I can't figure out what the hell he was driving/riding...
Chevy Silverado
Luckiest guy on the planet.
Just like any other Sunday, Kaleb and Camille Whitby were getting ready for the short drive to their church in rural Eastern Washington last weekend when Camille stopped her husband in his tracks.
"I'm so thankful that you're here," she told him, before offering a hug and a kiss. "It would've been lonely without you."
A year ago last Sunday, Kaleb survived a pre-dawn chain reaction crash on Interstate 84 east of Baker City that sent 12 people to the hospital and one improbable cell phone picture starring Kaleb's face and his obliterated Chevy Silverado across the world.
Gnarly crashes on I-84 aren't out of the ordinary, and nobody was killed in the pileup, which involved 24 vehicles and dozens of passengers. But this crash was notable for the way Whitby's mangled extended-cab truck was sandwiched between two tractor trailers to an almost unimaginably narrow width, yet he surprisingly walked away with only a few scratches.
In the hours afterward, Whitby spoke at length with The Oregonian/OregonLive as his parents drove him back to the family farm 30 miles north of Washington's Tri-Cities. "Thank God I'm alive," Whitby said at the time. "Now I've got to figure out why."
A year later, the 28-year-old said he knows that question is a doozy. "It's going to take the rest of my life," he said of finding the answer.
Much has changed since the wreck.
The Whitbys welcomed their son, Karter, in June. A second child under the age of three means new routines, more work, but also more fun.
"I couldn't imagine my life without him," he said. Their older son, Mason, turns three next month.
They moved into a new house, a couple miles down the road from Kaleb's parents.
"It's been amazing," he said of the past year. "It's been hard. Life just continues on. It's been a wonderful ride."
Kaleb had just returned to the family farm after chasing dreams of Olympic weight lifting glory months before the harrowing crash, and he said he's thrown himself into the family business in the year since.
"I'm in more of a groove," he said Tuesday. "I understand more, I've experienced more." He's taken over the cattle side of the farm.
He bought a new truck, a white Dodge Ram 1500. He still misses the extended cab, the extra space that might've saved his life. "I prefer Chevy."
In September, the former football player and competitive weight lifter tore his Achilles tendon during a city league flag football game in the Tri-Cities.
"It put a damper on things, and put more strain on everybody," he said of the injury, which put him out of commission for weeks, the busiest time of the year for dealing with the cattle.
Whitby said it feels like he's lived a lot more than a year's worth of life in the past 12 months.
There are times when he still thinks about the crash.
He's more careful, more cautious behind the wheel. "Things are fragile," he said. "And you've experienced what it's like," he said of a near-death experience.
But mostly he's thankful, and he has no immediate plans to head back on the stretch of highway near Baker City, where he was involved in his first accident. "'I don't think I'm particularly excited about going that way again."
