GONE, but how could you forget this man….He was “THE Zamboni Driver” at the Greensboro Coliseum for all those years of the Greensboro Generals I, the Greensboro Monarachs, the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Greensboro Generals II, and the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships at the Big Barn on West Lee Street/West Gate City Blvd.
He laid down most Nice Ice in the USA…He was the “Zamboni Man”, the man that laid down the ice for the hockey events, the Holiday on Ice Shows, and who didn’t go see at least one of those shows back when you were a kid, and he laid down the ice for the U.S. Figure Skating Nationals, which came to the Greensboro Coliseum around 15-20 years ago…
The word was Cliff always had the “Smoothest Ice” around….
And I say Cliff, because that is how most people knew Cliff Michael…Just Cliff…He was sort of a slow-moving, slow-talking fella, who always wore a baseball cap, but he got the job down all over town for many years…
He would run his Cliff’s Lawn Care Service by day, and be over the Greenboro Colisuem to drive the Zamboni for the hockey games, and other ice events at night….
My guess is that Cliff was an employee for the city of Greensboro for several years, maybe with the maintainence crew and grounds crew, and then he took his craft and transitioned to his Cliff’s Lawn Care Service, and he kept that running strong for many years…
I remember he used to mow the yard over at our old WKEW 1400 AM radio station on Summit Avenue, and Cliff was real good friends with our radio station General Manager Mr. Carlson, I mean Mr. Bill Mitchell….Mr. Carlson was our manager back at the old WRKP in Cincinnati…It seemed like everybody knew Cliff, and again, it was usually just Cliff for most people that came into contact with Mr. Michael…
Cliff was “The Man” for Matt Brown and Scott Johnson at the Greensboro Coliseum for very many years and seasons…He may have even gone back as far as the Bob Kent and Jim Oshust days, when Kent and Oshust were the Coliseum GMs….It seems to me that Cliff might have been older than dirt, or maybe the dirty ice…If you looked close you could see the ice shavings and scraps out there beyond the elephant doors at the Coliseum and those ice dumps were from when Cliff emptied the Zamboni, after he had several successful runs….
Nobody else did it like Cliff, because as far as I know Cliff, was the only man to do it…From what I can recall, Cliff is the only Zamboni Drive, the Greensboro Coliseum ever had…
If you would see Cliff coming out of the Coliseum after a Generals, Monarchs, or Hurricanes game you would see Cliff walking through the regular door, and the not the Elephant Doors…Cliff was an unassuming man and he didn’t come to the Coliseum to make a scene, he came to lay down the ICE…..It wasn’t about Cliff Michael, to him it was all about the Hockey Teams and their nice ICE…
Most people that you will talk to will say, Cliff was the BEST in the business….
Former Greensboro Monarch Phil Berger was totally bummed out when he heard the news of Cliff’s passing…After Berger’s Monarch playing days were over, he stuck around town for awhile, and he would show up at the Carolina Hurricanes’ hockey games, and Cliff would let Phil in the back door at the Colisuem for FREE…Cliff loved Phil and Cliff loved the effort with which Phil Berger played with, when Phil played for the Monarchs, and when Cliff had the chance to help out Phil, Cliff said to Phil, “Come on In”….
Cliff was like that…When I heard today from Scott Holland about Cliff’s passing, Scott said Cliff was “The Man”…Every true hockey fan would watch the hockey games and Scott watched the Generals, the Monarch, and the Hurricanes at the Coliseum over the years along with his dad Charles Holland and mom Jean, and Scott and I noted that the true fans would watch the Hockey Games and then during the intermission, you know, the break between periods, the true fans would watch as Cliff Michael drove The Zamboni, the ice-laying machine, because there was an art piece being laid down on the special ice-laiden Greensboro Coliseum canvas/floor, as Cliff appplied his craft/trade….
Remember the scene from the movie when the family went to watch the hockey game, and the dad asked his son during the intermission what his son wanted to do when he got older…”Do you want to be a Hockey Player his father asked?”….His little son replied, “No, I want to be The Zamboni Driver, his son shot back”….Yes the kid had a bit of Cliff, right there in his DNA fabric…
More news on Cliff’s passing with be forthcoming from his daughter Brenda Michael….But for now we know that Cliff’s visitation will be on Friday of this week, and his funeral will be on Saturday….
Cliff was just one of those good guys who comes quietly and unassuming into our presence, but the Impact he leaves is much larger and greater than all of the means…I still say Randy Travis said it best in his Three Wooden Crosses song, “It’s Not What You Take, when you leave this world behind You, It’s What You leave behind You when You Go”….
I could go on about Cliff for a lot longer, he was just that good of guy….And I wonder what thoughts Jeff Brubaker, Matt Brown, Scott Johnson, Bill Coffey, Bill Black, Art Donaldson or others might have on Cliff??? Some of those icons might be in Hockey Heaven now, you never know for sure…..
He was the man, and I think Cliff used to love to go down to “Ricks in the Sticks”, the seafood restaurant that Rick Mitchell used to run down in Lexington…Rick was the son of WKEW radio GM Bill Mitchell…
Like in those old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas Specials, where we see Rudolph driving and leading Santa’s sleigh through the sky, we can almost see Cliff Michael, the Zamboni Driver/Zamboni Man, from the Greensboro Coliseum, driving his Coliseum Zamboni, up into the sky, and on high into the clouds today….
RIP:Cliff “Zamboni Man” Michael….That man had the BEST ICE in town….
More details coming later from Cliff’s daughter Brenda Michael…