O.C. Grandfather Takes Role of Single Dad : Parenthood: He’s among growing ranks of those raising children of their troubled offspring.

Harold Klein had always planned to retire from his construction job at 55, sell the house in Dana Point and spend his golden years tooling around Arizona in a mobile home.

But just two years away from his target date, Klein’s plans went up in smoke.

In April of 1991, his ex-wife died, leaving the burden of raising their then-21-month-old grandson, Kevin, squarely on Klein’s shoulders. Kevin’s grandmother had been taking care of the child since he was an infant, because the boy’s mother--Klein’s daughter--has been battling long-term drug problems and his father’s whereabouts are unknown.

“I didn’t know what to do. He was in diapers and I had to potty train him,” says the 54-year-old Klein, who became the child’s legal guardian in August, 1991. “I was calling everybody I could think of for advice.”

Klein is among a growing number of grandparents around the country who are stepping in to care for the abandoned offspring of their own, troubled children. It is a trend that has been fueled over the last decade by the explosion of crack cocaine use and compounded by the spread of of AIDS, unwanted teen-age pregnancies, child abuse and high divorce rates.

Most of the time, the role of surrogate parent is assumed by a single grandmother, or a grandmother and grandfather who share the responsibility. Klein is among a rare breed of single grandfathers tackling the challenges of parenthood.

For a man who has been married twice but has spent most of his adulthood living the single life, the new responsibilities have been nothing short of culture shock.

“It took me a year and a half just to begin to adjust,” Klein said. “He needed all of my attention.”

Every morning, like clockwork, Klein rises at 4 a.m., kisses his grandson, leaves him in the care of a nanny and heads off to his job as a construction foreman--sometimes commuting 1 1/2 hours each way from his home to a work site. When Klein gets off work at 2 p.m., it’s a mad dash home to shuttle Kevin to swim lessons four times a week.

Early evening finds him squinting at the recipe on a box of Hamburger Helper--trying to prepare dinner by 6:30 so Kevin doesn’t go to bed on a full stomach.

“I tell you, my hat’s off to single moms,” Klein said one recent evening as he whipped up the evening meal--quick and easy Stroganoff with tomatoes and cottage cheese. “I don’t know how they go to work all day long, then come home and cook and clean up.”

There are no firm statistics on the number of grandparents who, like Klein, are raising their children’s children. But the Grandparent Information Center in Washington estimates that 3.2 million children nationwide live with grandparents or other relatives. In one-third of these households, neither parent is living in the home and the grandparent assumes the role of primary care-giver.

Nine months ago, the American Assn. of Retired Persons opened the Grandparent Information Center as a national referral service to assist the increasing numbers of older men and women who are raising their grandchildren.

The center has been deluged with nearly 4,000 calls--mostly from frantic grandparents asking for information about their legal rights as guardians, sources of financial assistance, and other services.

At the same time, nearly 400 support groups have sprung up around the country to help older men and women cope with the emotional toll of bringing up children in later life.

Klein is more fortunate than many. His ex-wife left a $70,000 insurance policy to be used for her grandson’s care. He also has a live-in nanny who watches Kevin during the day and does the cleaning.

But even with all this going for him, being a father to a 4-year-old boy is an unrelenting job that leaves little time or energy for the more relaxing pursuits Klein had planned for middle age.

The hours that Klein once spent lounging around his back-yard spa have given way to evening swim lessons, picnics with other grandparents raising their grandchildren and socials at the Lutheran church down the street.

Klein’s life has been so dramatically transformed in the last three years that he has little in common with most people his own age.

“They’re all in a different stage of life,” he said. “They’ve got adult children or never had children at all, so they’re not exactly interested in talking about childhood diseases.”

So Klein is usually on his own when it comes to grappling with the challenges Kevin presents, which can include hyper-sensitivity.

One evening last week, Kevin hovered in the doorway of Klein’s kitchen, tears welling in his eyes, as he sulked over his father’s refusal to give him a soft drink. Then he disappeared into the living room. Minutes later came a piercing wail.

Klein rushed into the living room, favoring his left hip, which is still stiff from recent hip replacement surgery. He found Kevin screaming and holding his foot. The child was crying and said he had fallen down a step.

Klein kissed his grandson’s bare foot and returned to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner.

“He (Kevin) has a big heart but he sure knows how to push my buttons,” Klein said. “I’m telling you, at this age, it’s tough.”

Historically, grandparents have from time to time stepped in to raise their grandchildren--an arrangement that was not uncommon in rural areas and in parts of the South. However, the large numbers of grandparents becoming primary caretakers of their grandchildren throughout the nation is a departure from the past.

“What we’ve seen over the past 10 years--certainly the last five--is different because it is associated mainly with the debilitating effect of crack cocaine and other substance abuse,” said Renee Woodworth, coordinator of the Grandparent Information Center.

As Klein’s experience illustrates, the phenomenon is not limited to the inner city, but cuts across race and class lines--a testament to the fact that crack cocaine ravages indiscriminately.

Michael Jones, a Newport Beach psychologist, said 100 Orange County families belong to his support group for grandparents based in Santa Ana Heights. There are about a half a dozen such groups in Orange County.

“My office is here in Newport Beach--a very affluent area,” Jones said. “This is not just an issue for families who are on the lower end socioeconomically. Cocaine is widely popular and has spread pretty much throughout the population in general.”

Klein said his 32-year-old daughter was one of the drug’s victims. According to Klein, she became pregnant with Kevin while living in a crack house in Long Beach. Five months into the pregnancy, she got off drugs and stayed clean for nearly a year, Klein said.

But like so many others, Klein said, she again succumbed to cocaine’s lure.

Klein said he never sees his daughter, although he says he has told her that when she is truly ready to take control of her life, he will be there for her.

Klein’s daughter has visited Kevin several times at the child’s great-grandparents’ home, Klein said. But no one has told the boy that she is his natural mother.

He said the boy often asks questions about his mother, which sometimes leave Klein at a loss for words.

“He’s been wondering more and more where she is as he gets older,” Klein said. “Sometimes, after we’ve been watching TV he’ll say something like, ‘I wish my mommy could be with me.’ It just breaks my heart.”

“I’ll tell him, ‘Your mom is very sick,’ ” Klein said. “But he tells all of his friends that his mommy has gone to Jesus, even though I try to correct him.” Klein said Kevin never asks about his biological father. To the 4-year-old, Klein is “daddy”--the only father he likely will ever know.

He frets over how best to instill his grandson with a knowledge of the African American part of his heritage in a county where only 2% of the population is black. Kevin’s mother is white, and his biological father is black.

“Sometimes he’ll ask me, why is my hair like this? Or why is my skin this color?” Klein said. “I tell him ‘because your father is black.’ ”

Just after 8 p.m. Klein tucks Kevin into bed with his doll, Sally. The black baby doll was a gift from Klein’s 18-year-old stepdaughter, Tracy Schlick. By the end of his 16-hour day, Klein said he is so exhausted he can barely face the prospect of starting over again the next day.

Still, he says, he has never regretted his decision.

“I always wanted a son,” he said. “I just didn’t know it would be so late in life.”