“I said, ‘Yeah, that’s my mom.’
Her voice trailed off as the memory came back: “I remember that look. He just looked at me and finally said, ‘She was in an accident.’
“I thought she was in the hospital, but he said, ‘Do you have anyone here at home with you?’ I told him ‘No,’ and I wanted to know what was going on.”
The other man, who turned out to be the coroner, finally said:
“I’m sorry to say, she died instantly.”
Bayley said she just stood there in shock and when the sheriff asked if she needed to call someone, she nodded.
Her dad was a car salesman and he was at work:
“I got him on the phone and said, ‘Dad, please come home. I need to talk to you!’ Then I met him in the driveway and told him.”
It was an icy winter day – January 20, 1999 – and Marianette was driving on Upper Bellbrook Road, on her way to care for a quadriplegic patient. Authorities said her Buick Regal hit a patch of black ice and slid across the road, head on into a Chevy van.
That night – to everyone’s surprise – Christina showed up at the taekwondo school near the Dayton Mall where she’d been training.
“Everyone just stared at me,” she said. “They said, ‘Why are you here?’
“They didn’t understand. Taekwondo was the outlet where I always felt safe. It has done so many good things for me in my life and right then that’s what I needed.
“I remember I just went over to the heavy bag in the corner and started beating the (crap) out of it. That’s how I dealt with my mom’s death at the time.”
Within a year, she found another way not only to cope, but to honor her mom in a special way that continues to this day.
As a young child, Christina was heavy and when she went to school, some kids picked on her because of her size.
She said her parents watched a Chuck Norris movie and that gave her mom an idea. She enrolled Christina and her brother in a taekwondo class taught by the legendary Grandmaster Y.C Kim.
Marianette thought it especially would be good for her 6-year-old daughter. Not only would it help her get fit, but it might boost her confidence and self-esteem.
Christina immersed herself in the challenge and eventually blossomed.
She won area tournaments and then state titles and later, after graduating from Alter High School in 1992, she qualified for four straight U.S. national teams.
She made the U.S. Olympic team for the 1996 Games in Atlanta, only to have the IOC completely drop the then-demonstration sport just before from the Games. Four years later – at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia – taekwondo became a full medal sport.
Bayley ended up representing the U.S. on teams across the world – Germany, Greece, Venezuela, Egypt, Cuba, Korea, Peru, Mexico, Taiwan, Canada, Netherlands, Philippines, Brazil and more than a dozen other nations – and the U.S Olympic Committee named her an Athlete of the Year.
Along the way she started to teach taekwondo at local schools and recreation centers and then at UD.
About six months before Marianette died, she told her daughter she ought to open her own school. She thought it could be a successful venture and in the process taekwondo might empower other students—especially girls – the way it had her.
And a year after her mother’s death that’s exactly what Christina did.
She said she sold her mom’s 1959 Ford Fairlane – a blue and white car show collectible with a retractable hardtop that bore specialized “Moms 59″ license plates – on eBay for $60,000.
That launched her school – Total Taekwondo & Fitness (TTF) – first at a Marshall Road location and now, for the past 15 years, in spacious quarters at 1942 E. Stoop Road.
“I opened the gym in honor of my mom.” She said.
Her school has some 135 students – ages five to 70 – who can get everything from the basics of taekwondo to Olympic training – top women athletes from around the nation have come to train with her – as well as fitness classes, self-defense and more.
In 2017, Bayley adorned the cover of the Taekwondo Times magazine along with the headline: “USA’s Power Female Coach.”
She now serves as an AAU national team coach – again touring the globe – and just two weeks ago she was selected as the first-ever (male or female) taekwondo coach to go into the AAU Hall of Fame.
Her enshrinement will be July 5 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
A week ago the World Taekwondo Masters Association made her a Grandmaster for the 7th Dan black belt she has earned.
And Saturday at The Ahn Classic in Cincinnati – where 30 of her athletes were competing – the AAU honored her with Grandmaster status.
Yet, the success Bayley seems to cherish most now is the way many of her young students have gained things like fitness, discipline and self-confidence through taekwondo at her school.
“When they break their first board or get recognized during one of their first competitions, it’s amazing the change you see in them,” she said. “You see their confidence, their joy.”
She smiled at the thought:
“When I look at my classes, I see a lot of me(s) in them.”
‘It became a cool thing’
When you visit the 48-year-old Bayley at her school, you find her story wherever you look.
“All the flags up there are countries I travelled to,” she said as she nodded toward a far wall where a United Nations of flags were hung along the length of the room.
Behind her – above a banner proclaiming her the National AAU Coach of the Year – was an oversized photo of her dressed in white and blue carrying the Olympic torch before the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
On another wall – beyond trophy cases her dad once made that now overflow with her awards – was a gallery of photos, including one of her getting her arm raised after defeating a Swedish challenger at the 1995 World Taekwondo Championships in the Philippines.
