Help Rebuild the Staub Family Home

Please help the Staub/Towler/Myers family rebuild along the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas.

Early in the morning on July 4th in Hunt, TX, our friends who we consider family survived by escaping into the attic and then to the roof as the waters rose to the ceiling in their river home in a few short minutes. A panicked phone call from a loving neighbor (Brian) is what ultimately saved Jane, Alden, Shabd & her baby, Jack, Jules and Lisa. (Please see both the Associated Press article “A Texas Family Clung to Life…” and the NBC interview “Texas Family Clings to Roof…” for their full story; links in bio.) We are beyond grateful their lives were not lost, but are also coming to grips with the destruction to their property that is devastating. One cabin was completely washed away and the original main house was fully submerged in flood waters. The gratitude I have that they survived is overshadowed only by the grief I and they feel alongside so many in our community as we try to understand incomprehensible loss.

For generations, the Staubs have shared this beautiful place with family and friends. Tim and I had just left a few days prior to the flood with our son and his best friend, and that trip marked my 20th summer in Hunt with them. The property was purchased by my friends Alden and Hetta’s great-grandfather in the 1930s, and has been a family sanctuary and place of respite for nearly a century. The healing and rebuilding effort for this family will be long, arduous, and expensive, and I would like to help after everything they’ve done for me. All proceeds will go towards cleaning out, salvaging what they can, and rebuilding the property.

I have always felt so held by this quiet river, so heard by that rugged land, and so deeply loved by these kind people who understand the true gift that is Hunt, TX. As Alden said, “Surviving the devastating and terrifying floods in Hunt, TX was a reminder that at our core humans are compassionate beings with an unstoppable drive to love one another despite our differences….There is a false veil of separation between people that politics and media hardens, may that veil stay lifted as we continue to see one another as mirrors of ourselves through hardship and fortune alike.”

Please join me in helping them rebuild. Any donation helps. Thank you.