‘Shouldn’t be alive’: Pastor back after crash
When Sarah Huffman got the call – “Your husband’s in the hospital, he fell off his bike” – she stopped by her downtown Newark mortgage loan office to tie up a few loose ends. She prepared an out-of-office message, notarized a document and made sure everything was in order.
This was not the first time.
Her husband, Corbin, the lead pastor at Lifechange Church in Newark, had previously broken bones and even punctured a lung while mountain biking. His accident was unexpected, but not shocking. Sarah took the rest of the day off and mentally budgeted for several hours spent in Licking Memorial Hospital while her husband’s injuries were assessed and treated.
Meanwhile, Corbin was making the best of things. No one told him, when
he failed to land a jump on his mountain bike at Newark’s Horns Hill Park, that in addition to a broken wrist and mangled face, his skull had internally separated from his spine.
It was not immediately apparent, when he stood after his accident and walked to the truck, that muscle and skin were the only things holding his head in place.
He didn’t know that he shouldn’t be alive, much less walking.
“Most people, when that happens,” a doctor later told him, “go straight to the morgue.”
A lifelong adventurer
A lifelong adventurer, Huffman was introduced to mountain biking by a friend about five years ago. He fell in love with the sport and frequently rode in the area.
On the morning of July 27 when he and his friend, Darryl Bennett, went to ride at Horns Hill, Corbin donned all his protective gear, including the helmet that would save his life.
Sarah recalled kissing him goodbye and noticing how excited he looked to be going out for a ride – “like a little boy getting ready to go ride his bike through the neighborhood,” she said.
“He’s 39. So it’s not like he’s a little kid. It’s not like we’re 20 anymore,” she said. “But he just had such a joy about going out on a sunny Tuesday to ride his bike with his friend. And I could tell he was excited to go ride through the woods.”
The morning felt normal. Sarah headed to work to be present for the closing of a home, which happened to be with a couple from their church; the Huffmans’ children, Berkley, then 9, and Griffin, 8, were with a sitter.
Huffman was up for adventure. He’d been wanting to hit a specific jump in the trail and was feeling good about his chances.
The ride with Bennett started out smoothly. Huffman remembers thinking maybe he’d gained too much speed leading up to the fateful jump, but he was committed. The 10-foot drop hit hard and fast.
He briefly lost consciousness following the impact – “maybe 15 seconds at the most, just a quick kind of knockout,” he said – but Bennett was immediately by his side, wrapping his shirt around his friend’s face to try to stop the bleeding.
And then they walked away.
“I saw Darryl and said, ‘Hey man, let’s get out of here,’” Huffman said. “He was like, ‘No, stay down!’ and I was like, ‘No, let’s get out of here.’”
And so, with nothing but skin and muscle keeping his head attached to his body, Huffman walked to their waiting truck with intentions of recovering at home.
As they started the drive, Huffman glanced at his wrist and realized it was probably broken. This, not his bloody face, was the factor that convinced him they should take a detour.
“I look down...and I’m like, ‘Well, my wrist is broken anyway,’” Huffman said. “‘Yeah, let’s go to the hospital.’”
Once they were checked in and assigned a room, he continued to be lighthearted, remarking that if facial reconstruction were an option, he wouldn’t mind looking more like Matthew Mcconaughey.
Eventually Sarah joined them, followed by a doctor who had examined Corbin’s X-rays.
That was when reality set in. “They got my scans back, and then it got real serious because they’re like, ‘Don’t move.’ They locked me down and said, ‘Don’t move whatsoever. The helicopter’s going to be here in 10 minutes and you’re going to go to (Riverside),’” Corbin said.
Bennett told Sarah he watched the color drain from her face.
“At that point, I knew – this is longer than just, ‘We’re going to be at the hospital for six hours to get patched up,’” Sarah said. “I was like, ‘OK, here we go.’”
A family friend who worked at the hospital later told Sarah she watched Corbin being wheeled to the medical helicopter and she’d never seen the process go so slowly.
