Penny Deupree is the great-granddaughter of legendary author Frances Hodgson Burnett, who penned the novel A Little Princess in 1905 and The Secret Garden in 1911. Burnett’s stories have become classics and have stood the test of time. But after the July 4th flood in Hunt, Penny and her family found remaining books from Burnett in the rubble.
Reflecting on the night that destroyed her home, Deupree tells of a moment when personal survival was all that mattered. The house was full of nine family members at the time, including a one-year-old and Penny’s three-year-old great-grandchild. Somehow, everyone made it to safety, an outcome she says was nothing short of a miracle.
The Storm
In the early morning of July 4th, Penny’s son Tad Deupree woke to water from the Guadalupe River rushing into his mother’s home. Tad and Penny rushed to wake the other seven family members. But they soon found it impossible to escape through any doors on the first floor as water rushed around them.
Instead, all nine ascended a ladder to an upstairs loft, hoping for safe ground. Tad found a decorative buoy from a lobster cage that the family began using as a battering ram to break through the upstairs wall of the house in hopes of escaping the home. After 20 minutes of desperate pounding, the family created an 18-inch hole, just wide enough for each person to slip through.
Once outside, the family waded into deadly waters, but were able to grip the home’s gutters and climb onto the roof. There, they spent the next two hours wondering what might happen next. “I just knew we were going to get out. I mean, there was no other option,” Penny remembers. In those furious and desperate moments, Penny says her attitude was clear and simple: “Don’t ever give up. And say a lot of prayers.”
During their time on the roof, surrounded by storms and lightning, family members sang to the young children to help them fall asleep. A bright light broke through the darkness from a neighbor who heard their cries on the roof. Penny instructed the neighbor to get a ladder near her garage. But Penny recalls, “He came back after he looked for it and said, ‘There is no garage.’”
The Aftermath
Like many families along the Guadalupe River, the Deupree family found themselves digging through debris and managing the remains of a house ravaged by water. “We have three kids and seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren,” Penny says, “and I’m telling you, all the children have been down here taking their turn helping us through the litter that’s all around the property.”
Hundreds of households along the Guadalupe have been trying to clean up and heal, especially around Hunt, the small community hit hardest by the floodwaters. The area’s destruction didn’t spare Camp Mystic and Heart of the Hills—both youth camps—which experienced some of the greatest loss of the flood tragedy, including the deaths of several young children. That’s a fact not lost on Penny. “I’m grateful that the list of missing is going down,” Penny says. “And I hurt so much that all these kids, and anybody who was killed by this, was just…well, we were lucky.”
Penny believes that her family now consists of nine walking miracles. When asked why they survived, she credits only God and a lot of prayer. “God was with us every second of the way. And we are a prayerful family,” Penny declares. “You can’t question what’s going on. We made it, and that’s all that matters.”
Because of the miracle of their survival, Penny hopes to keep sharing their story—perhaps carrying on the legacy of her great-grandmother. “I know that people need to hear it. God was at work the whole time. He was pretty busy that night.”