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A High Point family continues to recover from a car accident in Ohio that seriously injured their children a few days before Christmas.

High Point Christian Academy principal Mike Cliff was driving his wife and four children to Michigan on Dec. 23 when the family van hit a patch of ice near Cleveland, according to an e-mail from the family. The van skidded across the highway before being hit from behind and launched into the concrete road barrier at 60 mph.

Tricia Cliff said everyone in the van was awake and wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident, which sent the children to the emergency room.

“The first 36 hours were just a blur of (emergency rooms) and reports, 'a cracked vertebra,’ 'bowels’ and so on,’” Cliff said Friday night.

Cliff and her husband were released soon after the accident.

Their children were taken to Rainbow Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. Their sons Will, 13, and Lee, 10, have since been released, according to Cliff.

Mike Cliff and the two boys could return home this weekend. Aaron, 12, was also expected to come home but has developed a minor intestinal complication, which is being treated, said Tricia Cliff, a nurse at High Point Regional Hospital.

Abby, 15, suffered some of the worst injuries and had to undergo several surgeries, Cliff said. But Abby is good spirits, even joking about the loss of several teeth in the accident.

“She has a great attitude about it,” Cliff said. “She said 'I just got the lead role in as an old lady in Arsenic and Old Lace, so I guess I don’t have to worry about makeup.’”

Abby remains confined to her bed but was moved from the intensive care unit earlier this week.

Cliff said her family has leaned on one another and their faith to get through this difficult time.

She said her husband went through a period where he blamed himself for the accident, saying he should have been driving slower.

But Tricia Cliff said the accident was out of everyone’s control, and the family is grateful to be together and alive. 

“They’re a very strong Christian family and a very close family,” said Richard Hardee, the headmaster of High Point Christian Academy.

Back home in High Point, the community around the school is keeping the Cliff family in their thoughts and planning for their homecoming, Hardee said.

Friends created a Web page on the popular networking site, Facebook, to keep everyone up to date and to raise money for the family.

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com