Jeepper Ragsdale’s sister, Jane, woke him up with a call around 3:30 am on July 4, telling her that the water was already increasing.
He was already at the foot of his bed, Jane said, he said. The cell service was irregular at the camp where Jane was director, but Jeeper could hear so much, he said.
“And I couldn’t do anything,” Jeeper told ABC News. “I was, how, to leave the house.”
That was the last time Jeepper spoke with Jane, whose full name was Cynthia Jane Ragsdale, and that it was one of the more than 100 people who died in the floods of Texas who started early that morning.
Flood victim, Jane Ragsdale.
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She had been in the camp, Heart or ‘The Hills, for almost 50 years. He had been co -owner since 1978 and had served as director since 1988.
As his brother recalled, the camp in Texas Hill Country was “my sister’s love for her life.” It was in his blood.
Jane’s camp was close to another, Camp Mystic, who was also devastated by floods.
When Jane called to tell Jeeper what was happening, he told him to break a window, that he would leave the house by any necessary means, he said in an interview. He said he thought she had done it, but that it couldn’t be sure.
“Well, she simply wasn’t contacting me again,” Jeeper said. “So it was quite obvious, probably, what had happened. But I clung to the hope that I had somehow left.”
Jeeper Ragsdale, who lost his sister, Cynthia Jane Ragsdale, at the floods of Texas Hill Country, speaks with ABC News, on July 9, 2025.
ABC News
Jeekper said that his sister’s call that alerted him to danger and that he could wake up several people in his own camp. He accredited his phone call with saving at least five lives.
In the days after the flood, Jeepper has had time to reflect on his sister’s life. He had worked as a journalist in his youth, traveling as far as Argentina to work. She had been one of the “most pleasant people you could meet and loved people and was not materialistic.”
He said he would remember her as she always did, just like a happy person who would greet him with a big hug every time they saw each other.
The worst part of Friday was the schedule that he didn’t know where he was. Without knowing if she was fine, she said. It meant everything for him who had called him that morning, he said.
And he said he had sent him a text message at some point that morning, while floods devastated the area. In a text message he said she was worried about reopening the camp, Jeeper said, but he has not yet looked back in his latest text messages.
“I have not been able to look at my text messages,” he said. I have not been able to return there. But I know I talked to her. “
