June 30, 1974
They were just kids, playing in Palo Alto’s Joe DiMaggio League. But they took the game seriously and taunted the officials when they made unpopular calls. In an effort to restore order, volunteer umpire Stan Feigenbaum called a time-out to meet with the team managers behind home plate.
__He was holding his protective mask in his hands when someone hurled the ball. No one ever determined if it was deliberate or accidental, but the ball struck the umpire on his left temple. He staggered to the bleachers and sat through the rest of the game. A few hours later, he began vomiting and was rushed to the Stanford Medical Center, where he later underwent emergency surgery.

Nearly Eight Years Later
The day begins before 8:00 a.m. Rose Ann gives her husband, Stan, a sponge bath and a shave. Next, she maneuvers him onto a bedpan. After combing his hair and dressing him, Rose Ann serves and spoon-feeds him breakfast in bed. Even when she rushes, the entire procedure still takes more than an hour.
__The years that separate these two days tell a story of survival, of devastating endings and painstaking beginnings. But, perhaps, the most frightening part is that brain injury - the result of a car crash, motorcycle accident, heart attack or stroke -could strike any family just as unexpectedly.
__Eight years ago, the Feigenbaums were an ordinary, middle-income family, enjoying the good life most Californians take for granted. They had just moved into a four-bedroom custom house in Palo Alto. Stan, a successful engineer, was the sole financial supporter of the family; his life revolved around his wife and their three sons, David, 8, Tom, 10, and Bill, 14.
__Rose Ann was a homemaker, dabbling in art-history classes at Foothill College and flirting with questions about where her life was headed. "I was spoiled and selfish," she admits.
__She didn’t attend many of the city recreation department’s games - "it irritated me when the crowd yelled to kill the umpire" - and she missed the last one. The kids who were playing, she knew, were tough ghetto kids, and Stan was a controversial umpire - "He called it like it was." For his efforts, he earned a token $10 a game; but nobody could have predicted what it would cost him and his family.
__The hospital ordeal reads like a TV drama: the blow to his head had severed an artery, triggering massive bleeding in the left side of his brain. A blood clot developed and surgery was necessary. Stan slipped into a coma and doctors gave him only 24 hours to live.
__Then, as the days stretched into months, they began hinting to Rose Ann that her husband would be better off dead. Even if he did wake up, they said, he wouldn’t be able to function as a human being; if he said anything, it would be a single word. The social worker began talking about the motionless, rapidly fading, 90-pound man in the past tense.
__Today, 48-year-old Stan Feigenbaum is an outpatient in the brain-injury unit of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Menlo Park. He’s still in a wheelchair. His right arm and both legs are totally useless; his left hand can perform only the most simple tasks, like holding a plastic cup.
__His mind is alert, his memory fine and his intellect sharp - I.Q. 140 - but most of what is Stan Feigenbaum remains literally locked inside his head. For, although he’s learning to talk again, his words come out garbled, in a whisper, and require extreme concentration to understand.
__This morning while he works with his therapists, Rose Ann waits across the street in the VA cafeteria. Sitting in a plastic booth among the battered and crippled causalities of other public and private wars, the slim blonde seems oddly out of place - like she ought to be sipping an expensive Chablis at the country-club pool.
__At 12:30, she interrupts her discourse to retrieve her husband. "How did it go?" Rose Ann asks, leaning over his wheelchair to hug him. His arms remain motionless, but the good left side of his face lights up with a smile.
__Rose Ann has the car-transfer down pat: she sets the brake on the chair, holds Stan’s legs between her own knees, stands him up and pivots him onto the front seat. After he’s comfortably settled, she empties his catheter into a plastic jar and pours it in the gutter, glancing around to make sure nobody has noticed.
__Stan is excited about his session today. Although the once-familiar words don’t come quickly enough to keep up with his thoughts, he remains undaunted. If he can’t make himself understood, he continues until he succeeds.
