A year ago on July 4th, at 3:30 in the morning, Blair and Brooke Harber sent a text message to their parents. It said: “I love you.” A short time later, the two sisters — Blair, 13, and Brooke, 11 — were swept away by the Guadalupe River as catastrophic floodwaters tore through Hunt, Texas. Their grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harber, were lost in the same waters. When rescuers found Blair and Brooke the following day, fifteen miles downriver, their hands were locked together.
Mark Maguire, owner of Renny’s in Dallas, knew the family well. His wife has worked for St. Rita Parish for sixteen years. His children attended St. Rita School, the same school where Blair and Brooke were students, and where their mother Annie has taught for years. Mike and Charlene Harber — the girls’ grandparents — were regulars at Renny’s. They had dinner there two or three days before the flood took them.
“It’s just really close to us from a community standpoint,” Maguire said. “On top of the most unimaginable loss that anybody could possibly endure — it’s really close to us.”
Right after the floods last July, Maguire did what he could. So many St. Rita families were regulars at the restaurant, and nobody quite knew how to help. He ran a three-course menu with a $10 donation back to the community — simple, immediate, a neighborhood restaurant doing what it could do. A year later, as the anniversary approached, he called the Harber family.
“We reached out to the Harbers and asked if we could make this an annual fundraising event,” he said.
They said yes. From July 1 through 12, Renny’s is offering a $49 three-course dinner, with $10 from every order going directly to the Blair and Brooke Harber Beloved Sisters Fund at The Catholic Foundation — supporting flood relief, disaster relief, and the causes the girls cared about most, including Catholic primary school education.
But the most remarkable part of what Maguire is doing this week has nothing to do with the dinner menu.
Blair, the thirteen-year-old, was a baker. Her favorite thing to make was a Mexican vanilla chocolate chip cookie. So Maguire and his wife went into the kitchen and made them — Blair’s cookies, by her recipe, packed into boxes offered for a suggested $10 donation each.
“We made 30 boxes for today,” Maguire said. “And they’re gone.”
He paused. “We’re going to make 50 more. And we’ll probably be back to 50 boxes a day until this is done.”
The promotion runs through Sunday, July 12. The cookies are available at Renny’s, 11661 Preston Road, Suite 153, for a suggested $10 donation per box. Reservations for the three-course dinner at rennysdallas.com or by phone at (972) 818-0068. Donations to the fund directly at blairandbrooke.org.
Blair was thirteen years old. She loved to bake. She loved children and was studying childcare on her own. She was planning to audition for the lead in the school play. When her father opened her laptop after her death he found a recipe she had saved — penne pasta vodka sauce she was going to make. In another tab, a childcare certificate she had earned without being asked by anyone.
“In 13 and 11 years,” her father RJ said, “they changed more lives than most people do in a lifetime.”
Go get a box of cookies.
The fund set up in the girls honor benefits:
- Flood relief efforts and other disaster relief.
- Catholic primary school education.
- Catholic primary school sports programs.
- Catholic primary school after school programs.
- An endowment in honor of Blair and Brooke’s legacy.
- Notre Dame Catholic Church in Kerrville, Texas.
