Alamo Heights residents tie green ribbons to honor those missing in South Texas floods

Alamo Heights in San Antonio is a tight-knit community, the kind of place where kids who start kindergarten together also graduate from high school together and stay friends long after. 

When community members learned that one of their own went missing in the devastating July 4 flash flooding, they quickly thought of ways to show their support: tying green ribbons around the trees and streetlights lining the streets of Alamo Heights.

Kellyanne Lytal, a student at Cambridge Elementary in the Alamo Heights Independent School District, is one of several campers that went missing from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp located in Hunt on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Early Friday morning, the river rose 25 feet within two hours, tearing trees from their roots and resulting in at least 109 deaths. More than 160 people are still missing, including five children and a counselor from Camp Mystic. 

Kellyanne’s father, Trinity University football offensive coordinator Wade Lytal, went to social media July 6 to ask community members to pray for his daughter. 

“Asking for all prayers for a miracle for my baby girl Kellyanne. She is still one of the Mystic Campers who is unaccounted for,” Lytal said. “I’ll never forget when she told me she had a lead solo in the Christmas Pageant. She is absolutely fearless.”

The community responded immediately.

“There’s a heavy pull on all of us,” said Marianne DiSabato, a longtime resident and retired AHISD teacher who lives down the street from the Lytal family on Abiso Avenue. 

DiSabato tied a green ribbon around a tree in her front yard Monday morning after learning about the effort from some local moms. Since then, she’s visited several stores to buy more green ribbon for her neighbors, in some places not finding any left. 

“It’s to show the family no one’s forgetting them,” she said. “We’re all hoping for a miracle.” 

The green ribbons are meant to represent the official colors of Camp Mystic. Green can also represent safety, renewal, harmony or nature — and it’s the color many campers wore in widely shared photos on social media. 

Two brightly colored green bows adorn Cambridge Elementary’s welcome sign on Townsend Avenue and Cambridge Oval. It’s the first place the ribbons went up, so that the Lytal family could see community cares, DiSabato added. 

The San Antonio Zoo will also illuminate its parking garage overlooking U.S. Route 281 in green lights through the end of July to honor “a local family’s request to display green ribbons in observance of their missing daughter,” a spokesperson said on Tuesday. 

Heritage Pediatrics, a clinic that serves the Alamo Heights neighborhood, put together “tree ribbon packages” for residents who can’t find any more green ribbon in stores and would like to show their support. 

In a message to AHISD families, Superintendent Dana Bashara said many students were campers at other locations along the river who experienced the “fear and trauma” of the floods. 

The district partnered with Alamo Heights Baptist Church to offer counseling services earlier this week, and the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas will offer healing circles open to the public on July 11 from noon to 1 p.m. 

“In times like these, it is more important than ever that we lean on one another and offer compassion, love and support,” Bashara said. 

AHISD is a small district, serving about 4,700 students in total. DiSabato, who worked there for 25 years, said any student’s absence will be felt deeply. 

The impact of the Guadalupe River flooding can also be felt at Trinity University, which is nestled off 218 behind the zoo parking structure.

KSAT reported Tuesday that the university’s head coach Jerheme Urban, along with several football players, went to the disaster site to help look for Kellyanne and Aidan Heartfield, a marketing major at Trinity who is also missing after the floods. 

“Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and loved ones as search and rescue efforts continue. We will do all we can to support them during this incredibly difficult time,” the university said on Facebook. 

Alamo Heights mayor Al Honigblum confirmed Kellyanne is an AHISD student to the Report, and said a few residents are also grandparents of two girls who’ve died in the flooding but are requesting privacy. 

“The connectivity within our community is endless,” Honigblum said. 

While search-and-rescue efforts continue in the Hill Country area, Alamo Heights residents will keep the green ribbons tied around their trees and stoops as they wait for their missing neighbors to come home. 

To learn more about how to help victims of the Central Texas floods, read this story.