__"It has to be God," he says painstakingly searching for the right words. "I’m reborn. Amazing!" Rose Ann, with unlimited patience, translates each word for those who have trouble understanding.
__While Stan was in a coma, his aunt changed his name to Chaim. "It’s a Jewish tradition, so that the angel of death can’t find him," Rose Ann explains. "I’m Catholic, and the last time Stan was in a synagogue was for his Bar Mitzvah. But the doctors told me Stan’s life was in God’s hands, and I guess a lot of people would have blamed Him. We didn’t."
__Rose Ann leaps from one subject to another, describing the events of the harrowing years with a kind of detached curiosity, alternately annoyed at circumstances that have tested her, and awed by powers that she doesn’t pretend to understand.
__As long as she can draw upon her seemingly endless reserves of energy, the once-flighty 43-year-old homemaker believes everything will work out. "I swear I was meant to do this, that all my yesterdays led up to what has happened, so that I could tolerate it."
__For months, she says, "I walked around like a zombie, putting my mind in neutral. It was impossible to comprehend what was happening, and I didn’t let myself think whether everyone would be better off if Stan died."
__The first words Stan was able to recall after his accident were, "I love you." He couldn’t say thank you, so instead he told everyone that he loved them. "I’m aphasic. That means I have trouble using words, but I’m not dumb," Stan says, spelling "aphasic" aloud. To prove his point, he asks his wife to take one of his former business cards from his backpack. "Stan Feigenbaum, Manager, Image Technology, Microform Data Systems."
__Most of what he has been able to relearn has been though the efforts of rehabilitation therapists. Unfortunately, according to his wife, neurosurgeons tend to give up too early. Some still believe that brain-injury victims reach their potential after just six months, and many feel patients would be better off in nursing homes.
__"But you can’t just throw somebody away because he can’t do something. Too often, we keep patients alive at the beginning just to let them rot later," Rose Ann says.
__"With today’s heroic medicine, we have to do more. We have the ability to bring people back after heart attacks, for example, then we have to deal with the brain damage. It isn’t easy, especially with the lack of facilities and funding." Fortunately, she says, the therapists at Valley Medical Center and the VA have stuck by Stan, and under their tutelage, he has made remarkable strides.
__Stan is prattling on about his morning lessons in language, reading and math. When Rose Ann misses a word, they begin a playful game of charades.
__"Let’s see," she says. "Is it bigger than a bread box?" Stan laughs, and his wife joins in. She’s fortunate that her husband has maintained his sense of humor, since many victims of brain damage develop severe personality problems.
__"It’s ludicrous," Stan says, conjuring up a word that he hasn’t used since his accident. He giggles with delight.
__"As a result of his brain injury, his emotions are always up-front," Rose Ann explains. Quick to find a positive side to everything, she points out that increased sensitivity is one of the more pleasant results of the accident. "I enjoy his personality sometimes even more than before. He’s a nicer person, more in tune with other people’s needs," says his wife of 19 years.
__At home again, Rose Ann parks her husband in the living room next to a sunny window and ties a radio and emergency horn to his wheelchair. Like the rest of the house, the room is crammed with "things" - knickknacks, pictures, a doll, too much furniture, a baby grand piano. This is a home where memories obviously are more important than a polished floor or a tidy coffee table, the kind of atmosphere where colorful handmade quilts make you want to kick off your shoes and sit on your heels.
__Rose Ann goes into the kitchen to make tea, but, in minutes, Stan grows impatient and presses his horn with his left hand. One beep means he wants something when she gets the chance; three beeps indicate an emergency.
__"I’ll be right there!" Rose Ann yells good-naturedly. "I’m tuned into that horn like a well-trained dog." At times, she feels like she’s taking care of an extra child; and, sometimes, all the mothering makes her lose perspective of her role as wife. "But Stan won’t let me forget. He’ll say something like he loves me."
