Campers Honor Camp Mystic With Dining Hall Memories

To support those affected by the floods in central Texas on July 4, please consider donating to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund which supports short- and long-term efforts to help the community rebuild and assist those impacted by the natural disaster.

For eight summers during my childhood, the month of July was fully booked. I’d pack a trunk full of swimsuits, Nike shorts, and white Hanes t-shirts and my parents would take my sister and me on a six-hour drive through Texas, from our hometown of Beaumont to the small unincorporated community of Hunt, where we’d be dropped off at the green grounds and rolling hills of Camp Mystic.

I didn’t attend Mystic for as long as some of my peers. My first summer on the banks of the Guadalupe River was after I finished the second grade — the earliest age you could enroll — and I didn’t return to the all-girls camp after my sophomore year of high school, opting instead to spend every second of summer with the boyfriend I started dating that fall and friends in my home town. 

Those who did go to Mystic through the end of high school would eventually become “aides” in their final year as campers, a role that brought responsibilities leading activities and helping supervise younger girls, in addition to an array of privileges, freedom, and opportunities to bond. Mystic made sure that your final summer as a camper was a special one, and I know that girls with this depth of connection are struggling with grief as they learn about the lives that have been lost and buildings that were destroyed on the grounds of their home away from home.

Even without those last few summers, the tragic floods in Texas that swept through the Hill Country and devastated Camp Mystic have prompted the resurgence of all the bright, beautiful memories I did make there over the course of eight years. 

My heart is filled with deep sorrow for so many. At least 121 people whose lives were lost in the floods. At least 27 of them were campers and counselors who died during what should have been one of the most joyful summers of their lives. The Eastland family lost its patriarch, Dick Eastland, one of the owners and directors of Camp Mystic who died trying to save young girls from the rising waters. Paula Jo Zunker, one of my favorite counselors at Mystic, who rode horses with me for several summers, lost her life along with her husband and children. 150 people are still missing. 

We, at least, have our memories and one another with whom to grieve. I’ve witnessed so many people who love Camp Mystic coming together to show support for their community and mourn the destruction of this happy, special place. 

Dick and his wife Tweety — the married couple who acted as parental figures for campers, in addition to serving as directors and owners of this nearly 100-year-old camp — developed an environment that stuck with girls well beyond our years at camp and which is now helping us process our sadness and pay tribute to a place that brought joy to so many people. And for many of us, that bond was formed at the tables of Harrison Hall.

Attending this camp was a privilege. My parents were able to afford it, they could spare the time to drive and drop me off, and they knew to put me on the waiting list years in advance. Part of that privilege was a dining program that included dishes so good campers remember them decades later. 

We ate at wooden tables in the massive dining hall, now ripped apart by the river that flowed just a short distance downhill. Each table sat one to two counselors and six or seven campers with a family-style spread. Some meal options would repeat once every week, like French toast sticks for breakfast or grilled chicken for dinner. Others were reserved for once-a-term special occasions, like chocolate mousse served in a bowl made of chocolate.

When I asked former Mystic campers what dishes, traditions, and dining hall memories they held most dear, the number of specific meals people remembered took me by surprise. One of my former counselors and a long-time Mystic camper herself, Lauren McGrew-Hitzhusen, told me, “The triple chocolate cookies haunt me. That’s my number one favorite thing EVER. Has anyone said chef salad bread yet?”

By “chef salad bread,” she meant the genius invention by campers presented with the salad bar-like spread we were offered for lunch. The array of lettuce, ham, cheddar cheese, and standard accoutrements came with soft, rectangular, and slightly flattened loaves of bread that we would in half, tear open the center, leave all of the crust intact, and stuff the interior with our preferred salad toppings. I filled my bread boat with pesto pasta salad, which is something I should probably resurface in my life now.

Rachel Taylor, a camper from 2009–2019, recalled a few favorites. “Their pizza and ranch! The best. Also the pesto bow tie pasta. Bananas Foster night, chocolate mousse night, and of course peanut butter with ice cream.” Mystic is where I learned that ranch belongs on pizza, and that other unusual combos make perfect sense.

As Courtney Franks, one of my childhood friends and a fellow Mystic camper who was in the same cabin as me for eight years, recalled, we always enjoyed “a cool new flavor of Blue Bell ice cream every day after lunch.” The flavor of this Texas-based ice cream brand would vary from Monday to Saturday, but we always had vanilla on Sundays, and we always ate that vanilla ice cream with peanut butter. It was just what you did — and some of us still do, I even taught my current roommate to spoon peanut butter onto most bowls of ice cream. 

