Cecilia “Cile” Steward's parents threw her a ninth birthday party last month, but one person wasn't there: the birthday girl herself.
Ever since Cile was swept away by the floodwaters that swamped Camp Mystic in the Texas Hill Country last summer, her mother has been coping with her grief by writing her daughter a letter every day.
Meanwhile, her father has been keeping tabs on the ongoing search by Texas authorities for her remains, and he's feeling less hopeful by the day.
“I have this sinking feeling of there’s no way they’re ever gonna find her,” Will Steward said when he and his wife, CiCi Steward, sat down for an emotional “TODAY” interview this week with their long-time friend and fellow Texan, show co-host Jenna Bush Hager.
Cile was among the 130 people who were killed July 4 after slow-moving thunderstorms in Kerr County, Texas, caused the Guadalupe to overflow its banks, turning a meandering river into a terrifying torrent.
Cile, 8 years old at the time, was one of the 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, a venerable Christian summer camp for girls, who perished in the flood.
But unlike the other victims, Cile’s body was never found.
“I write to her every day. I tell her how sorry I am that this happened to her. I’m sorry that her life was stolen from her,” CiCi Steward told Bush Hager, her voice cracking.
“Despite the fact that I bawl crying every time I write to her, that is how I stay close to her,” she said. “We look at her pictures daily. Thank God for the phones and the amount of photos and videos we have. A blessing and a curse, really.”
The Stewards spoke with Bush Hager, with whom they’ve been friends for more than 20 years, on the same day they filed a lawsuit against the Eastland family, which has operated the all-girls camp for decades, in Travis County, Texas.
“They were completely unprepared,” the couple’s lawyer, Brad Beckworth, said of the Eastlands.
Despite the camp being in a flood plain and having a well-documented history of flooding, the Eastland family had a bare-bones emergency evacuation plan, and they repeatedly ignored the National Weather Service flooding alerts, the Stewards contend in their lawsuit.
So by the time they started evacuating the girls from the flooded cabins, it was already too late, the suit states.
“It’s just absolute chaos,” Beckworth told Bush Hager. “When you talk to the counselors, they can hear the screams. Nobody knows what to do. They don’t know where to go.”
The victims included Richard “Dick” Eastland, the owner of Camp Mystic. His family says he lost his life trying to save the girls.
The Stewards contend in the lawsuit that Eastland and his son, Edward Eastland, waited for more than an hour before they tried to evacuate the girls from the cabins.
They insisted in their interview with Bush Hager that it was the camp counselors and first responders who deserve the praise for saving most of the 750 girls who were at Camp Mystic when the flooding started.
“There are heroes at Camp Mystic and none of them are named Eastland,” CiCi Steward said.
