Charleston firefighter had lived in Tacoma

Reuben Champaign has his father's hands and sunny sense of humor. A few days shy of 3, he is learning to say "I love you," although his father will never again hear those words.

Melvin Champaign, one of nine firefighters who died Monday in a furniture-store fire in Charleston, S.C., lived in Tacoma for 10 years before moving to South Carolina in 2003 to pursue firefighting, the career that had always inspired him. While living in Tacoma, Champaign met Jeannetta Charity, and the two had one child together before going their separate ways.

As authorities investigate the tragedy, focusing on why the firefighters were trapped inside the fiery store when the roof collapsed, Charity has questions of her own: What were Champaign's wishes for Reuben? How can she help her son remember his father? Her memories of Champaign will certainly help. She recalls a charismatic man who made great barbecue and could play the piano. He loved adventure. He loved Reuben.

A native of South Carolina, Champaign moved to Tacoma when he joined the military and then later worked as a welder. He also was a children's martial-arts instructor at a community center.

When the couple met in 2003, he was three times divorced and she was ending a marriage. Both had several children.

The first time they spoke, he invited her to dance at a birthday party for a mutual friend.

"I'm really shy, and he ended up dancing with me all evening," Charity recalled Wednesday by phone from her Tacoma home. When they started dating, they loved piling the children into the car and going to Seattle's Pike Place Market on weekends. There they would watch the harbor cruises and dream about doing that one day.

A few months later they impulsively decided to move to South Carolina so he could be closer to his family, enroll in college and become a firefighter.

"One day I said, 'Why don't we just do that?' We just up and sold everything," she said. "We sold our cars, rented a van together and went to South Carolina."

But Charity decided she missed Tacoma and moved back.

She also discovered she was pregnant. Reuben was born in 2004.

"Reuben is his spitting image and his personality is just like Melvin's. Ruben is his father," she said.

Champaign stayed in South Carolina to work and take college courses, but they talked on the phone regularly and saw each other occasionally, Charity said. The last time was June 2006. It was Reuben's birthday, and Champaign organized a barbecue with all the neighborhood children in Tacoma.

"He had a roast beef and asparagus and baby carrots. He wrapped that up in foil and put that up on the grill, and it just fell apart," she remembered.

Almost a year since they last saw each other, Charity received a phone call from Champaign's uncle with the news that he had died in the line of duty.

"He was fearless," Charity said. "He knew there were dangers, and he very sober about that. But he loved helping people."

She said she will instill that in her son — and make sure he goes to college.

Right now though, she is angry. She wonders why there were no sprinklers in the furniture store. And she wants to know what Champaign experienced in his final moments.

"There's a lot of stuff on the Internet about people crying out in the building. I spoke with the chief in Charleston about that, and he said that was not substantiated," she said. "I wanted to know if they had suffered."

Charleston Coroner Rae Wooten said the victims died of smoke inhalation and extensive burns.

City and state officials on Wednesday announced plans to investigate the deadliest tragedy to befall firefighters since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Roxana Popescu: 206-464-2112 or rpopescu@seattletimes.com

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.