A River of Sympathy

Three days after the floods that ravaged the Texas Hill Country on July 4, senior editor Aaron Parsley wrote a firsthand chronicle of his family’s experience of the tragedy and the loss of his one-year-old nephew, Clay Parisher. In the August 2025 issue, “Where the River Took Us” recounted the minute-by-minute horror of that morning, but it ended with a message of hope: a letter from Aaron to Clay’s sister, Rosemary, whose life was saved by her mother, Alissa. Millions of people read the story. Many wrote to us about it.

I have never written to a writer, but in this case, I was compelled to. There is no better way to understand the magnitude of survival and loss from that day than by reading this account. In a way I can’t fully explain, it made me feel like I was

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