“The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River.”

Aaron Parsley recalls his family house on the Guadalupe River as a place of peace and tranquility, until July 4, 2025. In the early hours of the morning, a flash flood lifted the home off its foundations and tore it apart. Parsley and six members of his family were inside at the time, unable to evacuate the house for higher ground with floodwaters raging around them. This is Parsley’s harrowing, first-person account of the flooding and its aftermath in Kerr County, Texas.

In Alissa’s waking, grief-stricken moments, we told her over and over that saving Clay was impossible, that she did all she could. That the flood was in control. In the days since, she has talked about feeling Clay in her arms, and then not having him in her arms, and how she understood in that moment that he was going to die. She said over and over while we were in the house waiting for the first responders, “He can’t swim. He’s a baby.” 

The next day, Kerr County officials contacted Lance to let him know they’d found a deceased child that matched our description of Clay. My cousin Sam Parsley drove Lance, my aunt Lynne Parsley, and me to a makeshift morgue behind a Kerrville funeral home to confirm that it was the little boy we loved so much. It was.

According to an official we spoke to, Clay had been found along the Guadalupe near the Rio 10 Cinemas, on Bandera Highway, about a dozen miles from our property. Lance touched his little chest and wiped his blond hair and said, “That’s my boy.” 

And then to Clay: “We’re so sorry. We love you. Your Mama loves you so much. She tried to save you.”