How the Kerrville Folk Festival became a hub for recovery — and hope

The Kerrville Folk Festival is known for its music. But in the aftermath of last year’s tragic Fourth of July flooding, it became something else entirely.

Deb Rouse runs the Kerrville Folk Festival, an 18-day music festival held at Quiet Valley Ranch, about eight miles southwest of Kerrville.

For more than half a century, the festival has helped launch the careers of emerging musicians. But on the morning of the flood, Rouse quickly realized the ranch would serve a very different purpose.

“As I was sitting at my desk, my phone started ringing, both my cell phone and my office phone,” Rouse said. “And I can hear every other extension in the office ringing, and it was people from all over the country calling and saying, ‘We’re members of the festival community. How can we help? What can we do?’”

These were folk festival supporters who had seen news coverage of the flooding and wanted to help. Rouse initially directed people to organizations such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army, but eventually added a donation button to the Kerrville Folk Festival Foundation website.

“I anticipated we might get $10,000 just putting that button on our website. We raised $100,000 in about a two-month period,” she said.

But the festival wasn’t just raising money.

“We also made the decision to open the ranch up to displaced individuals who might need a place to go,” Rouse said.

Another call came from a nonprofit looking for a place to set up a kitchen to feed people affected by the flood.

“I said, ‘Well, actually, I have a commercial kitchen that’s not in use. Would that be helpful?’ And he was like, ‘That would be amazing.’”

Soon, the 50-acre festival grounds had become a hub for relief efforts, providing shelter, meals and support for flood survivors.

Almost everyone TPR interviewed for this story lost someone they knew. Volunteer and retired police officer Phil Engstrom wasn’t armed with a gun, but with decades of experience. He too felt the loss intensely.

“Coach Zunker was my son’s soccer coach, and we spent four years with him in high school, all the soccer games, and he was a very popular and wonderful guy,” Engstrom said.

Engstrom lives about seven miles northeast of Kerrville, and his home wasn’t damaged. But like many others, he felt compelled to help.

“My wife and I went and helped somebody muck out their house,” Engstrom said. “They had a story of how their son got swept out of the house but got into a tree, and mom got swept out and got into a tree. But the dad sat there on the roof of his house not knowing all night long if everyone was okay. That had to have been devastating.”

As donations poured in, the operation at Quiet Valley Ranch quickly expanded.

“There’s a food distributor out of Dallas that brought an 18-wheeler,” he said. “It was a refrigerator unit, and it had food, meat, chips, paper goods, napkins, everything you can imagine.”

Much of the food was perishable, so volunteers quickly organized meal production for hundreds of people.

“I’ve always said that I’m the type to run into the fire, right?” said chef Sarah Heard. “It’s an innate thing.”

Heard felt called to help in Kerrville, even though she lives on the other side of Austin.

“Oh man, I just got goosebumps,” Heard said. “The first thing that hit me was a smell, and I will never forget the smell.”

Heard threw herself into organizing the kitchen and planning the hundreds of meals volunteers would prepare.

“I would work my shift, and when we called it for a day, I would go down to the river and just walk,” Heard said. “I would turn my phone off and take it all in. I think that’s part of the reason I felt so strongly that I needed to be there and help with whatever I could.”

Chef Jon White was asked to come to Kerrville, with one condition:

“Be prepared to sleep in the bed of your truck as long as you want to hold out and meet me there as soon as you can.”

Almost immediately after arriving, he was helping prepare hundreds of meals.

“We have 500 meals, we have three hours. What can we do? And then just started pushing it out,” White said. “As soon as we got there, we had meals to do.”

White stayed for about a month.

“I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m really thankful that I got to do it,” he said.

Donette Jez, a coordinator with the Kerrville Folk Festival, said the flood was deeply personal.

“And I think the worst time is when my friend, when they found Jane’s guitar, and I lost it,” she said.

Jez said her friend Jane was a gifted musician.

“Jane was known to play the guitar to the children and have all these nice songs. Just a kind heart, very, very, very amazing woman,” she said.

Her loss was personal and devastating. But the relief effort also gave her a sense of purpose.

“There is an overwhelming loss, but by the same token, we’re in this together,” Jez said. “We all do it together.”

The Quiet Valley Ranch has given more than half a century to keeping folk music alive and growing. And after last year’s Fourth of July flood, it gave locals yet another reason to love it.

This story first appeared at Texas Public Radio.