Stow’s stand against bullying Giants fan Bryan Stow, who suffered severe brain damage in a March 2011 assault at Dodger Stadium, is starting to feel ‘whole’ again through sharing his anti-bullying message with kids.

Stow’s stand against bullying Giants fan Bryan Stow, who suffered severe brain damage in a March 2011 assault at Dodger Stadium, is starting to feel ‘whole’ again through sharing his anti-bullying message with kids.

Bryan Stow achieves an impressive feat on this March morning at Mary Farmar Elementary School in Benicia: He makes nearly 250 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders pay rapt attention at a school assembly.

They chuckle when Stow jokes about them missing class for the gathering. They roar when the video screen shows him in a swimming pool, surrounded by older women, during his rehabilitation. They chant, “Go, Bryan, Go!” when he stands up and takes several halting steps with a cane.

And they vigorously repeat after Stow when he explains steps to combat bullies.

Stand up and speak up. Reach out and help others. Lead by example.

Stow wears a Giants T-shirt under a pullover from his Santa Clara County paramedic job, which ended when he was savagely assaulted at Dodger Stadium on March 31, 2011. Now, with speeches like this, he’s found a new calling: connecting with kids around a message he embodies.

“It makes me feel really good, like I’m whole,” he says.

Even eight years later, Stow’s name remains familiar to many Giants fans. He and two friends had traveled to Los Angeles to watch the Giants play the Dodgers on Opening Day. In the stadium parking lot after the game, Stow, wearing a Buster Posey jersey, was brutally attacked by two men and suffered severe brain damage.

His assailants were arrested and convicted. Marvin Norwood pleaded guilty to felony assault and Louie Sanchez to felony mayhem. Norwood was sentenced to four years in prison and Sanchez to eight.

Stow emerged with a shattered life. He sports a nasty scar on his head from his injuries and subsequent surgery, and after years of therapy he must take 13 pills a day, including anti-seizure medications and a sleep aid. He wears compression stockings to prevent his legs from swelling and protect against blood clots, and he requires constant care.

Still, Stow has made substantive physical progress in recent years, moving from a wheelchair to a walker to crutches. He speaks slowly but clearly, still engaging and charismatic and funny.

So when Stow turned 50 last month, his family and friends celebrated with a rousing surprise party.

“We didn’t even think he’d live to 43,” says Erin Collins, one of Stow’s two sisters, “so for him to turn 50 was huge.”

He reached the landmark birthday invigorated by the anti-bullying presentations he makes to schools across Northern California. Through his Bryan Stow Foundation, he’s made more than 250 such appearances over the past three-plus years. Stow even took one 2017 trip to Hawaii to speak to students there.

His fundamental message, and the guiding principle of the foundation: Adult bullies did this to him, and becoming a bully is a choice. He implores students, from elementary school through high school, to make a different choice.

Stow lives with his parents, Ann and Dave, at their home in Capitola, outside Santa Cruz. Ann joins him on most of his school visits. They are encouraged by the thoughtful questions kids ask, and how many students tell stories of their own experiences with bullying.

Then there was the fourth-grade girl at Boulder Creek Elementary School, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Shortly after Stow spoke there, one teacher saw the girl stand up to peers who were teasing another student, persuading them to stop by asking, “Don’t you remember what Bryan Stow said?”

Moments like that explain why Stow says the presentations have a therapeutic effect, helping him avoid depressing thoughts. As recently as 2014, he replied, “paramedic,” when people asked him what he did, even if that career ended when he was attacked.

Now, referring to the school visits, Stow says, “This is my new job.”

One day before their Benicia school visit, Bryan and Ann Stow are sitting in the mostly vacant breakfast room at a nearby Holiday Inn Express. Ann is talking about Bryan not having his short-term memory when he finally returned home in 2013, after two years in various hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

“Who are you?” Bryan says, smiling, as he interrupts his mom.

Former Giants third-base coach Tim Flannery, who raised nearly $200,000 for Stow’s medical care through benefit concerts, tells the story of introducing his wife, Donna, to Stow. He looked at Donna, looked at Tim and looked back at Donna.

Then Stow said, “What are you doing with this guy?”

Bryan Stow practices his entrance before addressing 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students during delivering his anti-bullying speech at the Mary Farmar Elementary School in Benicia, California, USA 1 Mar 2019. Stow is the Giants? fan who suffered a severe brain injury during assault after Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium in 2011. (Peter DaSilva/Special to The Chronicle) less Bryan Stow practices his entrance before addressing 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students during delivering his anti-bullying speech at the Mary Farmar Elementary School in Benicia, California, USA 1 Mar 2019. Stow ... more Photo: Peter DaSilva / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Peter DaSilva / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Giants fan Bryan Stow finds purpose in a life shattered by attack 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Stow always has had a sense of humor and upbeat demeanor, but the past eight years have tested him mightily. Brandy Dickinson, his speech-language pathologist for four years, recalls her early interactions with him in the acute rehab program at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos.

