After having a brush with death is not the time to decide to live your life to its fullest. The time is now! Adam Nugent and Kate Strong have an incredibly powerful and emotional conversation with Bob Howard. Bob has been working in the employee benefits and risk management insurance industry for the last 25 years and also hosts the podcast A Close Call with Death. He talks about the incredible events in his life that led him to change all that he knows about living life the right way. Don’t take life for granted. Hear his impactful message of hope for the future on today’s episode.
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Throughout his life, Bob Howard has had several near-misses with death from head-on collisions to almost drowning. In this podcast excerpt, he shares one such incident and how he has a new appreciation for life as a result.
AN: You’ve got this new venture, your podcast, A Close Call with Death. How did that come about?
BH: Great question. I was really tired of everything that was going on in the news in 2020 and 2021 with all the rioting and the election fight. People were just destroying each other. I thought, “Something’s got to change. I want good news for once.” Matter of fact, I was thinking it would be so nice if somebody had a good news channel. Thank you guys so much for doing this because we need more of that.
I thought, “You know, there’s a lot of good out there. We’ve got to find it.”
I’ll back up a second. People would ask me, “Why are you so happy every day? Is that fake?” And I was like, “No, it it’s a real deal.” There were a lot of times when I had a close call with death, starting in my teenage years. I had some really hairy accidents that nearly killed me, and I was even more grateful every day that I woke up and I was still here.
AN: Do you mind sharing one or two of them?
BH: I’d be happy to. I’ll tell you the one that’s the most amazing, profound miracle that happened when I was in college. I was going to the University of Wyoming. I was going back to Laramie, Wyoming, through the Wind River Canyon. It’s a very beautiful drive, but it’s very treacherous. It is a skinny, two-way road, and it’s a big hundred-yard drop off down to the river below.
I was going as fast as I could in a little Volkswagen Beetle. I was probably maxed out 70. It was really windy, switchback roads. I came around a corner, and there’s one car on the road, about a mile out, coming my direction. Right before it got to me, it crosses the center line. It comes right at me. And I mean, head on.
I had nowhere to go. I cranked the wheel to the right as hard as I could and hit the brakes. And that car hit me in the front left corner of my Beetle head on. It spun the car. It crushed it. And my right passenger door opened wide. I didn’t have my seatbelt on, and I flew out of the car horizontally straight out of the car and gently landed on the road. And I stood up, and my car was demolished. That car had pushed it clear to the edge of the canyon.
A highway patrolman was behind me and saw the entire thing happen. He put his lights on and drove up and came running up to me. He grabbed me by the shoulder and said, “Son, are you okay?” And I said, “I really don’t know what just happened.” I was in shock.
He said, “I swear, I thought you were like a mannequin flying out of that car. And then it stood up and, and it’s you, and you’re okay.”
I mean, I seriously didn’t even have ripped clothing or anything. I just flew out and landed softly and stood up. It was evident the guy who hit me had fallen asleep at the wheel. He drove straight at me without even breaking.
There’s no way I should have lived from that. And I was so grateful that I got to return to Laramie and live through that. That one was just mind blowing.
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