Chuck and Cathie Baldwin were married for 54 years.
They met as teenagers at Mountain Grove High School in southern Missouri and moved to Germany when he joined the Army. Later, they worked together in construction, living in Texas and California, and then took turns driving the same long-haul truck, crisscrossing the country for about 15 years.
Nearly every summer, they threw a homespun music festival called Chuckstock on their farm outside Manes, Mo., with food, beer and family and friends playing classic rock and blues on a stage Mr. Baldwin had built.
“They were rockers, man,” said Tanisha Ledford, a friend and former neighbor. “They were children of the ’60s.”
Both were also Democrats in a conservative area, and had volunteered to serve as poll workers on Election Day. As some of the few Democrats in their area, they were often enlisted for election-related work to ensure some partisan balance, family members said.
But as the couple drove before dawn to their polling place in a music hall in Manes, their car was caught in a flash flood. As much as 8 inches of rain had fallen over the previous 48 hours, causing a nearby creek to overflow its banks.
When the Baldwins’ bodies were found, they were holding on to each other and clinging to a tree in the water, according to the Wright County sheriff, Sonny Byerley. Grieving family members said they were not surprised that the couple died together.
“No one who knows them would imagine Chuck letting go of Cathie,” said Forest Boggs, a nephew who lives on the Baldwins’ property. “There is no situation that arose where he would have let her go.”
The Baldwins had two children and four adult grandchildren, family members said.
Ms. Ledford said the Baldwins also took care of her two children when she was working multiple jobs, at a gas station, a liquor store and a farm. She remembers Mr. Baldwin brushing her daughter’s hair as she read him a book and Ms. Baldwin and her son picking green beans from her garden.
“If you needed help and they could help, they would,” Ms. Ledford said. “They were wonderful people.”
Mr. Baldwin was outspoken and had challenged others who believed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Mr. Boggs said.
“Chuck stood out wherever he went, all around the world,” Mr. Boggs said, adding: “He never held his tongue. But he could hit it off with anybody from anywhere.”
Mr. Baldwin, 70, often called politicians to express his concerns about the direction of the country, relatives said.
“He wanted the little guy to get what the little guy needed and not the fat cats, as he would say,” said Stormy Bultas, a niece.
“He had worked in construction for his entire adult life and been in the military and saw people from a lot of different backgrounds,” Ms. Bultas said. He “definitely felt like there are a lot of people who get chewed up and spit out and used, especially manual laborers.”
Ms. Baldwin, 73, shared her husband’s views, but “she wasn’t one to try to push or ruffle any feathers the way that Chuck would’ve,” Ms. Bultas said. In that way, they were a good match, she said.
“You kind of have to have one calm, if you have one rowdy,” she said.
Music was a huge part of their lives. Mr. Boggs called them “proud hippies.”
They saw the Rolling Stones and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils together, and Mr. Baldwin collected thousands of records, which he kept stacked in floor-to-ceiling shelves. Big Brother and the Holding Company was his favorite band, Ms. Bultas’s husband, Jim Bultas, said. Mr. Baldwin also raised cows on the farm.
“His favorite things were his cows and his records,” Mr. Boggs said.
Ms. Baldwin liked to garden and watch hummingbirds. So Mr. Baldwin, who was always working on their house, “tore out and rebuilt the entire front room so Cathie could sit with her plants and watch the hummingbirds,” Mr. Bultas said.
On Saturday, friends and relatives, dressed in tie-dye and band T-shirts, gathered at the Manes school gym for a memorial service for the Baldwins. Many shared stories about the couple, appreciating Ms. Baldwin’s kindness and Mr. Baldwin’s readiness to help neighbors with projects on their property.
Ms. Ledford said the Baldwins showed that “love still exists.”
“There’s still kindness,” she said. “There are still good people in the world. You’ve just go to find them. They’re there.”
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