Cile Steward, the final girl missing after floodwaters overtook Camp Mystic on the Fourth of July, is mourned by her family.
Courtesy of gofundme.com
Even before finishing her first summer at Camp Mystic, those who knew Cile Steward said she was equally at home in sparkly dress-up heels or a pair of fishing waders.
“Steward was a courageous, funny, plucky force of nature,” friends of her family said in an online tribute days after the 8-year-old was named among the missing girls swept away from the camp’s Hill Country grounds during rapid, catastrophic flooding on the Fourth of July.
The young girl would be grieved by a “tremendous network” of family and friends, according to a GoFundMe campaign that said much of what it received would be put towards memorial donations in her name.
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But unlike some of the nearly 30 flood victims who were swept away from Camp Mystic when the river rose in a hurry in the early morning of July 4, Steward’s family spent days waiting for updates on her whereabouts. At first, they hoped for good news. Then, for any news at all.
In the initial days after the foreboding National Weather Service alerts announcing a “very dangerous and life-threatening flood event along the Guadalupe River,” a freckle-faced, smiling Steward made the rounds on social media, plastered with her mother’s phone number. Family members and friends urged bystanders to reach out if they saw her.
But by the time the online fundraiser was created in Steward’s name, friends and family spoke about how she would be “deeply missed.”
Their mourning process was already interrupted once, when a fake story alleging she was rescued from a Styrofoam cooler made the rounds online, and was repeatedly shared under posts about the missing girl. In some versions of the falsehood, she was said to have been found by golf legend Tiger Woods; in others, by his son Charlie.
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This lie was among many fake, tidy narratives that went viral as the country and mourning families frantically pieced together details of the disaster.
The reality wrapped up less neatly.
“Camp Mystic is grieving the loss of 27 campers and counselors following the catastrophic flooding on the Guadalupe River,” its leaders said in an early statement on July 6. “Our hearts are broken.”
Still, many parents waited days for the bodies of their little ones to be found. Some onlookers wanted answers and got more questions, as details emerged about a possible gap in the evacuation of Camp Mystic, and missed opportunities for a better flood warning system in Kerr County.
Steward’s parents were quiet on public forums, though updates from close family members confirmed they had waited longer than most other Mystic families to learn what happened to their baby.
“We are in desperate need of His divine intervention,” her uncle Ryan Steward said on social media in the first day after she went missing. He asked for prayers that she be found.
Over a week later, the search continued.
“Her body has still not been found. We do remain hopeful. Please join us in praying,” her aunt Gina Williams Dowdy wrote on Facebook on July 17.
But that did not mean family members waited to mourn. Steward’s parents had asked for privacy as early as July 7, Dowdy said, “as they take time to grieve together as a family.”
The Cile Steward they remembered was courageous, funny, joyful and stylish, according to online remembrances. She was creative and full of adventure. She was gone too soon, with a life well lived.
“Nobody has ever rocked an animal print like our beloved Cile Bug,” they said, “and no one ever will.”
Rebekah F. Ward is the Houston Chronicle’s climate & environment reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].
Before coming to Texas, Rebekah was an investigative journalist at the Albany Times Union, where she started in 2021 as the newsroom’s first Joseph T. Lyons fellow. She has worked for outlets including Reuters, France 24 and the OCCRP, reporting from the U.S., Colombia, Mexico and her native Canada.