A Champion’s faith: Former crew chief enduring storm
Piecing life back together after tragic boating accident
By Joe Menzer, NASCAR.COM
December 17, 2008
02:10 PM EST
type size: + -HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — Last year at this time, Cliff Champion sat lounging in the living room of his home. A lighted Christmas tree stood a few feet away from the couch the former NASCAR crew chief rested on, as the gentle waves from a large lake lapped at the doors of his converted 80-foot Somerset houseboat.
Once the man who helped build cars and call the race-day shots for the likes of Cale Yarborough, Dale Jarrett, Ricky Rudd, Benny Parsons, Richard Childress and Alan Kulwicki, Champion had long ago traded in the fast lanes of NASCAR tracks for the tranquil waters of Lake Norman, which boasts 520 miles of shoreline, a surface area of more than 50 miles and is located on the outskirts of Charlotte.
He ran a luxury charter boat business called Championship Yacht Charters, which catered to all kinds of folks looking to have a good time while floating on the water. He hosted wedding receptions, graduation parties — even the occasional celebratory party of a recent NASCAR winner — on the top two decks. His modest but more-than-adequate living quarters comprised most of the bottom deck.
He also hosted many charity events, including a series of cruises one day last May when he took 300 members of the U.S. Armed Forces out on the lake to show his appreciation for all that they do. Bobby Allison was among those who showed up to help him out in that endeavor.
Life seemed grand, its possibilities endless. And Champion loved the slow, leisurely pace of it all as he cruised his guests around the expansive lake at a top speed of 6 mph.
That all changed six months later, and life since has not been the same for Champion. On the afternoon of June 10, after dropping off 60 passengers who had been part of a high school graduation party, everything was altered in a grim, ghastly flash. Shortly after worker Nathan Coppick, 19, began refueling the boat, a powerful explosion engulfed it in flames, along with much of the Westport Marina dock where it had parked.
Crew members Katherine Jones and Jessica Young jumped from the boat and swam to safety. Champion and Mike Federal, father of the graduate being celebrated, also were on board along with Coppick. But while Champion and Federal were at the front of the boat, Coppick was near the rear, where the explosion had occurred.
Champion tried to get to Coppick through the flames.
“You couldn’t get to there because the whole back of the boat was a fireball,” Champion said then. “I couldn’t get to Nate.”
Eventually, Champion escaped along with Federal before the huge boat slipped underneath the green-gray waters of Lake Norman. Coppick wasn’t found until the next day, when a team of investigators and rescue workers pulled the boat up from the bottom of the cove where it had settled — and Coppick’s body was recovered in the rear near the engine room.
The aftermath>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Champion’s faith — and bevy of friends — has helped him cope with the tremendous loss as he continues to try to rebuild his life.
The boat was still on fire when he picked up his cell phone and called pastors at his nearby church, Grace Covenant. Like himself, two of them previously had worked in NASCAR.
“It was good because they were able to comfort the family, and the firemen, the workers, everybody — because it was a pretty bad scene,” Champion said.
When he emerged from the boat shortly before it slipped underwater, all Champion had on him were the bathing suit and tennis shoes he wore, and the cell phone he gripped in his hand. It was only then that he began grasping the seriousness of the situation, even as he and rescue workers continued to feverishly work in vain to find the missing Coppick.
“You don’t realize it even when it’s happening to you. A lot of people didn’t know that I did live on the boat and it was my business — so it was everything,” Champion said. “When it happened, I was busy trying to fight the fire and help the rescue guys, as was everybody, to either find the young man or help put out the fire.”
Soon it was on the news about what had happened. More friends from the NASCAR community started calling. Andy Petree and Phil Parsons showed up to help, as did Tom Cotter, a former roommate who had gone on to become a public relations giant in NASCAR and beyond.
“Deb Williams, an old sports writer, she called up and asked if I needed a place to stay. I kind of stood there in a daze for a second and thought, ‘Well, yeah, I guess I do.’ I wasn’t thinking about where I was going to sleep that night,” Champion said. “So that’s when it kind of starts hitting you at first. But it still takes a little while. Friends came up and gave me a little bit of money to get me through the night — because when I went off the boat, I had a pair of tennis shoes and a bathing suit. You can’t even go out to dinner without a shirt.”
When the boat was pulled from the water and placed on land at a storage facility, Champion faced another problem. Investigators still needed to sift through the wreckage, searching for clues as to what caused the blast. But others saw the hulking, charred remains of Champion’s former life as something else, and they started conspiring to steal what they could of it.
Still more folks from his NASCAR past stepped forward to help.
“Frank Davis, one of the old racers who originally came up with the concepts of Legend cars out in Phoenix, Ariz., he saw that as soon as we got the boat up on land and got it secured for the night, thieves started coming out and trying to steal what they saw as scrap aluminum. I needed to stay with the boat to guard it, because it was evidence that we needed to remain untouched until the investigators were done with it,” Champion said. “The very next day, Frank brought over a brand-new motorhome and parked it in the lot. And I stayed in his motorhome for two months. He’d come and get it and pump it out and fill it full of fuel and say, ‘Here you go.’ He wouldn’t let me give him a dime.”
When Davis finally came to retrieve the motorhome, other Good Samaritans emerged from the shores of Lake Norman.
“Some people I didn’t even know from one of the local churches called up. This woman and her husband were moving into a new house, and they offered me their old house to live in rent-free for two months. It was a house right on the water. I lived there for another two months,” Champion said.
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