Northwestern Grad Dies After Wakeboarding Injury

LAKE WATEREE,None — There's nothing John Clinton loved more than packing a boat full of friends to try to make the biggest wave for wakeboarding.

That's one way the 19-year-old Northwestern High School graduate "lived life to the fullest," his older brother Danny Clinton said.

John Clinton was injured Sunday after hitting his head on the water while wakeboarding on Lake Wateree. He was pronounced dead the following afternoon at a Columbia hospital. He also had been injured while wakeboarding on Lake Wylie about three weeks earlier.

Danny Clinton, 22, shared memories of roughhousing with his younger brother as children and all the "daredevil" things they did on their bikes.

"He was always going 100 percent to the fullest," Danny Clinton said. "Life was an opportunity to have a great time.

"Whether it was jumping off the highest rock into water ... tackling the hardest or trying to make the impossible catch, he didn't let the opportunity to make that statement - or do his best - pass him by."

There wasn't a whole lot his brother failed at, Danny Clinton said.

"That goes all the way from sports to academics to school to his social life," he said. "He loved wakeboarding. It ended his life, but he had a great time doing it."

John Clinton's uncle said his nephew loved all water sports, but wakeboarding was a passion.

"I had taken him out wakeboarding a month ago," said Jim Clinton, a partner in Clinton Family Ford with his brother and John's father, Dan Clinton. "When he landed his first flip with the smile on his face, you would have thought he won the lottery."

John Clinton was captain of the Northwestern High School golf team. He was a scratch golfer, his uncle said, and loved to play sports - including snowboarding, basketball, fishing and disc golf. He played AAU baseball with the Palmetto Vipers.

Clinton was an exceptional student in high school, graduating with highest honors and full international baccalaureate certification. That carried over into his freshman year at Clemson University, where he made the dean's list while studying industrial engineering - just like his brother Danny. He was active in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

John Clinton was one of eight cousins who grew up together in Rock Hill, his uncle said.

"Someone once made a comment that the Clinton kids don't have cousins in town, they have brothers and sisters," Jim Clinton said.

He saw his nephew as a special young man who was always doing something goofy to make other people laugh.

John Clinton was a member of St. Anne Catholic Church and Young Life, a nondenominational Christian ministry.

"He had a deep faith beyond his years," Jim Clinton said. "He was involved in the church. He loved to play music."

Clinton used music to "pump" himself up, his brother said. Whether he was going to study or play disc golf, he'd get excited the same way - by cranking up the Eminem song, "Lose Yourself."

"He wasn't into rap all that much," Danny Clinton said, "but the lyric, 'Lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it,' was a motto he lived by and would want others to embrace."

Clinton was declared dead at 12:50 p.m. Monday. His body remained on a ventilator, his uncle said, so several of his organs could be donated.

"He chose to give the gift of life of five major organs to hopefully expand life to those in need right now," Jim Clinton said. "He checked the (organ donor) box on his driver's license.

"At 16 years old, he had the foresight to see that he wanted to be a part of that. That's the kind of man he was."

Despite his nephew's death, Jim Clinton said, wakeboarding is not a dangerous sport.

"It was a freak accident," he said. "We're a water family. John loved to wakeboard. He loved the sport.

"God just took him early."

Services

John Clinton will be buried at 1 p.m. Friday at Forest Hills Cemetery in Rock Hill. A memorial service will follow at 2 p.m. at St. Anne Catholic Church in Rock Hill.

WSOC