The all-girls Christian summer camp in Texas — where a frantic search is underway for survivors of a catastrophic flood — has been a destination for the daughters of Texas’s political elite since it was founded nearly a century ago.
Camp Mystic, situated along the Guadalupe River in the tiny town of Hunt, has been a beloved summer retreat for some of the most influential young women in the Lone Star State — and national politics, according to a 2011 Texas Monthly story The Post discovered Friday.
The daughters of former Texas Govs. Dan Moody, Price Daniel and John Connally, who was shot as he sat next to President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, all attended the camp, according to the outlet.
The daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson — JFK’s successor and one of Texas’ most formidable politicians — also summered at Camp Mystic, per Texas Monthly.
James Baker, who served as chief of staff to Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, sent his daughter and a granddaughter to Camp Mystic, the outlet added.
While attending Southern Methodist University, future first lady Laura Bush was a Camp Mystic counselor, years before she married George W. Bush, who would serve as Texas governor he, like his father, became president, according to Texas Monthly.
Campers would go on to “become executives for Neiman Marcus, dance with London’s Royal Ballet, own a Gymboree franchise in the former Soviet Union, or marry well and become the kind of intensely focused volunteers who would probably be happier as CEOs,” the outlet wrote.
“I don’t care where my goddaughter goes to college, but I do care where she goes to camp,” Mystic alum Catherine Jones told a reporter.
Camp Mystic, which will celebrate its 100th birthday next year, was founded by EJ “Doc” Stewart, a former head football coach at the University of Texas, in 1926, according to its website.
Its mission is “to provide young girls with a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem,” its site added.
Aside from when the federal government leased Camp Mystic as “a convalescent camp for Army Air Corps veterans of World War II” between 1943 and 1945, it has operated continuously since its founding, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
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