Vena Marie (Bagwell) Champion

Vena Bagwell Champion went to her heavenly home and was welcomed into the Lord’s light on the morning of July 20, 2022 after a difficult and courageous battle with cancer.

Vena was born on December 27, 1973 to her loving parents Richard and Shirley Bagwell.  She was raised in Fayetteville, TN and graduated from Lincoln County High School in 1992.   Vena had a love for the performing arts and was an avid and talented dancer and musician from early childhood and throughout her life.  Vena’s love of her church and Monteagle Mountain led her to attend The University of the South (Sewanee) for her freshman year where she participated in the university dance program and felt the call to teach dance as a profession.  Vena transferred to the University of Alabama where she received a B.A. degree in dance with a minor in business.  Vena opened the Cumberland Dance Academy in Cookeville, Tennessee, where she positively influenced the lives of hundreds of students over the course of several years.

Vena met the love of her life as a teenager at the Episcopal Youth Event in Montana in 1990.  Greg and Vena remained long-distance friends for several years and reconnected in person in 1996.  Vena and Greg were married at St. Mary Magdalene’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville in 1997 and took up residence in Cookeville, TN.  As their family grew with the addition of their sons Drew and Alex, the Champions moved from Cookeville to Mt. Juliet and finally to Chattanooga.

Vena’s love of the arts was inherited by her boys who are both excellent actors and musicians.  To support them and follow her own interests, Vena worked for the Chattanooga Theater Center and the Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts where her boys attended school. Vena served one year as chair of the Dubose Conference Center board of directors and one year as the director of Camp Gailor-Maxon, the Episcopal Church’s summer camp in the Diocese of Tennessee.  Vena also worked as an Account Executive for WDEF News Channel 12. Vena’s love of her family was shown in every decision she made.  Her husband and boys were everything to her, and she will be greatly missed by all her family and friends.

Vena is survived by her husband Greg, her sons Drew and Alex, her parents Richard and Shirley Bagwell, her brother Rick (Stacey) Bagwell, and many loving nieces, nephews, and in-laws.

A Celebration of life service will be held at Saint Martin’s of Tours Episcopal Church in Chattanooga on Saturday, July 30, 2022, at 1pm EST . Her ashes will be interred at a later date.

Vena asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Drew and Alex’s college fund.  Donations can be sent to https://www.gofundme.com/f/drew-alex-champion-college-fund

You may share condolences to the family at www.heritagechattanooga.com

Arrangements are by Heritage Funeral Home, 7454 E. Brainerd Road.