’s body and we want you to tell the boys, and these are his kids, and we want to be with them when they hear.’ And so that turned from a vigil to a memorial very quickly.
“I say this because I just want to magnify the gift that Danny and Caroline gave our team. I want you to imagine a 16- or 17-year-old boy, or maybe even a 25-year-old man, who’s played for Zunker to have gone through their social media one more time at midnight in their room alone and seen coach Zunker’s name and then not being able to sleep and being alone. And what Mr. Danny Zunker gave our team, we cannot repay him, that our boys were together. And that was a gift that we could not have planned. The Zunkers could not have even planned because they had just received word an hour before that gathering.
“So, man, it was a very hard night. A lot of tears shed in my family. For my 17-year-old son and some of his buddies, it was really, really a tough, tough night. But it was good that we were together.”
How are you holding up personally?
“I’ll be completely honest, I really don’t remember the words that I said, because I was asking God to give me the words to say it. I mean, there’s so many crude ways to say it. And I wanted to honor a family and I wanted to honor his life, but I wanted to be clear. And, really, Sunday morning, finally I was able to grieve and to really weep during our church service. Just for the heaviness of it all, you know, and for not just the loss of a good man and his family, but just the heaviness of the uncertainty and just the pain. So that’s been real tough.
“And I’ll tell you something else that’s been tough is driving all the way out to Hunt today and seeing, I’ve been out here twice now, but seeing the destruction of our natural beauty around here. And, the mystery of driving through the trees and the winding river and to see it laid bare, stripped from its trees and its covering, that has found a heavy place in my heart that I did not expect. So it’s something that I’m having to process that I didn’t realize I was going to be wrestling with.”
This interview has been edited for clarity.
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Ashley Locke produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Michael Scotto. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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