Kelly Clarkson cried during her talk show’s return to air on Monday, which marked the first time she has made a new appearance on screen since the death of her ex-husband earlier this year
Kelly Clarkson cried during her talk show’s return to air on Monday. The season seven premiere episode marked the Breakaway hitmaker’s first appearance on screen since her ex-husband Brandon Blackstock died of cancer last month and the 43-year-old star couldn’t hold back her emotions as she spoke to a group of bus drivers who helped rescue children during the deadly flash floods in Texas in July.
Kelly could be seen wiping away tears as Kerrville school district superintendent Dr. Brent Ringo discussed the impact the flooding – which killed 135 and left more missing – had on the community.
He said: “We activated our emergency operations plan in Kerrville ISD, and [sent] the text message out, ‘Anyone that can drive a bus?’
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“A bus driver, a coach, high school principal, our middle school assistant principal, assistant superintendents — within 10, 15 minutes [we] had a response that they were on the way.”
Some of the drivers then appeared on stage, including a teacher named Amanda who broke down as she recalled her experience picking up children from Camp Mystic, where 27 girls and counsellors were killed.
She said: “We took them to the reunification process — basically triage, they’re make sure everybody was okay.
“And they really had to take pictures to see what kids we had, because parents obviously were just in complete shock, they didn’t know what kids we had.
“It was awesome to see all the parents reunited with their kids. The hardest part was when the last kid got off your bus and the parents just asked, ‘Was that it?’ So it’s hard.”
Kelly wiped her eyes with a tissue and said: “And looking at the parents, I can’t…”
As she tailed off, Amanda replied: “Yeah, it’s awful.”
Kelly cried again when another driver, Geri, told how her young passengers comforted one another by singing Christian songs.
The Stronger hitmaker offered a round of applause for the bus drivers efforts in rescuing “900 children” who had been left stranded, and could then be seen wiping her eyes again as the school district superintendent discussed the “day by day” recovery efforts.
He said: “It’s gonna be a longterm recovery as we go through this, and so this year, we’re able to make sure all 5,000 kids received backpacks and school supplies. We wanted to take that burden off our parents as much as we could and the outpouring of support coming in helped take care of that.
“Everybody knows somebody that has lost someone, and so we have counselors in our buildings, outside of our buildings, we want to make sure our families are taken care of on their time. And so it’s going to be a longterm recovery process to make sure everyone’s taken care of.”
Kelly then introduced the public affairs manager of H-E-B, a Texas supermarket chain, who announced the company would continue their ongoing relief efforts with a $50,000 donation to the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas to help those affected and an additional $50,000 to the Kerrville Public School Foundation.
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