MIDDLEBURG, Pa. — Brent Blair is getting a second chance at life after nearly losing his in an accident that killed an all-terrain vehicle driver six weeks ago.

He’s also going to get a second chance at high school graduation.

The 18-year-old student was just days away from graduating when he was driving on a rural road in central Pennsylvania on a 2001 Harley Davidson motorcycle and an ATV driven by 51-year-old Todd Arbogast pulled into his path, according to Pennsylvania state police.

Arbogast was killed and Blair suffered a traumatic brain injury, two collapsed lungs and numerous facial fractures. He was airlifted to nearby hospital Geisinger Medical Center in critical condition.

“For the first full week, we didn’t know if he would make it,” said his mother, Tracey Blair-Loss. “It was touch-and-go for a long time.”

After three weeks at Geisinger and another two weeks in rehab at Hershey Medical Center, Blair returned home late last week.

In a few weeks, Blair will get a second chance to walk across the high school auditorium stage and receive his diploma as his family, friends and school officials look on.

The special ceremony will be held at 6 p.m. July 26. 

“It’s a very tragic chain of events that happened. Brent certainly earned the right to graduate,” said school board President Victor Abate, who will attend with Superintendent Rick Musselman, high school Principal Cynthia Hutchinson and others.

Since his return home, he faces physical, occupational and speech therapy three days a week to regain his memory and the full use of his right arm. Blair-Loss has taken time off from work to care for her son, who needs to be reminded to take medication throughout the day. 

Getting the call about the accident sent the mother of three into a spin.

“It was the same call all over again,” said Blair-Loss, recalling the death of her former husband and father of her children seven years ago in a similar accident.

Jason Blair was 34 when he was killed in July 2009 while riding a motorcycle on a local highway when a vehicle clipped his bike.

Blair-Loss said she and her family grieve for the Arbogasts and understand their pain. At the same time, she and her husband, Dan Loss, are finding it difficult to watch Blair struggle to regain what he’s lost.

His short-term memory loss is especially agonizing for the entire family.

“His grandmother passed away a few weeks before the accident, and he can’t remember it,” Blair-Loss said. “I have to tell him every day that she passed.”

For Blair, the most difficult part of his recovery is not having the full use of his right arm. He also rues the loss of his motorcycle, which was owned by his late paternal grandfather.

“I’ll get another one,” he said as his mother shook her head from side to side. “I say ‘No more bikes,'” she said.

Blair-Loss said her son’s accident has strengthened her faith and she hopes he’ll find a new direction in life because of it.

Blair had been planning to take a job at the same company where she’s employed, but his mother said he’d enjoyed working with special-needs children. 

“There’s a reason for all this. Maybe there’s something else he should be doing,” she said.

Moore is a writer for The Sunbury, Pennsylvania Daily Item.