Hundreds join prayer service for Marin family missing in Texas floods
Three members of a Kentfield family remained missing Wednesday after a flood devastated the area in Texas where they vacationed during the Independence Day weekend.
RELATED: Texas flood: Marin County couple and teen son among the missing
Hundreds joined a prayer service for the family at St. Sebastian’s Catholic Church in Kentfield on Tuesday night. The missing residents are Mark and Sara Walker and their 14-year-old son Johnny. The Walkers’ daughter Ellie, 16, is alive.
“It was just a meaningful service that meant so much,” Greenbrae resident Pamela Schaefer said after the event. “We miss them all. It’s just so tragic.”
The church is next to Marin Catholic High School, where Ellie Walker is a student and her brother is enrolled as an incoming freshman.
Ellie Walker survived the flooding at Camp Waldemar, an all-girls summer camp that is close to her family’s vacation home in Hunt. Her parents and brother are among the 161 people reported missing in Kerr County.
Statewide, 173 people are missing, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday. The death toll from the floods increased to nearly 120. Floodwaters rose 20 feet along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country on Friday.
On Sunday night, hundreds of people attended a candlelight vigil for the Walkers at Bacich Elementary School in Kentfield.
San Rafael resident Kathy Walker, the mother of Mark Walker, told the Bay Area News Group on Monday that she saw a photo of her son’s Texas home.
“It’s crashed and gone,” she said.
Mark Walker’s brother, former San Francisco Giants player Tyler Walker, traveled to Texas to be with his niece.
“All we can do is wait and pray for a miracle at this point,” Kathy Walker said.
At St. Sebastian’s Catholic Church, families, parishioners and students attended the service. Many of them hugged each other outside the church afterward.
Several young attendees wore their Bombers Baseball Academy team uniforms. Mark Walker coached the Bombers along with T-ball and Little League teams, his mother said.
David Winters, a Corte Madera resident whose son graduated from Marin Catholic, attended the gathering. He described the outpouring of support for the Walkers as stunning.
“It’s one big family,” Winters said. “We’re just lucky to have each other.”
Gabriel Wankar, the leader of St. Anselm Church and School in Ross, said he recognized members of his church and graduates of his school at the service.
“The sheer number of people at the prayer service was a moving testament to how deeply this tragedy has shaken our community,” Wankar said. “The silence of high school students spoke volumes. It was a silence that said, ‘We are heartbroken, we care, we’re here.’”
“Nobody has the answers, but in Christian hope, we showed up,” he said. “That’s what love does, and in that gathering I saw the quiet strength and beauty of a community that is at the core of humanity — not the negativities that we see on television.”
Schaefer said the community must keep the faith.
“You have to believe that there was a purpose and give it up to God,” she said.