For the first time in his 30-year career as a soccer and basketball referee in northern Maine, Bob Stedt was nervous in August about the physical test officials must pass in order to work soccer games.

Stedt had always been a healthy, reasonably fit man who stayed active. The principal at Van Buren High School, Stedt is also the soccer referee assigner for northern Maine, the man who organizes the schedule each fall.

But this fall season, things were much different. This fall, Stedt was about 14 weeks removed from April heart surgery in which he had five blocked arteries bypassed. It was a procedure that will likely prolong his life beyond that of many of the male members of his family.

How did a healthy, fit, 53-year-old man go from all that activity to a quintuple bypass last April?

It’s a matter of family history.

Stedt’s father, grandfather, and uncle all died of heart attacks. Stedt figured he was due for one, too.

But with new arteries and a strong heart and set of lungs, and a new, healthier outlook, Stedt probably won’t have to worry about that. And he’ll get to see things his father and grandfather never did. He’ll watch his children grow into adulthood.

And he’s back refereeing games – not as many as before, but enough to still be able to enjoy his passion.

“There were times I didn’t think I would ever officiate again,” Stedt said. “Some people have been surprised to see me walk back on the field. They didn’t think I would be back that quickly.”

But he is.

Genetics make the difference

Seventeen heart attacks.

Combined, that’s at least what Bob Stedt’s father, uncle, and grandfather suffered through before they all died relatively young.

Bob Stedt always thought it would happen to him, too.

“I’d said that to people before,” he said. “I expected to have a heart attack by the time I was 55 because everyone in my family has.”

Stedt’s father, Maynard Stedt, had his first heart attack at 37. Six heart attacks later, Maynard Stedt died at 55.

Stedt’s grandfather, William Stedt, had as many as nine heart attacks before he died at 62.

Stedt’s uncle, Wayne Stedt, died at 51 after his first heart attack.

Oh, and Bob Stedt’s brother Mike, now 54, had a heart attack at 52.

The family history was something that Bob Stedt’s mother Maxine thought about, especially after Mike Stedt had his heart attack.

“I was very worried,” the 72-year-old Maxine Stedt said recently. “… When my youngest [son Jerry Stedt] heard about what happened to Bob, he went out and got all the tests done. He was scared, too.”

The 5-foot-9 Stedt weighed about 205 pounds last spring. He didn’t smoke. He visited fast-food restaurants a bit too frequently while driving from school to school to referee, he conceded, but ate well otherwise.

And with eight or nine soccer games per week on his schedule, he was getting plenty of exercise. Stedt estimated he worked a combined 200 basketball and soccer games last year.

So despite the family history, Stedt thought he was doing OK. How could he have refereed college basketball games last March and four weeks later have a bypass?

He asked his doctor, cardiac surgeon John Braxton of Portland.

“He said there’s no way to predict when this is going to happen,” Stedt said. “He said the plaque builds up inside the arteries, just sitting there, and all of a sudden it ruptures and clogs. The biggest thing to help and keep you from a heart attack is exercise.

“But he said the biggest thing that will cause you to have a heart attack is family history, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about that.”

There’s plenty of research to back up that theory.

According to an American Heart Association study published Oct. 5, if your sibling had a heart attack at an early age, you’re three times as likely to have advanced calcium deposits in your arteries, which may indicate the presence of atherosclerosis, which is the narrowing of the arteries. That leads to blockages.

So there was little Stedt could do. But at least when his family history came to the fore, he was in the right place at the right time – as in, anywhere but on a soccer field in northern Maine.

Getting sick and then better

Bob and Susan Stedt were driving back from a trip to Kittery, where Maxine Stedt now lives, when the family history of heart attacks came to the fore in one of its sons.

The two were driving though Portland when Bob Stedt started to feel funny. Susan Stedt drove the rest of the way north to Richmond, where their son Jason was living.

Stedt felt better after a while, but later that day he was lying on the couch watching the Nicolas Cage and John Travolta film “Face/Off” – which is about two men who undergo radical physical changes – when he had trouble breathing.

Given his family history, Stedt and his wife drove to Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick, where it was determined that he wasn’t having a heart attack.

Stedt felt better the next morning but failed a standard stress test, completing just six minutes of the 12-minute test. It was a sure sign of some kind of blockage.

