He looked at me and the kids and my mother-in-law and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to make it. I love you all,” Julian Ryan’s fiancée, Christinia Wilson, recalled.

The 27-year-old father sacrificed his life to protect his fiancée, children, and mother as floodwaters engulfed their Texas home.

Julian Ryan’s final words to his mother, as floodwaters quickly engulfed their trailer home, were simply, “I love you.”