Ben Stein Dreemz
Tragic End to Troubled Life A
bout 37 years ago, my wife-for-life alexandra Denman and I fl ew to Kansas City to adopt a baby. We had been struggling for years to fi nd a
baby to love. After a lot of scamming by various criminals masquerading as helpers, a lawyer of high repute named David Radis put us in touch with a beautiful girl who was pregnant in Missouri. We met her. She was stunning. Name not important.
She was intelligent and needed money. Getting pregnant was her business. We adopted our son the day he was born. He was
gorgeous. We named him after my mother’s father, Gabriel, and my wife’s war hero father, Col. Dale Denman Jr. of Prescott, Arkansas, and mostly after the man who had been my best friend for years, Barron Thomas. Hence, Thomas Gabriel Denman Stein. We brought him home on our laps.
The best friends a man ever had, our researchers Susan Gayle Reifer and a glorious girl now married to a major force in the movie business Ann Marie Newman, set up a nursery at our house in the Hollywood Hills. We had a fabulous baby nurse, and she took care of everything. Tommy was a diffi cult kid from the get-
go. He cried too much. But not a lot too much. We loved him like mad insanity. I sat with him for long hours, reading him stories. After a few months, I read him science-fi ction stories.
THOMAS STEIN
he went into a downward spiral. Thrown out of school for drunkenness and vandalism. Then back to Los Angeles, to hang out with horrible drug addicts. With the help of another Civil War buff , we got him
into a fi ne small school in Clinton, South Carolina, called Presbyterian College. It was fi ne because my wife’s family have been Presbyterians since it was founded. There, he fell in love with a girl. He brought her home
to California to meet my wife and me. She was in love with Los Angeles. She and Tommy dropped out of college and moved to
a lovely apartment here in L.A. There, he mostly smoked dope and drank. He and his girlfriend got married in South Africa. They quarreled over drugs and moved back to South Carolina. We bought them a beautiful house. It
did not help. Tommy drank more than ever. He abused his wife. They got divorced, and Tommy got ever
more into drugs and drinking. By then, he and his wife had the most
gorgeous daughter on Earth. “Coco” was what we called her. Tommy by then was hanging out at
cafes and fell in love with a girl he met at one. He kept on drinking and tried to work, but he couldn’t. He had a psychiatrist, but she seemingly only gave him an ever wider,
And soon he graduated to TV cartoons. For many months we would lie in bed watching Ren & Stimpy. We both loved an episode called Space Madness, about a Chihuahua lost in space. In about fi ve years, with the great help of my best friends
on this Earth, Al and Sally Burton, I was able to buy a home in Beverly Hills and homes in Malibu and the desert. Tommy was still a diffi cult kid. He did not do his homework. He refused to get up and go to school, even though it was only a block away in Beverly Hills. With the help of a fellow Civil War buff , we got Tommy
into a great private school for rebellious kids. It was called Cardigan Mountain, after a nearby peak in New Hampshire. Tommy resisted it at fi rst, but then fell in love with
Cardigan Mountain. He cried when he graduated and went off to a prestigious private school in Massachusetts. He discovered drugs there, and after that it was all downhill. Don’t tell me marijuana is harmless. From pot
32 NEWSMAX | SEPTEMBER 2023
ever more powerful range of psychotropic meds. As far as I know, he never met his shrink in person. Only over the internet. He and his fi rst wife quarreled over custody of Coco,
and on July 4 of this year, Tommy was so upset about this subject that he committed suicide with one of his many rifl es. My wife and I are deeply upset about his death. Deeply
to the point that my wife can barely get out of bed. I wish I had known how many drugs my boy was taking.
I would have taken him out of South Carolina and brought him here, where a good shrink would have treated him diff erently. Maybe with love, instead of with prescriptions. I loved
him so much, I cried when his name came up on my screen. Now, for my wife and I, every day is trying to wade
through quicksand. Be careful about pot. Be careful about doctors. I’ll write more later. Love your kids.
COURTESY OF BENJAMIN STEIN
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