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Cynthie "Jane" Ragsdale grew up with a love for summer camps near the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
In the 1960s, Ragsdale’s parents bought Camp Stewart, a summer camp for boys near Hunt, when she was a child. Ragsdale, who lived briefly in Denton then, spent her summers at Camp Mystic, a private summer Christian camp, where her aunt and cousin had also gone, and at Heart O’ the Hills, an all-girls summer camp, a special place where she would become co-owner and camp director.
Ragsdale, considered the “heart and soul” of the all-girls camp, was among the more than 50 people confirmed dead from the catastrophic flooding that hit the Texas Hill Country on Friday, according to a July 4 post to the Heart O’ the Hills Official Fan Page on Facebook. She was 68.
“I loved every minute of camp from the first time I stepped foot in one,” Ragsdale recalled in a 2015 oral history interview with the Kerr County Historical Commission, archived on the Portal to Texas History.
That love would lead Ragsdale to become a camp counselor, assistant program director and program director — a summer job that Ragsdale said allowed her to focus on her studies in Spanish and journalism at Texas Woman’s University.
At Heart O’ the Hills near Hunt, Ragsdale served as program director from 1978 until 1987 and camp director from 1988 until her death on Friday.
“Thankfully, camp was not in session, and most of those who were on camp at the time have been accounted for and are on high ground, " read a statement from the camp's Facebook. "However, we have received word that Jane Ragsdale did not make it. We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful.
“Please continue to pray for Kerr county and the surrounding areas as there have been multiple fatalities and still many missing.”
She taught us "everything we know"
Former campers and parents remembered Ragsdale and the impact she had on the lives of thousands of girls over the years.
Ava Steindl of San Antonio attended the camp beginning in 2010 and was a counselor there in 2017. She remembered Ragsdale's contributions.
"She taught me and most of these girls everything that we know, from basic life skills to learning how to change a tire," Steindl said.
Thomas Mayo of Beaumont said his 23-year-old daughter Caroline attended camp at Heart O'The Hills from when she was 6 years old. He said the impact that Ragsdale had on children and their parents was immeasurable. "She loved the camp and she loved those kids," Mayo said. "And it's a darker place today without her in it."
Friday's Facebook post announcing Ragsdale's death drew more than 500 comments from former campers and their parents. They shared condolences and memories that they and their children had with the longtime camp director, whom they called the heart of the camp.
Ragsdale’s freshman roommate at TWU, Maggie Marsh-Nation, credited Ragsdale with introducing her to the Hill Country and being the reason that Marsh-Nation lived there with her family.
“She was the kindest hearted and wisest person I ever knew,” Marsh-Nation wrote in her comment. “I was blessed to share a room with her for a year. She will be missed by thousands of people she knew and campers she hosted at her beautiful camp.”
Many brought up Ragsdale’s love for the camp and all those involved. Elysia Linson wrote in a comment: “I will never forget her taking me and Eleanor for a walk around camp after one Mother-Daughter weekend — she knew every tree, plant, critter, she was so OF that place and her spirit was so full. What a gift she was to all who knew her.”
A detour from journalism
When she was younger, Ragsdale, who was born in Houston , wanted to be a foreign correspondent.
In the 2015 oral history interview, Ragsdale said journalism was “big” in her family. Her cousin worked as a television journalist, and her grandfather was an old newspaper editor from Galveston who “used to sit us on his knee and have a little folded up piece of newspaper, and he’d be explaining punctuation and spelling and how this works and why you put the open quotes over here and not over there.”
He would also send his grandchildren corrected copies of their letters that Ragsdale said they’d written to show what they’d done wrong.
“Yeah, I’m also a word lover,” Ragsdale said.
Ragsdale worked as a summer intern in the 1970s at the Denton Record-Chronicle, Elizabeth Clark, a former lifestyle and features editor at the Record-Chronicle , wrote in a Saturday email.
After college, Ragsdale spent a couple of years in Guatemala and Argentina, where she worked at what she called “the newspaper of my dreams.”
“It was the job that I always thought that I wanted in this setting,” Ragsdale recalled in 2015. “It was a big metropolitan paper. I’m like, ‘This is it. This was Clark Kent’s type of newspaper, the real deal.’ But what surprised me was that I just could not stand living in the city. I did not like city life at all.”
Ragsdale returned home and started working year-round in 1982 at the Heart O’ the Hills camp and became camp director six years later.
Built in 1928, the camp was originally a resort to house parents who brought their kids to the summer camps in the area. It’s located on the southern part of the Guadalupe River, which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said surged 26 feet in 45 minutes on Friday.
Heart O' the Hills became a summer camp in the early 1950s.
Ragsdale met her husband Richard “Dick” Howell Jr. in 1984. A Navy veteran, Howell died in June 2022 at the age of 84. They had one son.
"Dick was well known among tennis and pickleball players, was distinguished in Senior Games, and in pickleball was ranked #1 in the world in 2013. Dick and Jane published the quarterly 'Texas High School Hoops' from 1987-1991," according to Howell's obituary.
A trustee of this treasure
Over the years, Ragsdale said, Heart O' the Hills offered horseback riding, swimming lessons, canoeing, riflery, archery, hiking and arts and crafts.
In her 2015 interview, Ragsdale shared why the camp was so important to her when she discussed that her friends were talking about retirement and she was struggling to understand why.
“Then I realized, when they get up, they’re going to work,” Ragsdale said. “When I get up, I’m not going to work. I’m just doing what I love. I love what I do. … I heard a quote one time that I modified to make it gender neutral: ‘The person who loves what they do is always on vacation.’ I love what I do. I’m passionate about it but part of the reason it’s not a job for me, I feel like I am a trustee of this treasure and I’m trying to keep it going the best I can so that I can pass it along and give those kids today the same opportunities that I had at camp.”
