Chuck and Cathie Baldwin were driving in the dark early on Election Day to work a shift at their polling place in rural Missouri when floodwaters overtopped a creek and swept their vehicle off the road. The couple, married for more than half a century, were later found dead, clinging to a tree and to each other.
Wright County Sheriff Sonny Byerley said the Baldwins — who regularly volunteered to help in elections — tried to swim to dry ground but drowned, among at least five people killed Tuesday as torrential rains drenched the state.
“When I’d go to the polling locations, they were there and they were always happy to be a part of it,” said Byerley, who polices the county of about 19,000 residents, 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City. “They did believe in the American republic and the polling system.”
The state’s highway patrol and the sheriff have not released their names, saying only that the man who died was 70 and the woman was 73. But the Baldwins’ daughter, Michelle Baldwin-Bostian, of North Carolina, confirmed their identities Wednesday.
News spread fast among the couple’s friends in tiny, tightknit unincorporated Manes, Missouri, where voters filled out their ballots in a music hall that regularly hosts performances by local artists.
In this heavily Republican-leaning community, the Baldwins were rare Democrats, which is why they were tapped to join a bipartisan team working the polls, said 52-year-old Patty Squirell, who worked with Cathie Baldwin at a liquor store in nearby Mountain Grove.
“Cathie was an angel here on earth,” she said. “She was so nonjudgmental and so loving and so kind. And we’re all in deep mourning.”
Tanisha Ledford, who lived on the same dirt road as the couple for a decade, remembered how they watched her children when she was working three jobs, sometimes not getting home until 3 a.m.
“You couldn’t go wrong with either one of them,” Ledford said. “Chuck stood up for the innocent, and Cathie would feed the poor. She did. I watched her do it. No one went hungry around her.”
Lindsi Snyder, a teacher at Manes Elementary, said her parents were close to the Baldwins. She described how Chuck wasn’t even 18 when he met Cathie and that the besotted young couple decided very quickly that they wanted to marry.
In 2022, Cathie Baldwin marked their 52nd wedding anniversary with a Facebook post calling Chuck “the love of my life.”
The sheriff said the Baldwins were driving in the dark on a two-lane highway around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday when their car was suddenly swept away by floodwaters from the fast-rising Beaver Creek.
Three teenage boys in another car that was swept away at about the same time were able to swim to safety, and they knocked on the door of a nearby house to call 911. Byerley said the boys then returned to the surging water to try to reach the Baldwins.
“They were out of their car, clinging to a tree,” Byerley said of the couple.
