VENTURA : Ex-Smoker Gives Students a Warning

Dick Reiner sat in Sheila Brady’s fifth-grade class at Ventura’s Juanamaria School with a surgical mask covering his nose and mouth. A plastic tube running into his nose supplied him with oxygen.

Behind him, an American Lung Assn. poster announced: “The truth about smoking will just kill you.” Reiner agrees.

“I smoked three or four packs a day,” Reiner told the schoolchildren. “It killed me.”

Reiner, 64, suffers from chronic emphysema, which forced him into retirement 10 years ago. But he uses his life-threatening illness to help steer children away from smoking in a program sponsored by the American Lung Assn. of Ventura County.

Reiner is very blunt about what 28 years of heavy smoking did to his health.

“I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day,” he said. “I can’t walk and talk at the same time. I can’t eat and talk at the same time. The hardest thing to do is take a shower, which takes half an hour. When I get out, I have to sit in my easy chair because I am so tired.”

Reiner said that he began smoking at 15 because everybody smoked.

“In those days, the only bad thing said about smoking was that it would stunt your growth. Since I was over 6 feet, that didn’t bother me,” he said.

Reiner gave the children an example of what his life is like. Telling them to take a deep breath and let out only 25% of their air, he had them move around with the remaining air in their lungs.

“That’s how I feel all the time,” he said. “I have to train myself to do things the easy way.”

After his talk, Reiner asked the children how many still want to smoke. Only one youngster raised a hand.