TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — The chain of a necklace, a pair of warped glasses, voice recordings — Sherry McCutcheon and her sister, Terry Traugott, cling to the small things. It’s all they have left of the three family members they lost in last year’s flash floods.
But those small, tangible reminders of their brothers, Gary and Doug, and their mother, Betty, don’t fill the room with laughter — on Christmas, birthdays, nights when they would take “momma” to get the Chinese food she loved so much but was not supposed to eat.
In the year since devastating flash floods claimed the lives of more than 130 people across Central Texas, Traugott and McCutcheon have dedicated themselves to making sure their family members are represented as more than just a number, a tally, a small portion of a breathtaking death toll.
And while there are still plenty of moments of levity for the two — like when asked them to sit on a bench and it sank into the dirt, prompting thunderous laughter from both about how they were going to go bottoms up on TV — they regularly bring up how much they miss it, the laughter, and that the crushing absence of it is a painful reminder of what they lost…