__Before coming home permanently, Stan spent almost two years in medical facilities, undergoing 14 operations. Every time his wife visited, he would ask, "When?" Finally, Rose Ann decided that everyone would be better off with Stan at home. For one thing, she would have more time to spend with the children. But it was a difficult decision to live with at first, she admits. "When he came home, everyone was very depressed. It was all so overwhelming, like having a new baby in the family. I had the new-mother blues."
__Though she has had a succession of attendants to help on weekends, she doesn’t have one at present. "They’re so expensive, and I’d rather have the money to do something else. Last month, Stan and I used the money to go to a play in San Francisco."
__Rose Ann has considered going to work in order to pay for a full-time attendant, but she doesn’t think it would pay. "Besides, I think it’s more important for me to schlepp Stan around myself." Meanwhile, volunteers, including an 87-year-old "reader," have been a great help, as have monthly family-support groups.
__Much of Rose Ann’s strength is inspired by Stan’s own motivation. Ironically, her first marriage failed because she didn’t have the patience to deal with her husband’s problems, she says.
__"Sometimes, I feel so useless. I love you," Stan says to his wife.
__"I love you, too."
__But Rose Ann isn’t afraid to argue with her husband. "Shush up now, I’m talking." He stops for a moment, then resumes in mid-sentence.
__To help them cope with their extraordinary lifestyle, Stan and Rose Ann have studied transcendental meditation and try to meditate together regularly. "I’m an optimistic person. I devote ten minutes a day - no more - to being depressed," Rose Ann claims. But in a more honest moment, she admits that her feelings are like a yoyo. "I’m either happy or depressed. Depression catches up with me when I’m low on energy."
__For her peace of mind, she sees a psychic several times a year. "I’ve always been fascinated by psychic powers and it’s cheaper than going to a psychiatrist. "Sometimes, I want to die to leave her better off," Stan confides.
__When things do get away from her, Rose Ann sneaks off to the bathroom, where she keeps a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s Enthusiasm Makes The Difference. She also admits that Gothic romances are her favorite escape.
__By now, the two youngest boys have returned from school. Billy, the oldest at 22, is still at work. In the den, out of earshot of their parents, Tom, now 18, and David, 16, talk candidly about life with a severely handicapped father.
__"I was 10 when Dad was hurt, and 12 when I saw him again for the first time. But it wasn’t until I was 14 that I realized he could still think," Tom says. "We were a real loving family before. Sure, I miss it. Now I have to have my son-to-father talks with my mother.
__"Mom doesn’t have much time for us, but I guess that’s good, because we have more freedom. Every once in a while, I give her some crap, but I try not to, because I know how busy she is." He admits he went though a difficult time, and even experimented with drugs, but that’s over now.
__Tom says he is in charge of much of the housekeeping - "Otherwise, it wouldn’t get done" - and spends most evenings reading the newspaper to his dad. But the teenager admits he has never helped his mother bathe or dress his father. He starts to say something about not being around forever to help, then changes his mind. "The truth is, I guess I never really thought about those things. Sometimes, I feel like I’m his servant. His horn drives me crazy."
__David doesn’t think much of the horn, either: "I usually tell him to wait until the TV commercials." Actually, David is the one who spends the most time with his parents: "I’m just about the only one who does help." Help, he says, includes changing his dad’s talking book tapes and working with him on his physical therapy. Soon, he hopes to buy a blackboard so he can work with his father on his studies.
__"We don’t have a generation gap," David says. But he doesn’t have many long conversations with his father, either. "I don’t know what to say."
It would also be nice to be able to play tennis with him. "I guess I could always rig up a racket to his wheelchair. "
The conversation over, David switches on the television and Tom goes to his room to practice the guitar. Back in the living room, Stan is tearful; the subject of the boys always upsets him.
__"He was the world’s best father," Rose Ann says. "I didn’t always try my hardest with Billy, because I knew Stan could handle him better. It kills him because he feels he can’t help them when they need him."
__Stan is sobbing now and Rose Ann leans over to hug him. "Don’t worry, the kids are going to survive. They’re lucky; at least they have two parents. And, during the most important years, you were a great father."