“I sat down and after that, it’s like those cartoons you see where the creature’s heart is pounding out,” he said. “That’s just what it felt like. It felt like my heart was going to come right out of my body.”

An ambulance took Stedt and his wife to Maine Medical Center in Portland where he was to undergo a 21/2-hour catheterization procedure during which a doctor was to search for the blockage and insert a stent to open the blocked artery.

But a few minutes into the procedure, for which Stedt stayed awake and watched on a monitor, the cardiologist shut down the machines.

What’s going on, Stedt asked?

The doctor didn’t want to continue the procedure because he didn’t find one blockage. He found six. And all six were between 80 and 90 percent blocked.

Stedt met with Braxton, who scheduled surgery for Friday, April 23.

“It’s funny, they say you don’t forget those dates,” Stedt said. “They’re right.”

The surgery was a success, although a blocked artery behind his heart was small enough to be left alone.

Recuperation was first on Stedt’s list of concerns, but he started to wonder if he could referee again. It bothered him, especially after phone calls in the hospital made him recall his times on the soccer field. Longtime Madawaska High School girls soccer coach Ed Marshall was one of those callers.

“He said, this doesn’t mean I’m going to be any easier on you,” Stedt recalled. “And I said, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

As long as he followed strict instructions, the doctors said Stedt was safe to referee again. He had eight weeks of no activity, changed to a healthier diet, and completed a cardiac rehabilitation program, which he still attends about twice a week.

When the high school soccer season started in August, Stedt said he felt ready to go.

Then there was just that fitness test.

In order to referee soccer games, the Northern Maine Board of Approved Officials requires that referees be able to complete a certain distance in a set amount of time. For younger refs, that meant a 11/2-mile run in 12 minutes. Even as he got older, Stedt, one of the more experienced refs on the board, had always tried to reach that distance in order to assign himself to tougher games.

He passed the test standard with 15 seconds to spare but never got to the 11/2-mile requirement for the younger refs. He went about 11/4 miles or so.

“That was a struggle,” he said. “But I passed.”

The first week of the season Stedt worked five games in four days – a schedule similar to one he would have worked last fall. But it was too much, too soon.

“When I was done with it all, I thought, I just can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I got home that night and my wife said, this isn’t going to work, you know. You’ll have to think about it real hard because you look terrible.”

Stedt took 11/2 weeks off after that and since then has cut back to just two games per week.

“I can’t work a full schedule,” he said. “I feel good when I’m out there running. But it catches up to me afterward.”

Family comes together

One day this summer Stedt realized he never got to see the end of “Face/Off,” the movie he was watching in Richmond when he and his wife left for the hospital that April day.

Stedt mentioned that to Jason, his 26-year-old son at whose home Stedt was watching the movie when he felt ill.

“He brought it to me and I just watched it,” Bob Stedt said with a smile.

The Stedt family came together after Bob Stedt’s surgery. Jason Stedt is moving back to northern Maine with his girlfriend to be closer to family. And Bob Stedt’s 21-year-old daughter, Lea, who is studying architecture at Norwich University in Vermont, spent the summer in Van Buren helping her father.

“She was going to work at an architectural firm in Vermont [this summer], but she decided to come home, which was nice,” Bob Stedt said. “She helped me out an awful lot doing things that I just couldn’t do.”

Bob and Susan Stedt also have a son, Kelly, who is 24.

Bob Stedt is getting a chance to see his children into adulthood and likely beyond.

“Hopefully I’ll get to see an awful lot,” he said. “I’m hoping I got more of my mom’s genes than my dad’s. She’s in great shape.”

The history of early heart attacks doesn’t seem to be on Maxine Stedt’s side. Her father had heart problems but died at 78, she said.

Stedt still feels tired at times. Five weeks into the new school year he was looking forward to the fall potato-harvest break.

“I’m at the point where I’m just exhausted,” he said a few days before the two-week break began.

Stedt’s doctors have told him he should be as good as ever by next summer. His heart and lungs are in fine shape, thanks to his years of refereeing. And he’s lost 25 pounds.

Getting back on the soccer field has made a difference, too.

“It’s nice to be able to go out and referee, get the fresh air and do something different,” he said. “It clears my head.”

“People have always asked me why I do it and the stress that it causes. Officiating doesn’t cause me stress. It might cause other people stress,” he said with a smile, “but it doesn’t cause me stress.”