“He Held On Until the End”: A Father’s Final Act of Love During Texas Floods

When the storm came, it gave no warning. One moment, families were laughing under fireworks in celebration of the Fourth of July. The next, they were clinging to each other, praying to survive a nightmare.

In the heart of Texas Hill Country, where families gathered to make memories, something unthinkable happened. Torrents of rain—more than anyone could have imagined—poured from the sky, turning campsites into rivers and rivers into monsters. The Guadalupe River, swollen beyond recognition, surged to 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

And in the middle of it all was John Burgess.

He wasn’t a man looking for headlines. He was just a dad—there with his wife, Julia, and their two young sons, enjoying a quiet getaway. They had driven from Liberty, Texas, to pick up their daughter from a nearby camp that, by some miracle, remained untouched. It was supposed to be a short family trip. It turned into a tragedy that would shatter hearts across the country.

Lorena Guillen, who owns the Blue Oak RV Park where the family was staying, still can’t shake the image from her mind. As the floodwaters rose, she saw John out there in the darkness, soaked, shivering, clinging to a tree with his two boys in his arms.

With emotion thick in her voice, she remembered the moment. “My husband was out there in the rushing water, shouting, ‘Please—just toss me your baby!’ But John… he couldn’t do it. He was clutching his boys with everything he had. He held on until the water took him.”

The currents were merciless. Mobile homes were torn from their foundations like paper toys. Cabins from the park next door floated by, smashing into trees. It was pitch black. People screamed for help—some begged. Others just cried. “You could hear them all night,” Guillen said quietly. “It was chaos. It was heartbreak.”

That night, 28 RVs at Blue Oak were torn apart, ripped from the ground like leaves in the wind. Now, fragments of those lives drift silently downriver—along with the echoes of voices that will never be heard again.

A few days later, search teams found John’s body—and Julia’s not far behind. Julia had once stood at the front of a classroom at Lakewood Elementary in Belton, a quiet force in the lives of her students. John was a proud graduate of China Spring High School near Waco. Now, in both communities, their names are spoken with a kind of quiet reverence—not just as victims of a terrible flood, but as reminders of devotion, of family, and of a bravery no one ever asks for but some give anyway.

Their two sons are still missing.

Across Kerr County, at least 105 people have been confirmed lost in the flooding. Twenty-eight of them were children. The numbers are hard to grasp. But it’s stories like John’s that give the tragedy a face—turning numbers into names, and heartbreak into something deeply, painfully real.

Winnie Taylor, a neighbor still reeling from the tragedy, put into words what so many can’t: “We’ve all been praying. “It just doesn’t feel real,” she said softly. “Not them. Not this way.”

Despite the devastation, there’s something that lingers more than the grief—something quietly powerful: the image of a father who never let go. Even in the face of unstoppable water, John chose to stay with his boys. He chose love, even when it cost him everything.

Today, the Blue Oak RV Park is in ruins. But a GoFundMe campaign to help rebuild it is slowly gaining support, each donation a small spark of hope in the ashes of tragedy.

If there’s anything to take from this heartbreaking story, it’s this: love holds on. Even in the darkest hour. Even when the world is falling apart.

And maybe, just maybe, that kind of love is the one thing the storm couldn’t wash away.