“They weren’t willing to risk even hitting a pebble,” she said.
Keeping it together
Sarah told herself she’d have to keep it together for the kids.
Driving home from the hospital, prepared to pack her bags, she rehearsed what she might say.
“I was just taking a deep breath, like, OK, keep your cool. You can’t lose it. You can’t cry until after you’ve seen the kids, because they’ll be able to tell that you’ve been crying,” she said.
Sarah had opted out of flying with her husband to Riverside, knowing she had to make sure their children were taken care of. She chose not to inform them of the accident in great detail, but let them know they’d be staying with family for a few days while Corbin recovered.
“We were kind of telling them stuff in doses,” Sarah said.
That evening at Riverside, the sizeable gashes on the right side of her husband’s face were stitched closed; in the morning, a doctor performed a fourhour surgery to reattach his skull to his spine.
Part of a horse cadaver was used to replace the crushed portion of his skull, and screws were inserted into his upper vertebrae to attach them to his skull. After that, the area was covered in bone putty to help promote fusion. Then, the healing process began. It wasn’t without hurdles: The postsurgical swelling in his neck made it impossible for Corbin to swallow, leading to the eventual insertion of a feeding tube. A blood clot formed in one of his arms where an IV had been. All told, his hospital stay lasted 15 days – and even after he was released, it was two weeks before he was able to swallow.
But he continued to recover, even as the doctors around him marveled at the miracle of his survival.
“They said that most people don’t even get to the hospital. So they were amazed I was even at the hospital...the hospital workers, nurses, doctors were all like, ‘I can’t believe you’ve walked out. There’s no explanation for that whatsoever.’”
Huffman’s explanation?
“My explanation is that it’s God. It’s a miracle – that’s the only way,” he said. “It was all God, all the way through. He was there the whole time.”
A community rallies
From the afternoon of Huffman’s accident as the events of the day unfolded, Bennett began rallying support on social media, appealing to friends, family and the community to pray for his pastor and friend.
In a Facebook photo album understatedly titled “Horns Hill-1, Corbin- 0,” Sarah relayed to the world the latest updates on her husband’s condition.
She continued to do so as he went through the recovery process, bringing up specific prayer requests punctuated with a healthy dose of coping humor.
During their stay, the couple were able to share the story of Corbin’s recovery with people from multiple hospital units, and even though they were in for longer than they’d have liked, they appreciated each opportunity for interaction.
The experience also gave them a chance to see how their church – and “The Church – big C,” Sarah said – stepped in when one of its own was suffering.
“This didn’t just affect our little Lifechange church that we run,” she said. “This affected our whole body of believers in Licking County and beyond.”
The family received an outpouring of financial support, gift cards and offers to preach in Corbin’s stead.
“It was really cool to see everybody step up and help. Because when everybody plays one little part, it takes the load off of everybody else,” Sarah said.
Returning to the pulpit
At 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 10, Corbin will return to the pulpit to celebrate his church’s 7th birthday and to preach about what he learned from his neardeath experience.
He’s titled the sermon “The Comeback,” and the church – whose building is located on Marion Road in Newark – has rented out Weathervane Playhouse for the occasion, hoping to make it a community event.
Huffman plans to talk about the body of Christ – the Church – and how its parts work together to accomplish their purpose.
And about how miracles do happen. “Hopefully (people) can walk away knowing that God is real, that God is powerful, and that God still loves everyone and cares for us in an incredible way,” Huffman said. “I shouldn’t be alive, let alone walking or talking – that’s the mercy and grace of God.”
Corbin is still to wear a neck brace until mid-december while his bones fuse together, but already he has made great strides – literally. He is able to walk and hike regularly and has regained some rotation in his neck. The feeding tube has been removed, and he is slowly returning to life as normal.
Except for mountain biking, which is on hold indefinitely.
“I made the promise to my wife that if I ride again, all wheels will remain on the ground. No more jumps, no more drop-offs, no more anything like that,” he said.