Helping Young Burn Victims Go Back to School

When Barbara Ann Kammerer returned to her teaching job at an Anaheim junior high following her car accident, she “knew I had to tell the students why I looked the way I did,” she said.

When the car burst into flames in the 1977 accident, Kammerer suffered second- and third-degree burns over most of her body. She returned 1 1/2 years later to Orangeview Junior High in Anaheim wearing a head-to-toe pressure suit to protect her still-sensitive skin.

The fingers of her right hand had been amputated, leaving her with a “paw,” as she calls it. Her left hand was disfigured and her face had undergone several plastic surgeries.

Explaining the burns to her six classes of students, “who asked a lot of questions and were really interested,” eased the return for her and the students. It also led Kammerer to develop a school re-entry program for young student burn victims, the first known program of its kind in the nation.

With a two-year, $44,000 grant funded through the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation in Canoga Park, she now visits young burn victims and their families to prepare them for their return to school.

“Being a burn victim herself,” said Lynn Schuster, public relations director of the foundation, “gives her an understanding that otherwise might be difficult for others to achieve.”

Before burn victims return to school, Kammerer, 41, visits their classrooms and teachers with a slide presentation and lecture about what to expect and how they can help burn victims resume their studies and a normal life.

To date, she has helped 80 children return to their classrooms, including David Rothenberg, who gained national attention after his father set him afire in a Buena Park motel room.

Now, Kammerer says, she plans to do the same for adult burn victims who are trying to right their lives and return to work.

“Going back to work is like someone going back to school . . . Just because a person is 45 doesn’t mean they know any more about burns than a 10-year-old,” she said. Some of the most interested people at schools, she said, are teachers and administrators. “It’s usually their first experience with a burn victim.”

Kammerer, now a Huntington Beach resident, has quit teaching to devote full time to burn victims.

Because of the numbers alone--an estimated 2 million people are burned badly enough each year to need treatment--Kammerer’s program has drawn wide interest from trauma centers.

Sue Cahners of Shriners Burn Institute in Boston, has developed a similar school program, “but Kammerer’s program is the one everyone in burn treatment is watching.”

Says Dr. Bruce Achauer, director of the burn center at UCI Medical Center in Orange. “She (Kammerer) helps people get back to the same level of function they had before being burned. Her own life is her best example.”