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As Kerrville continues to clean up and build back after the July 4th flooding, on Saturday a Celebration of Life will be held for the woman who ran Heart O' the Hills girls’ summer camp—Jane Ragsdale.
Sara Elliott spent three summers there as a child, and credits Ragsdale with a lot. “She taught me to be brave. And it wasn't just me. Every single person that I've talked to that knew Jane Ragsdale and was one of her campers or one of the parents of their campers … all had a special relationship with her,” Elliott said.
When asked whether she remembered her first meeting with Ms. Ragsdale, despite the three decades since, she remembered it well.
“I do remember the first time I met Jane Ragsdale. I might have been 12,” she said. “She was the camp director, but she was also very easy to approach.”
And according to Elliott, that is a recurring theme regarding Ragsdale. "Everybody had a special relationship with her that knew her. I have never heard a bad thing said about Jane,” she said.
Thinking of her three summers there, Elliott remembers Ragsdale often playing guitar.
“She loved to sing with us under the stars. We sang 'Deep in the Heart of Texas.' We had a song book,” Elliott said. “We sang every night at dinner together. She played her guitar at Vespers.”
Elliott said that many missed their parents and homes, but that was one of the life lessons most learned there at camp.
“Being away from home was hard, but at the same time, it taught me independence,” she said.
And that’s one of the functions of summer camp: to encourage the young there to begin to develop the independence they will come to need as an adult.
“She was a very special person, and I didn't even know her for very long, but I still kept in touch with her when I was an adult, especially about my son going to camp,” Elliott said.
Saturday’s 2 p.m. Celebration of Life at Kerrville's First Presbyterian Church will likely be full of adults who went to Heart O' the Hills camp as children and want to remember and pay tribute to Jane Ragsdale.