__Besides, she adds, Stan can communicate with the boys with a simple look. "The biggest beef the boys ever had was sharing a room. Now they have their own rooms and they’re happy."
__Stan feels better, and she continues. "The kids really had it good before; Stan paid so much attention to them. I think that’s one of the things that made Billy so bitter." Billy is her son from her first husband, but Stan adopted him when he was just three. "I think he took the accident the hardest. He felt like he’d lost two fathers. For a while, he was hard to control. I went through hell and there was no one to help me."
__Even today, the children are sometimes "unthinking," Rose Ann admits. "But that’s okay, because it’s normal and I want them to be normal. The boys have been through a lot; maybe they’ve come out stronger."
__One of the things their mother misses most is the freedom to travel. Vacations are limited to about two days, and then there are all kinds of problems. "When we went to Yosemite," Rose Ann recalls, "the bed was so low that I had to care for Stan on my knees."
__Generally, the Feigenbaums prefer to stay home and entertain friends. Rose Ann invites company over as often as possible. Although they have managed to hold onto some of their old friends she says others feel uncomfortable making conversation with Stan. Even her parents are nervous about being left alone with him. "They’re afraid they won’t understand everything he says."
__For an occasional break, the couple enjoys eating out. And in restaurants, like at home, Rose Ann takes turns feeding herself and her husband. "This usually stirs up quite a bit of curiosity. Last time we ate out, the lady next to us never took her eyes off Stan. We didn’t really care and maybe she learned something."
__But, since money is tight, nights on the town are a luxury for the Feigenbaums. "Up until the accident, I never even balanced a checkbook," Rose Ann admits.
__"I’m sick for you," Stan replies.
__"Perhaps I need it for my education in life," his wife says.
__Although the family has initiated several lawsuits relating to the accident, it has yet to collect a dime. (Ed. note: Since this story was written the Feigenbaums have received a modest settlement from the California State Unemployed Insurance Fund.) The Feigenbaums live on Stan’s disability benefits, which amount to about half of his old salary. There’s not much money for attendant care, private therapists and special equipment.
__Medicare helps a little, but Stan isn’t eligible for Medi-Cal. When Rose Ann originally applied for Medi-Cal, she was asked if she owned a piano, whole life insurance or a cemetery plot. And, although it wasn’t mentioned, she believes that to qualify, she would have to discontinue Tom’s guitar lessons.
__Enough talk about finances, Stan says. Instead, he’s eager to show off the notebooks his wife and therapists have kept since his accident. "They’re my life, my brain," he says proudly. "Sometimes, I want to scream and throw things. I want to say s ." he dictated in one of the books. It also says Stan can type three words a minute with a headstick, and that he hopes he will eventually relearn all the letters and be able to read and write again.
__On one page, there’s an old copy of a report Stan once wrote to NASA on the Photographic and Optical Program, with which he was involved. On the facing page is a copy of an award from the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit for "attendance, improved speech and vocabulary."
__As long as Stan continues to make progress, the VA hospital will continue with his therapy. Last year, Rose Ann says, it was considering dropping Stan when he reached a plateau. "He was so angry that he started reading again."
__Whether her husband will continue his progress is a question Rose Ann doesn’t dwell on. "I really don’t know how far he will go. If we set goals and don’t reach them, we would be very frustrated."
__Meanwhile, she has more immediate problems, like putting Stan to bed. Barring interruptions, the routine takes 45 minutes, from brushing his teeth and washing his face and feet, to cleaning his nose - "He’s as fastidious as ever." She whistles as she works. "It’s like driving a car - I’ve learned to do it automatically."
__At the end of a long day, Rose Ann’s enthusiasm apparently hasn’t waned. "No one knows what will happen tomorrow, but today is beautiful and I count my blessings. We have each other and the family, and we have love."

(This article is reprinted with permission from CalToday Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, for which Marsha Kay Seff is a staff writer.)

I Fooled Them