<\/p>\n
Doug and Joan McLeod at a Mardi Gras party. They have always loved to dance.<\/p>\n
Courtesy \/ Doug McLeod<\/p>\n
Doug joined the Marines at age 19.<\/p>\n
Courtesy \/ Doug McLeod<\/p>\n
Doug served several terms in the Texas Legislature.<\/p>\n
Courtesy \/ Doug McLeod<\/p>\n
Doug McLeod was born in 1941.<\/p>\n
Courtesy \/ Doug McLeod<\/p>\n
Doug served as president of the Galveston School District.<\/p>\n
Houston Chronicle archives<\/p>\n
Doug McLeod insists on keeping the speeches short. He and his wife, Joan, are at Galveston\u2019s opera house on May 30 to receive an award<\/a> honoring their civic contributions to the island, and Doug does not want to bore his guests. Their accomplishments are tangible enough. He would prefer that everyone have a good time.<\/p>\n They say hello to their friends \u2014 some newer, others who remember Doug in his wilder high school days \u2014 and smile for the cameras in their black-tie finery.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the speeches, the hosts propose they share a dance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Doug takes Joan\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n They have always loved to dance.\u00a0<\/p>\n LOVE STORY: She hadn’t spoken to her ex-husband in 50 years. Then came the flood.<\/a><\/p>\n Doug met Joan 71 years ago when they were both campers in the Hill Country. Doug went to Camp Stewart, escaping the Galveston humidity for a breeze that played along the Guadalupe River. Camp was a family tradition<\/a> Doug\u2019s mother began in the 1920s, one he and his siblings cemented. Doug and Joan sent their own blended family of six children. Then their grandchildren, who call them MommyO and DaddyO.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Hill Country camps gave Doug many of the people he loves most. He is not sure what to do with that place now.<\/p>\n Last July, Doug\u2019s youngest granddaughter, Blakely, his daughter Lindsey\u2019s only little girl, began her first summer at Camp Mystic<\/a>. She\u2019d been on the waiting list to attend her whole life. She never came home.<\/p>\n Doug McLeod smiles with his grandchildren at Christmas. Blakely, the youngest, is in the front.<\/p>\n Courtesy \/ Doug McLeod<\/p>\n March 2026<\/p>\n Doug has always been a man of faith \u2014 or at least, he likes to say, ever since he got a brain in his head after college \u2014 and so every Sunday, he walks through the doors of Galveston\u2019s Trinity Episcopal Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Sometimes, he notices a little girl who looks about eight years old fidgeting in the pew. Something inside him twists, and he catches himself before he falls too deep into memories.<\/p>\n He dreads Sunday afternoons. Those are the hardest times of the week because there\u2019s nothing to distract him. He was always a stiff upper lip sort of a man \u2014 that\u2019s how his father taught him to be \u2014 but these days, the tears will flow, and he won\u2019t be able to stop them.<\/p>\n In a span of five months, he lost his son-in-law, then his son, then his granddaughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n One Sunday evening, he talks to his daughter Lindsey, who misses her own daughter every day. She says, Think about what a great life Blakely had. She had eight years and more fun than anybody on this earth. She sang for her mother\u2019s phone camera like she was performing on a stadium stage, talked her grandparents into getting her an extra book at her school\u2019s fair, grinned atop a pony at her birthday party.\u00a0<\/p>\n He wishes he could have seen what she would\u2019ve been like as a woman.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Winter 2025<\/p>\n Doug reaches out to a friend who, for a moment, died on the operating table. His friend says he wasn\u2019t out for very long, but he remembers being greeted by his long-dead father.<\/p>\n It was beautiful, his friend says. He didn\u2019t want to come back.<\/p>\n Doug hopes everyone he loved felt this way, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n He tells himself Blakely must have drowned instantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n He chooses to imagine her smiling as she rushes into the open arms of her daddy and her uncle.\u00a0<\/p>\n November 10, 2025<\/p>\n With the parents of six other girls who died, Lindsey files a lawsuit against Camp Mystic and the\u00a0Eastlands, the family that has owned the camp since 1939. Dick Eastland, a longtime friend of the McLeod family, died in the flooding. (The suit is ongoing. The Eastlands have denied wrongdoing.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n