Further down the wall was the poster from the Ohio Valley Toughman Championship she won in Wheeling, West Virginia, 13 years ago.
But for a more personal narrative, you need to look no further than the sleeves of tattoos that cover her arms, the tats on her back and those on the backs of her hands.
“Some people are like ‘Why do you get so many tattoos?’ And ‘What did you do to your hair?’” she said with a grin and a tilt of the head to show off her buzz cut. “They think it doesn’t match my respectful demeanor.
“But those assumptions are stereotypes. Just because I have tattoos and short hair doesn’t mean I’m some sort of gangster.”
She pointed out some of the ink work, including her parents’ initials on her arm, a large oak tree she had done in London and a TTF done in Las Vegas. A new portrait of her 10-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier – Halo – is healing on her right calf. A butterfly fills the back of her right hand.
“That symbolizes growing out of that cocoon, becoming free and flying,” she said.
In fifth grade she said he weighed around 160 pounds and she often was ignored when the other kids picked teams in gym class: “They thought I couldn’t do anything.”
She said that changed when she started demonstrating taekwondo at show and tell:
“I was dropping down to the floor, doing the splits, and I was kicking to the face and I was breaking boards,” she laughed. “They were like ‘Whooooa!’
“All of a sudden I wasn’t getting bullied anymore. Kids came up afterward with their pencils and asked me to break them. They were like, ‘Can you chop this desk in half?’
“It became a cool thing.”
These days she goes to area schools or invites entire classes to TTF for anti-bullying presentations.
Just as kids now look up to her, she once looked up to Y.C. Kim. And she especially revered Luong Pham, who was the star of Kim’s school and represented the U.S. at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea.
Bayley wanted to be an Olympian, too, and she trained endlessly. She was one of the only teenage girls willing to spar with boys. She missed her senior class trip and even the Alter High graduation ceremony as she toured the globe competing.
While her parents didn’t get to see her march in a cap and gown, they were left beaming so many other times, including at the Junior World Championships in Colorado Springs in 1988.
“I was in the last fight and they came up to my parents and said, ‘If Christina wins this match, the USA wins the tournament. If she loses, USA loses.’
“That was some pressure.
“I beat the girl from Spain and, as I stood there on the medal stand and had my arms raised, I the heard the American anthem playing behind me and I looked out in the crowd and my parents were crying. At that moment, I knew they were just so proud of me.”
Later, her parents both become her taekwondo students and her dad even competed.
When she missed the 1996 Olympics -- because of IOC “politics” she said – she first became depressed and then vowed to make the 2000 Games.
But then came 1999: Her mom was killed and, soon after, her dad suffered a near fatal heart attack. She had dropped out of UD to train full time, but in a cruel twist, the Olympic Trials were held on Mother’s Day.
The loss of her mother was amplified that day and she finished third and didn’t make the team. Although she’d have more successes, injuries eventually derailed her. She’s had two hip replacement surgeries and shoulder reconstruction.
That escalated her transition to a full-time teacher and, in the process, she’s educated some people.
Early on, she remembers a guy walking into Total Taekwondo asking: “Oh, are you the aerobics instructor?”
And she answered: “No, actually, I’m the owner!”
‘Taekwondo will be good for you’
Bayley said she was adopted when she was seven months old:
“When I was growing up, my mom and dad used to ask me if I wanted to find out who my birth mom and birth dad were, but I always said ‘No.’ My parents were amazing.’
“But a few years ago I was having so much go wrong with my body and I thought maybe I should find out for medical reasons.”
She said she began the process with Ancestory.com and on the very day of her dad’s funeral in 2018, a member of her biological family – an uncle – reached out to her.
She was told the timing was coincidental – he didn’t know of her dad’s death – and in recounting that, she hummed the theme music from the Twilight Zone.
She said it “didn’t work out” with her birth mom: “She wasn’t looking for me and wasn’t interested in a relationship.”
From southeast Ohio, the woman had gotten pregnant as a teenager and hadn’t let her father know. “She’d kept it a secret,” Bayley said. “She came to Fairborn and gave me up.”
Bayley learned her biological dad, who’s now deceased, had had a son who is 25 now.
The more she found out about him, the more “mind boggling” she said it became:
“I’m Christina and his name is Christian. And he started out in taekwondo and now he’s an MMA fighter. And that Toughman contest I won all those years ago? In 2016, he fought in the very same tournament in West Virginia.”
Although scheduling conflicts scuttled her plan to watch his last fight and his trip to Cincinnati this weekend to see her get her Grandmaster honor, they are working on future meetings.
“We’re definitely close,” she said quietly.
She said that’s one more thing taekwondo has done for her:
“Taekwondo is a way of life for me. It began as a hobby and became a passion and now it’s my occupation. It’s been there for so many things over the years.”
It brought some of the best moments she’s ever had.
And it was there for her on the very worst day of her life.
Her mom was right when she told her:
“Taekwondo will be good for you.”
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