River provides hallowed Haller all the noise he needs
Charlotte Observer
6/27/2000
Canoeist doesn't eat or drink anything he considers impure, and he won't get into a plastic boat.
"I just love the sport," he says. "I love the dance on water."
WESSER, NC -- On the bulletin board outside the Nantahala Outdoor Center are advertisements for wolf hybrids, Gore-Tex, kayaks and canoes. On the bumper of a car that drives past on U.S. 19/74 is the message, Dam Politicians, Not Rivers. In the air is the pleasant and powerful sound of water rushing across rock.
Here along the Nantahala River, 13 miles west of Bryson City and about 3 1/2 hours west of Charlotte, is a culture like few others. The only people in a hurry are the tourists, and when the woman behind the counter at a coffee shop called Kim's hears me ask a man if we're late, she smiles and says, "There is no late here."
People hike through the Great Smoky Mountains, ride mountain bikes and paddle, some of the paddlers spending 45 minutes of their lunch hour riding a wave. Three of the five members of the U.S. Olympic whitewater canoe/kayak team compete for the Nantahala Racing Club, which is based across the river from the outdoor center. "The Juilliard of paddling," Joe Jacobi, a gold medal winner in Barcelona, Spain, calls the NRC.
Like all cultures, this one has its own legends and one of them is Lecky Haller, a canoeist on the U.S. team that will compete in Sydney, Australia. I pick a paddler at random and ask him if he has heard of Haller. This is like going to a Charlotte playground and asking a big man if he has ever heard of Shaquille O'Neal.
"Hear of him? To be in the Olympics, at the age he is, in his late 30s, is incredible," says Josh Munn, 21.
Haller will be 43 in August.
"That's even more incredible," says Munn, who has been paddling since he was 5 and just finished leading a group of tourists down the Nantahala. "He's one of my idols, definitely. He works out six days a week two to three hours a day."
Actually, he works out in the water six days a week for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, and lifts weights twice a week and runs.
"And he's a total purist," says Munn. "He's never been in a plastic boat and he has never put anything that isn't pure into his body."
That's true about the plastic and the purity now. The man doesn't even drink coffee and has been known to put water, instead of milk, on his cereal. But Haller says he got drunk once back in college, at Johns Hopkins or Washington (Md.) College, where he was first-team All-America in lacrosse.
"I have nothing but respect for him," says Munn. "And he's a nice guy, too."
The son of two doctors from Glencoe, Md., Haller learned to paddle at summer camp near Hendersonville as a 12-year-old, and has yet to relinquish his oar.
"I did have a job!" Haller says excitedly. Most of what he says he says excitedly.
He taught paddling for two years at the NRC. So he has been employed for two of his 42 years. It's a good way to stay young. He is 6-foot-0 and 175 pounds, lean and strong, with thick shoulders, thick brown hair and a thick moustache. Although he finished fourth in the Barcelona Olympics and was ranked No.1 in the world in 1996, he has made little money from the sport. Nobody in this country does.
Haller lives simply with his wife, Nicole, a free-lance writer, in a compact house off an unpaved road outside Bryson City. He drives a 16-year-old Suburban. Take a tour of the house and you'd know the guy even if you had never met him.
In his basement are 22 pairs of athletic shoes and a pile of paddles. Out the door are five canoes. Off the deck is a view you hope the bulldozers never destroy. Haller collects a small stipend for being on the Olympic team, and his parents help a little. The top prize in the tournaments in which he competes often is $1,000, and he and Nicole admit money is quite tight.
Ever been tempted to quit and get that second job?
"Not yet," says Haller. "I don't know what else to do."
So you do what you love.
"It's unusual, I think," he says. "I understand that a lot of people hate what they do and probably do it to make money."
There is nothing impure about making money, of course. Jacobi, a good friend of Haller's who is an alternate on the five-member Sydney team, is looking for a link between the legends and the recreational rafters who not only ride the waves, but come in them.
"Nobody's goal is to make a million," says Jacobi, 30. "But I'd like the world to see this sport. Eddie Jones (of the Charlotte Hornets) is a great athlete, but as an athlete, he doesn't have anything on us. He doesn't. The only difference is he performs in front of people and we perform in front of trees."
On a special day two months ago on the Ocoee River in Tennessee, the people did outnumber the trees. Haller and his partner in the 33-pound canoe, Matt Taylor, needed a fine final run to win the whitewater Olympic trials and the trip to Sydney. The trials lasted six days, and this was the last run of the last day of the competition.
Since David Hepp and Scott McCleskey had been perfect, Haller and Taylor had to be, too. They looked like mermen, their waists and legs tucked into holes in the boat. To grasp the complexities of whitewater canoeing, somebody once said, envision golf on a course that continually moves and changes. With fans and paddlers standing on the banks screaming, Haller and Taylor were perfect enough to win.
"I cried," says Haller, who remembers how he felt in '96 when he and his brother, Fritz, failed to make the Olympic team. "I needed to get away from David and Scott because I knew how they felt."
Even if Haller were not going to Sydney, it's not as if the life he has chosen would not be enough. He has competed in 40 countries. Sometimes he and Nicole camp, and cereal and water are not expensive.
And for a guy who doesn't have a job, he works. Members of the U.S. national team used to turn in a summary of workouts. Most worked out 45-60 times a month.
The team's star worked out 75. Haller worked out more than 100, always.
"I don't want to ask, `Could I have done more?'" says Haller.
Says Jacobi: "Nobody asks these questions here. We know for sure."
This isn't a job.
"I just love the sport, I love the dance on water," Haller says excitedly. "The water teaches you so much. There's a magic to it that for me transcends exercise. I love putting a boat in the water, or sticking a foot into the water, because I'm part of it."
Early the next morning, he and Jacobi and Nicole put their boats in the water off Island Park in Bryson City. At this moment in places where the concept of late prevails, horns are honking and drivers are swearing and rivers are being dammed.
Up here, the rushing water obliterates all the unimportant sounds.
