In 2007, Bluffton University sophomore baseball player Allen Slabaugh survived a horrific bus crash in Atlanta that killed seven people.
This week, he survived another crash when the van he was traveling in blew a tire and rolled over. Slabaugh says he's counting his blessings.
"It all happened so quickly," Slabaugh told the AJC on Friday. "I was thinking, ‘Here we go again.' I'm just so thankful this time no one was killed or seriously injured."
Slabaugh, from Ohio, said his memories of the college baseball team's crash early March 2, 2007, are still vivid. He lost five teammates in the crash, which also killed the bus driver and his wife. David Betts, seated right next to Slabaugh, died. Slabaugh needed only stitches.
"I still think about it every day," Slaubaugh said.
Slabaugh graduated in 2009 with degrees in sports management and business administration and worked briefly for a minor league baseball organization. But he realized quickly he wanted to do more. He joined the Mennonite Voluntary Service group and is currently working for The Fuller House Center for Housing, a Georgia-based Christian housing ministry.
Slabaugh says he earns a small stipend and typically lives with four or five other people as part of the organization's work in 60 communities across the U.S. He is the leader of a group planning a 3,600-mile bike ride across the country to raise money and awareness for the organization.
Eight people, including Slabaugh, were in a van headed to Seattle from Idaho on Tuesday when a tire apparently blew, causing the van to sway before rolling over. No one was seriously injured, but the group's van and trailer were destroyed.
Slabaugh said Friday he was hoping to find another van so the group could continue its mission. Still, Slabaugh said he enjoys his work and the chance to help people, and sees it as his calling.
Life, Slabaugh said, changed drastically for him after living through his baseball team's bus crash.
"I think about life in a different way," Slabaugh said. "You can't go through an experience like that and not come away changed."
For more information or to donate to the Fuller Center, visit the organization's website.
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