A Monument to Love and Life . . . a Monument to Jason

To appreciate where this story winds up, you have to grasp the original depth of Sharon and Arnie Zepel’s heartache. There’s no easy way to relive that, but Sharon collects herself and begins . . .

“It really starts on Thursday, the 29th of September, that morning,” she says, as she and her husband, Arnie, both in their mid-40s, sit in their living room in Orange and talk about that day in 1994 when everything turned upside down. They had one kind of life that morning as they headed for a week’s vacation in Cabo San Lucas; they had another kind by day’s end, after the desk clerk at the resort pounded on their door at 11 that night and said they had a phone call from their son in California.

The call wasn’t from their son, however. It was about their son. Jason, 19, had driven his parents to LAX that morning and later went to his job at the Cinedome Theatres in Orange. One of his duties was changing the movie titles on the giant marquee. His parents never really liked that and even went over once to see how he did it. Still, Jason had done it dozens of times. On this night, though, he fell backward off the catwalk at the base of the marquee and landed on the ground 8 1/2 feet below.

Frantic in Cabo, Arnie and Sharon couldn’t get a flight until the next morning. It didn’t help that Sharon’s sister told her on the phone that nurses at UCI Medical Center, where Jason underwent brain surgery, already had asked about organ donation.

At the hospital the next day, Arnie and Sharon were hearing words like “intercranial pressure” and “herniated brain stem” and “gag reflex.” They played Jason’s favorite music at his bedside. They talked to him, massaged him, sang to him. Arnie read to him from the sports pages.

Jason never regained consciousness. Around 5 p.m., doctors told the Zepels that he was brain-dead.

After Jason’s death, the pain that spilled out over the next weeks and months, they say, was indescribable. “I felt like someone had taken a knife and gone through my heart and cut it out,” Sharon says. “It was not only emotional pain but physical. I really thought my heart was hurt. I couldn’t believe I was never going to see him again.”

Arnie was the same. “Before, I’d run four miles every other day. For the first few months after, it was like I struggled to get from the bedroom to here. I just couldn’t move.”

Now, 17 months later, the Zepels see that the healing began ever so slowly the first day, when the house was filled with sympathizers and everyone began reflecting on Jason’s life.

He had struggled as a boy in school and Arnie remembered telling Sharon way back then that it would be good if Jason could someday play baseball at El Modena High School, their neighborhood school. Sports, Arnie thought, would focus Jason on school and be a good influence.

As it turned out, Jason topped out at 5 feet 2 and, being stocky to boot, wasn’t a natural talent. Instead, he had hustle and a willingness to do anything, and coaches gave him a spot on the varsity. Jason exulted in it, his parents say.

“We felt being on the team was how Jason really improved his self-esteem and confidence,” Arnie says. “He just felt great because he was part of the team, so when we were sitting here that first night, it just flashed through me, let’s do something in Jason’s name for the El Modena baseball program.”

It would be nice, the Zepels thought, if enough money came in to buy some balls and bats for the team. Or, maybe some new uniforms.

The donations began coming, in all amounts. Five, 10, 50 dollars. “When it got to the two- to three-thousand-dollar range,” Arnie says, “the school called and said, ‘You’re not buying balls and bats with this. Let’s get together and do something.’ ”

Arnie fixed on the high school field and the crummy scoreboard with the Coca-Cola sign. Someone had to run out and change the numbers by hand. Lots of times, nobody bothered to do it. Arnie laughed, remembering that Jason often was the one who trundled out from the bench to do it and how it was the one dog-duty job he didn’t like.

That’s how this story winds up.

On March 15, El Modena will dedicate a new scoreboard anchored beyond the fence in right-centerfield and just beyond the 365-foot sign. No one will have to run out and update this baby. All electronic and costing $3,300, it will be full-service, flashing balls and strikes, the outs and the score. Instead of the Coca-Cola sign, the new board will have the inscription: “Dedicated to the memory and spirit of Jason ‘Zepee’ Zepel. Class of ’93.”

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Arnie always told his kids, Jason and Leah, now 19, that things happen for a reason. Try to turn negatives into positives, he told them. Donations peaked around $5,500. Besides the scoreboard, the money will go for an annual scholarship to the senior most exemplifying Jason’s spirit.

Arnie says five minutes don’t pass without him thinking of Jason, but that he feels his presence in a good way. Sharon says she just recently has begun feeling like she’s back to her old self, a self she missed.

“This the last thing we have planned for him,” Sharon says, referring to the dedication, “so this is going to bring us some closure. The hardest part is there are no new stories about my son. Other people talk about their kids and so-and-so is going to the prom, or this one is in college. There’s nothing to say about Jason that most people don’t already know, and that’s what’s hard--when people don’t mention his name anymore in conversation. This has given us an opportunity to do that.”

After talking to the Zepels, I thought about tragedies that leave holes in people’s lives. How do we survive them without being eaten alive ourselves?

I got around to picturing the ball field at El Modena. I picture a spring day with a good breeze blowing out toward right-centerfield. I picture a kid standing in the batter’s box, getting a pitch in his wheelhouse and lofting a long, arcing fly toward right-center. I see the ball clearing the fence and then clunking against the scoreboard with Jason Zepel’s name on it.

I imagine Jason, somewhere, saying, “Awwright! Nice poke!”

I think of something as simple as a scoreboard becoming a monument to a stocky 5-foot, 2-inch kid who found solace in playing ball. Somehow, it seems perfect.

Viewed in that comforting light, I picture the Jason Zepel story continuing for quite some time.

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Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.