“We want camps to continue, but we want children to come home from camp next year. We don’t want another disaster that people aren’t prepared for,” said Cole Naylor.
DALLAS — Their snapshots don’t show it, but drop-off was difficult at Camp Mystic this summer.
“Wynne was ready for camp. I was not ready to send her to camp for a month,” said her mother, Alli Naylor. “But she was so ready to have 27 sleepovers in a row, you know, 27 nights.”
Wynne had been on the waiting list for Camp Mystic since she was an infant. This summer was her first year to attend.
She was a vivacious 8-year-old who joined her dad on fishing and hunting trips, but also loved dressing up, participating in ballet and wearing her Lake Highlands cheerleading outfit for high school football games.
“We would sit in the backyard every Sunday and shoot BB guns because she wanted to practice shooting more,” Cole Naylor, 38, recalled.
Wynne was going into third grade at Lake Highlands Elementary, turning 9 on Sept. 16, and loved being the oldest of the three daughters.
“I think the hardest part about all of this is our two girls lost their leader,” Alli added.
The couple dropped off Wynne on Sunday, June 29 – five days before the unimaginable happened.
“My mom actually called me at 7:30 that morning and just said, ‘Is Wynne OK? I heard that there was a flood,’ and I… it was news to me,” Alli Naylor recalled.
Not knowing how serious the floods were, the couple still planned to take their younger daughters to the Lake Highlands Fourth of July parade that morning.
“We were parking at the parade,” Alli Naylor explained, “when I was talking to one of the other moms and I started hearing some really scary stories about girls in other cabins that were being rescued mid-storm, which made me hit pause.”
“We left the parade,” Cole Naylor added.
“And shortly after we left the parade,” Alli Naylor continued, “is when I got confirmation from another mom. I don’t know if you call it confirmation, but another mom had let the Bubble Inn moms know that Bubble Inn was missing, but we didn’t know what missing meant.”
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Bubble Inn was the cabin where Wynne, 12 other girls and two counselors were sleeping.
Complacency led to confusion during the emergency, the Naylors said. They struggled to get reliable information on their race down to the camp.
“An email went out from the camp saying ‘if your daughter is unaccounted for, you received a phone call’ and at that point, in talking with the other moms, about half of our cabin had received a phone call and half had not,” Alli recounted. “I remember looking at Cole and being like maybe we’re okay, maybe Wynne’s fine. Then at noon we got a phone call that Wynne was unaccounted for.”
Now, less than two months after the tragedy, the Naylors want to know why the camp’s emergency plan failed and why there wasn’t better oversight.
“We were excited and felt privileged that Wynne was going to that camp,” Cole said. “She didn’t come home. She didn’t come home alive. We had to go identify her body on Sunday morning. No parent should have to do that. This was preventable.”
The Naylors came forward to urge state lawmakers to finally pass House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1, which improve camp safety, require camps to create emergency plans, ban sleeping cabins in flood plains and improve training and response.
“There can’t be another situation where the plan is to shelter in place, to stay in a cabin when your cabin is in a floodplain,” Alli Naylor said.
“The girls who listened to that are the ones who died,” Cole Naylor added.
“Our girls followed the rules,” Alli Naylor continued.
With 16 days left before the legislature adjourns, the Naylors said they worry that time could run out before lawmakers approve the changes.
“This has to be done this year,” Cole Naylor explained. “The legislature doesn’t go back in session, as you know, until 2027. There’s going to be a camp season between now and then. We want camps to continue, but we want children to come home from camp next year. We don’t want another disaster that people aren’t prepared for.”
But the Naylors also say parents need to ask more questions before dropping their child off somewhere.
“We did not know there were questions that needed to be answered – or even asked – to the camps about safety situations,” Cole Naylor said. “What do you do in a disaster? What’s your evacuation plan? Where are the cabins that our children are going to be sleeping in located? What’s a communication protocol should something happen? I mean these are questions that every, every parent should ask.”
One camp safety reform bill has passed and is going to the governor for his signature. Legislation from state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, creates an early detection system for flash floods in Texas watersheds. It was approved Tuesday night.
Through it all, the Naylors said they struggle to stay positive for their two younger daughters.
“I’m so thankful that we have two other girls at home to help us get up and face the day,” Alli Naylor said. “Wynne did not have sad parents growing up. I don’t want [her sisters] to have sad parents, but I did look at Cole the other night and ask him, am I just gonna be sad every day for the rest of my life?”
Support and love from family, friends, Camp Mystic families and their Lake Highlands community have helped ease some of the pain of losing Wynne.
“I want Wynne here watching all of her friends make the dance company that Wynne was supposed to make and would have been thrilled to make,” Alli Naylor said. “On the first day of school, it’s so hard seeing all of her friends do the things that Wynne should be doing too. But those families have loved us so well and just shared all of their memories and all of the pictures that they had of Wynne on their phones from all the fun things that they would do together. It’s just been a gift.”
The Naylors have established a memorial fund to benefit causes that Wynne enjoyed including her elementary school, her faith and the outdoors. You can contribute directly at morelikewynne.org.