Many girls extended the peanut butter combination to other days. Former camper and counselor Savannah Wiseman, who attended her aide year in 2005, mused that, “One of life’s great mysteries is why a spoonful of peanut butter on top of a scoop of Blue Bell ice cream tastes better at Mystic than it tastes at home.” For her and her cohort, that even included rainbow sherbet.

That Sunday dessert was always preceded by a lunch of fried chicken. As another former camper and Taylor’s sister, Ali Christie, recalled, “On Sundays we wrote chicken letters in exchange for fried chicken.” She’s not the only person who reminded me of the chicken letter tradition, which Mystic used as a way to ensure we’d write a letter to our parents at least once a week. (I regularly ended up writing a “letter” that was just drawing of a chicken.) 

Another unforgettable moment was always the breakfast spread at parent pick-up. On the final day of camp, when families came to take their campers home, the kitchen — run by Richard Eastland, Dick and Tweety’s eldest son — would put out an impressive assemblage of burritos, breakfast treats, coffee, and most importantly, decorative fruit displays that featured watermelons, citrus, and more carved into the shape of roses or fun faces.

And then there were Tweety cookies. These oatmeal chocolate chip treats were highly coveted among campers, partially because they were so delicious, and because they came with the added magic of being made by and named after one of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet. Several former aides reminisced about their time learning to cook with Tweety, a class reserved for girls in their final year that left permanent impressions upon them. Christie recounts that “At least once a week (maybe more often) the aides got to learn from Tweety how to cook a couple of different dishes. I specifically remember making Caesar salad from scratch.”

Even the most mundane parts of Mystic meals stick in our memories. Maggie Wilson Gardiner — a camper for nine years and a counselor for eight, totaling 17 years at camp — shared, “Every table always had a jar of peanut butter and packets of jelly because nothing cures homesickness quite like a PB&J.” Or as former camper and counselor Lauren Rice recollects, “Hear me out, but the Mystic salads just hit different in Harrison Hall. That crispy romaine in those frosted plastic bowls. The ranch dressing. The homemade balsamic that I’d douse all over my salad.”

But it wasn’t just the food itself that lingers in the minds of Mystic campers. Banging on tables and singing songs — the same ones year after year — were a core part of our meals. After spending her summers as a camper from 199–2008, and as a counselor from 2009–2012, Katherine Cunningham remembered quite a few of them, listing off “’Wiggalo,’ ‘Weenie Man,’ ‘Purple Lights,’ and ‘Slue-Foot-Sue.’” If you’re wondering what “Weenie Man” is, I’m so sorry, but you had to be there.

The part of Mystic dining that seems to have stuck with us the most is the seating chart. We were assigned to a new dining table each week, with girls from different age groups who likely didn’t know each other. Alexandra Watt shared the impact of the mandated seating arrangements throughout her nine summers as a camper, saying,  “I was so shy and it was initially so daunting to sit with people outside of my cabin, but that was a godsend in the end.”

The community that this seating system cultivated had a lasting impact on former camper and counselor Carolyn Clare Hotze, who said, “I think this is what makes Camp Mystic so special. Between the dining room and activities, it’s such a close-knit group since you aren’t just making friends in your cabin but all throughout camp.”

“You knew if a little girl at your table was homesick and you’d see her around camp and give her a big hug. You knew if an intermediate was trying out for kickball and hoped her name would be called in the dining hall by the sports managers. You’d come together and talk about the ice cream flavors, who caught a fish, and hope together about what mail awaited you on the other side of lunch,” she continued. “My husband asked me yesterday, besides the friends, what my favorite part of Mystic was, and that’s what I said.”

Amanda Franklin Ainsworth — a camper for 10 years and a counselor for three — echoed this sentiment, saying, “I think part of the magic of Mystic was the way that all of the little things helped teach us life lessons without us even realizing it. Looking back, the dining hall taught us a lot about community and serving others. Assigned seating ensured that we looked out for one another and made sure that everyone felt like they belonged.”

These are only a handful of the thoughtful, nostalgic messages I received when I asked my fellow Mystic alumni to send me some of their favorite dining hall memories. Reflecting on these moments won’t bring back the people that have been lost or undo the damage of the floods, but it will honor the ongoing legacy of a place that brought so much joy to many people before this summer, the camp of our dreams.