A boater found dead in Chickamauga Lake on Monday has been identified as Phil Acord, who was the longtime CEO of Chattanooga's Chambliss Center for Children.
Acord, 78, is the first boater to die in Tennessee this year, according to a news release from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
Acord will be remembered as a fierce advocate for children, a great storyteller and a kindhearted person who cared for all of God's creatures, Katie Harbison, CEO and president of the Chambliss Center, said.
"He just lived and breathed this place," she said in an interview.
Acord reportedly fell overboard around 12:30 p.m. Monday into 53-degree waters without a life jacket, the wildlife agency said. He had been fishing with a friend, according to the release.
The water depth in that area, near the Ware Branch boat ramp on Thatch Road in northern Hamilton County, varies between 10 and 15 feet, according to the release.
Responders from the state agency and Hamilton County Sheriff's Office used remote-operated vehicles and a tow-fish sonar to search for Acord's body, sheriff's spokesperson Matt Lea said in a text. Acord was found around 5:30 p.m.
Hamilton County's emergency management agency and the Dallas Bay Volunteer Fire Department also assisted in the search.
State wildlife officials will investigate the death.
Acord retired from the Chambliss Center in 2021 after 50 years working there.
The center was already mourning the loss of board chair and Chattanooga real estate agent Mark Hite, who was found dead in Key West, Florida, in early January.
"It's just a season of immense loss for us here," Harbison said.
In his time at Chambliss, Acord saw its staff grow from 26 to more than 300 and its annual budget increase from $190,000 to around $6 million, he said in a 2021 interview.
"He really grew this agency to what it is today," Harbison said.
After leaving the CEO post, Acord became the center's "CEO emeritus," which Harbison said meant he continued supporting its work and would often visit the Chambliss campus. He last visited Friday, she said.
"I like Chattanooga," Acord told the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2021. "I love my job, and I'm not really interested in going anywhere else and doing anything else. Time gets lost in the process when you wake up every day and keep wanting to make things better for families and children."
Over the years, Acord also became the unofficial building manager, a fount of knowledge about the campus where he once lived and the organization's history, Harbison said. He passed a lot of that knowledge down but some of it surely left with him, she said.
"His passion, efforts and accomplishments in the realm of early childhood education have established Chambliss Center for Children as a model institution for the most inventive and inclusive children's programs of national acclaim," then-board chair Julie Stowe said when Acord announced his retirement.
Before joining Chambliss, Acord served in Alaska during the Vietnam War and later worked in the detention unit of Hamilton County Juvenile Court. He took a job as associate director of what was then called the Children's Home in 1971.
Acord was a native of West Virginia and attended Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga.
He loved fishing, Harbison said.
"He was doing something he loved, so that's what brings me a little comfort," she said.
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.
Hamilton County Sheriff's Office / Responders search for a missing boater, later identified as Phil Acord, on Chickamauga Lake on Monday.