Ah, never mind. Common sense prevailed and instead of trying to add the image to the region array, I created a variable for it and print the variable in the front page template.

I'm trying to have an image appear in a region as well as the text in a block that is assigned to it. The block text appears.

I have a mytheme_process_page() in my theme's template.php, but I don't know to where the html for the image should be assigned. I know it should be inside $vars['page']['featured'], but what next? I've tried a few things, and the only one that result in the image showing was just as I typed it above, but of course that blows away the other elements of the region, including the block text.