Stow, frustrated, often says he felt fat, depressed and lonely. Dickinson urged him to get out in the community, interacting with people.

She had seen how patients with traumatic brain injuries enjoyed getting together with children. Dickinson suspected Stow — who had retained his humor and social language, but whose memory and thought processing were seriously impaired — would benefit from speaking to kids.

His first outing involved a kindergarten class in the church school across the hospital parking lot. He spoke fluently and passionately about his time as a paramedic. The kids listened intently and hung all over him.

“That really built up his confidence,” Dickinson says.

She and Stow talked about how he should respond when kids ask what happened to him. Stow had routinely referred to his attackers as “thugs,” but they agreed that probably wasn’t the right word to use. They settled on “adult bullies.”

That was the genesis for the school presentations — connecting the assault on him with bullying among kids. Stow and his family, with an assist from Dickinson, decided to build the foundation on this issue.

Dickinson initially accompanied Stow on his visits, and now either Ann or one of his sisters (Collins or Bonnie Bush) joins him. They shape their presentation based on the age of the students, including discussion of suicide prevention in the speech to middle schools and high schools.

They also don’t sidestep the events of March 31, 2011. At one point, they show side-by-side photos of Norwood and Sanchez, the men who initiated Stow’s tragic odyssey.

Stow believes both should have received more jail time. Norwood already is out of prison, and Stow acknowledges struggling with that reality while he still labors through day-to-day life.

Asked if he still thinks about the assailants, Stow quickly replies, “Yes. Every single day. Every day I wake up on my own and get out of bed, I think about them.”

Does he feel anger? Frustration? Resentment?

“Everything,” he says. “All of that. And then a little part of me hopes they’re doing well, because they have kids themselves. But then part of me is f … forget that. I almost dropped an F-bomb there.

“I want them to feel what I felt. They’ll never feel that. I could be this way forever.”

Eight years later, Flannery still remembers the scene on Opening Day of 2011. The heckling near his spot in the third-base coaching box at Dodger Stadium, he recalls, was more hostile and vicious than usual.

There were several incidents in the stands that day, according to accounts of the trial after Stow’s family filed a lawsuit against the Dodgers, accusing the team of insufficient security. The Stows won a jury verdict of $17.9 million, later appealed by the Dodgers and settled.

One man testified that Sanchez, wearing Dodgers gear, intimidated Giants fans throughout the game, throwing peanuts and spraying soda. He became involved in one fight during the game, unrelated to the parking lot confrontation in which Stow was attacked from behind and repeatedly kicked.

The incident sparked renewed scrutiny of fan violence, as did a fatal stabbing in September 2013 a few blocks from AT&T Park. Dodgers fan Jonathan Denver, 24, died after a confrontation with Giants fans outside a nightclub; Michael Montgomery of Lodi was arrested but not charged, when prosecutors concluded he acted in self-defense.

Jorge Costa, Giants senior vice president of operations and facilities, says many major-league teams, including the Giants, added enhanced security programs even before these tragedies. Fans can anonymously text stadium officials, for instance, to notify them of potential issues.

Costa says incidents and ejections at AT&T were “slightly down” last season, though he wouldn’t reveal exact numbers. He acknowledges the Giants will “staff differently” for their late April homestand against the Dodgers and Yankees than for other opponents.

On April 7, Stow and his family will make an appearance at the ballpark to spread awareness of his foundation and its anti-bullying campaign.

Fans will see a different Stow than in the early days after the attack, when he took about 10 seizure medications and doctors were not sure he would survive. They had to remove part of his skull to combat swelling in his brain, and he spent nine months in a medically induced coma.

Even now, Stow struggles with extra bone growth resulting from his brain injuries, the body’s natural defense. He needed surgery on one elbow and also deals with recurring pain in both shoulders, his right knee and his left hip.

“Yeah, grind is a good word,” Stow says of his rehab over the years. “It was harsh. I don’t really remember all of it.”

His previous life, sadly, is a distant memory. He was an avid bowler and skydiver; now he watches movies or reads sports magazines. He occasionally attends concerts and tries to get some exercise in the pool, but he has gained about 80 pounds since the attack, partly as a side effect of one of his medications.

Stow spends most of his time with his mom, a former church secretary who retired to become his full-time caregiver. She coordinates and organizes his school presentations, though he’s indisputably the star — walking into the room (on crutches) to a spirited ovation after a video, set to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” tells his story.

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Stow is alternately funny, thoughtful and serious in his speech to the students. He deftly fields their questions afterward, and they seem influenced by his words.

“I learned bullying can change somebody’s life forever, especially if it’s physical,” fifth-grader Logan McCoy says after the presentation in Benicia.

His principal, Mellissa Harley, says: “To have an authentic voice talk about the very thing we try to tell them is powerful — and right on time.”

Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick