Cheating Death With a Rare Life

The first time doctors expected Benny Hernandez to die, he was 3 months old and had a severe case of pneumonia. The infant had no more than three days left, doctors predicted.

His parents took him home and prayed. And he lived.

His devout father told him in the years that followed: “God had a plan for you. He has given you life, more than once. Twice.”

Now, the Anaheim Union High School District trustee, famed for unseating an incumbent after spending $8.13 on his campaign, is living under another death sentence. It was issued in January 2001, when doctors told him an aggressive brain tumor would leave him six, eight, maybe 12 weeks to live. So Hernandez, 45, quit his job as a sixth-grade teacher in Compton and vowed to use his remaining time to touch the lives of others.

Thirteen months later, Hernandez travels all over Southern California, giving inspirational talks to community groups, schools and churches. He tells people that each day is worth living, no matter how many--or few--we are granted. He still attends school board meetings when his health allows, and may run for Anaheim mayor. Not that the medical news is good. Doctors have gone through his skull twice to remove two tennis-ball-sized tumors. A third tumor is growing fast.

Two months after his election to the school board, Hernandez’s first tumor came with a headache so severe it forced him into the emergency room.

The next day, tests revealed the fast-growing, cancerous tumor. It was the worst kind, glioblastoma multiforme, with tentacles that dig so deep into the brain they can never be completely removed. Doctors wasted no time; within a few days, they performed surgery that left Hernandez with a scar the shape of a lucky horseshoe. And they told him the bad news.

His mother and older brother, in Colorado, put their lives on hold to move closer to him.

Henry Hernandez says he and his younger brother maintained a so-so relationship for years. As he prepared to spend his brother’s last days with him, he thought, “How close can I get to Benny in 12 weeks?”

But the news didn’t seem to devastate Benny Hernandez as it did his family. After surgery, he immediately started planning for the future, as if he didn’t comprehend his fate. The surgeon pulled Henry Hernandez aside and told him: “I don’t know if your brother understands the seriousness of this. On a scale from one to four, four being most serious, my take is that he’s on five.”

Henry Hernandez is still with his brother.

But while Benny Hernandez’s tumors have not killed him, they have taken away many of the skills he once took for granted. Until Hernandez later regained some of his motor skills, his brother helped dress him and escort him to countless meetings. Henry Hernandez has provided the doctor with the difficult, honest updates on how his brother is doing. No, Benny Hernandez often doesn’t remember what day it is. Yes, he needs to be reminded two, three, sometimes four times a day.

In other ways, though, Hernandez is full of life. “I want to spend my last days reaching out to other people,” he said. “I think that’s the greatest reward.... I will keep going until my last breath.”

He is visiting every school in Anaheim. There, he tells children to go to college, get educated. Be somebody. When he talks in churches, he jokes that the tumor is God’s way of making him pray and meditate more. He has lunch and dinner with friends. On many days, he is up early and out late.

The one thing that makes him cry is his wish to have more time with his son, Alex, 8, whose birthday he marked by bringing a cake to school and singing.

In May, after 12 weeks of radiation treatment and about the time doctors originally thought he would be dead, Hernandez took the trip of a lifetime. An old college friend, Kathy Lopez, had heard about the tumor. She tracked him down, renewed their friendship. As a social worker, she was fascinated by Hernandez’s attitude. “It just kind of drew me to him,” Lopez said. “I would go to church to hear him. I had to be there all the time, be around somebody who was so positive.”

She asked if there was anywhere he wanted to go but hadn’t been. He mentioned the Great Wall of China. She blurted out, “I’ll take you.”

Lopez is still awed by the social touch Hernandez displayed on that trip, striking up conversations with strangers everywhere they went. He wore T-shirts with such legends as “I’m too sexy for my hair” (referring to his bald and scarred pate) and “God’s in control.” Everyone became an acquaintance: the tailor, people on the bus, tourists on a Yangtze River cruise and in shops where he bought back scratchers and tacky souvenirs.

A few months later, by the end of summer, the second tumor was causing new problems. Hernandez lost peripheral vision and motor skills. He couldn’t walk without a cane. In September, surgeons cut out two tumors that had merged into one. But the operation was a success and much of Hernandez’s mobility was restored.

He believes it is the power of God, prayer and love. And maybe the two cups a day of medicinal Chinese tea made from mushrooms, supplied by a man in Laguna Beach who had heard about Hernandez’s illness.

Still, his driving days are over, and he walks slowly, his eyes sweeping back and forth in front of him to compensate for the loss of peripheral vision.

In his pocket, he carries a computer organizer. He frequently pulls it out, checking his schedule and looking for phone numbers. It has a calendar full of dates he thought he’d never see: his 45th birthday last month, his son’s eighth birthday. There was even a joking entry for systems shutdown, set for a day earlier this month. That was the most recent day doctors had told Hernandez he could not expect to live beyond.

Now, in considering a run for mayor of Anaheim, he envisions an active approach--walking the precincts, knocking on doors--though it is unclear how much his health would allow.

Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Hernandez was performing in a musical trio with his brothers by age 4. Called the Little King’s Heralds, they played the accordion and sang hymns, booked almost every weekend at churches in Southern California and Mexico and appearing on religious television shows.

Hernandez was always the straight kid, the do-gooder, his brother said, the one who never even tried a cigarette. In school, at La Sierra University and Cal State Long Beach, he was active in community groups and professional associations.

It was typical of Hernandez to become a social worker after college, corralling wayward youth and setting them up with jobs or finding college counselors for them. He liked working with kids so much, he decided to become a teacher and run for the Anaheim elementary school board. He served on that board before making two unsuccessful bids for the high school board.

On his third try, in 2000, he didn’t campaign until the last minute, after a friend called him to say she had 70 of his old campaign signs gathering dust in her garage. He went to Target, bought some electrical ties and, with his son, hung the signs up on fences in Cypress. All in all, he spent $8.13--and finally won.

Even now, The only aspect of death that makes Hernandez cry is the thought of leaving his son, Alex, who turned 8 last month. On Alex’s birthday, Hernandez delivered a cake to his son’s classroom and, with one arm around Alex’s shoulders, sang “Going Home.”

Alex looked up at his father and wiped his eyes. He crossed the fingers on both hands in that common child’s signal of wishing, and, as if that weren’t enough, he crossed his arms over his chest. Later, he said, he was making a wish that his father would not cry. When he blew out the candles, he made another wish. But he would not share that secret.

Alex lives in Los Angeles with his mother, who never married Hernandez.

“I wish I could spend more time with my boy,” Hernandez said, wiping tears from his eyes. “And I just hope that all the love that has come my way, that he will receive the same love from everyone. I hope I can teach him how to give love, to receive love.”

The third tumor is growing. The doctor said to pray that it grows outward, where the doctor can grab it. Hernandez replied: “I’ll grow ‘em. You scoop ‘em.”

During the latest appointment, the doctor didn’t issue an opinion on the amount of time Hernandez has left. Hernandez never listens anyway.