For the Love of Hockey, and a Family of 25

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- Venture to arenas where men are paid to play ice hockey with room and board and very little cash, and the stories can sometimes top anything you've heard before.

In an arena at Floyd Bennett Field on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, wearing number 20 for the New York Aviators of the Federal Hockey League, is a 5-foot-8, 170-pound center named Jesse Felten. The Aviators have won 14 straight games, and Felten scored the game-winning goal in their 4-2 victory in Cape Cod on Saturday. Ask him why he is playing for $250 a week at a level below the East Coast Hockey League, and Felten will tell you about his love of the game and how he sees these winters as a stepping stone to a coaching career.

He'll also tell you he plays to honor his family: Ronald and Carol Felten of Cashton, Wis., and Jesse's 23 siblings.

"I know it sounds amazing to most people," said Felten, a second-year player with the 25-12-2 Aviators. "But to me, it's all I know. My mom and dad are remarkable people."

Twenty-four-year-old Jesse Felten, born in Texas, is one of 18 children adopted by his parents in a 12-year span between 1980 and 1992. His biological brother, Joe, born in Texas 11 months after him, is also a member of the Felten family. Over the years, in addition to Jesse and Joey and five daughters born to them in Wisconsin, Ron and Carol Felten adopted five children from Korea, five from Brazil (four siblings plus an unrelated 11-year-old quadriplegic boy), three from Chicago, two from Wausau, Wis., and one from Taiwan.

It has never been easy, and at times it's been sorrowful. Carol Felten is a trained nurse, so they answered the call from Lutheran Social Services to adopt a young girl with spina bifida. "Her life was very short, but she made a profound impact on our lives," said Ron. "That was the toughest, but every day brought a challenge. There were plenty of nights when we buried our faces in our pillows." Ron and Carol's deep faith has always carried them through. Married in 1963, they spent their honeymoon at a bible camp in Carol's hometown of Atlanta and later became two of the founders of Lake Waubesa Bible Camp, five miles from Cashton.

There has been infinite joy. The Feltens had eight children in diapers at the same time, but their biological, older girls chipped in with the laundry and other household chores. Carol and her daughters (the oldest, Carol Hanson, is now 42) would set aside one complete day at the start of each month to cook as many meals as they could to sustain them for a four-week period. "Everything went into the freezer," said Ron Felten. "The teamwork, the compassion was something to see." Adds Carol Felten: "We were blessed. Our older kids fought over who was going to play with and take care of the younger kids."

As the family grew in the late '80s, the Feltens were able to buy a farm adjacent to their home so, in Ron's words, "We could stretch out a little." He is a Certified Public Accountant who opened his own firm at home for obvious reasons in 1989 after 28 years with Wipfli Ullrich Betelson. "When I was with that big national firm, I had a staff of over 20 people reporting to me," said Felten, who is now 74. "Most of them were young and had a lot of energy. Moving my business home so I could be closer to our large family wasn't as big a culture change as you might expect. Both offices were hectic." The children were home-schooled. The Feltens named the property Plumfield, after the school in the novels "Little Men" and "Jo's Boys" written in the late 1800s by Louisa May Alcott.

The accounting practice supported the family. There was little outside help ("You don't adopt 18 children to be popular with the neighbors," said Ron, who still operates the business) but occasionally Carol was happy to take advantage of a lucky break. When the manager of a local Kmart received hundreds of boxes of hot pink and lime green diapers that she refused to put on the shelves, she donated them to the Feltens. Yes, even a future rugged Federal Hockey Player wore them. "He was a baby, but Jesse knows we always did what we could," said Carol, giggling gently at the memory.

Years later, those four boys and four girls in diapers played high school hockey in Wisconsin at the same time. Jesse Felten recalls his parents driving his siblings to games across the state in a 15-passenger van. "Dad would bring all of his accounting work with him on the road," said Jesse. Said his father, "You know what it's like to watch your son or daughter in a game? Now picture this: sometimes, we'd have four of our children on the ice at the same time." The best players of the Felten clan were Sandra, who went on to play at Bethel University in Minnesota, and Jesse, who played at Briercrest College in Southern Saskatchewan.

Two dozen family members now follow Jesse's hockey games in Brooklyn via the internet. "I would be lost without Point Streak," Carol Felten says of the website that offers real-time updates on Federal League games and all levels of pro hockey. "Our eyes are glued to it when the Aviators have a game." Her father, raised in Windsor, Ont., gave up his dream of playing professional hockey when, as a teenager, Carol's grandfather passed away. "Jesse may not technically have our genes," said his mother, "but somehow our family's passion for the game was passed on to him. Jesse is carrying the torch."

"We're dedicated to playing our best hockey and seeing where the road takes us. We're a bunch of guys around the same age who know when to be serious, but also have a lot of fun."
-- Jesse Felten So he travels with the Aviators to Rome (New York) and Danbury, Conn., and Cape Cod, grinding and sometimes fighting his way through the Federal League schedule. In 35 games this season, Jesse has 14 goals, 20 assists and 69 penalty minutes. He wishes his family could come to Brooklyn to see him play -- Ron and Carol have yet to see their son play a game in the pros -- but knows that's improbable. He is inspired by his youngest sister: 20-year-old Mei-Leig, blind since birth, adopted from Taiwan by the Feltens, and now thriving as a pianist and violinist at McNally Smyth College of Music in St. Paul. "I think of my little sister and know that anything is possible," said No. 20 of the New York Aviators.

While with the Aviators (the FHL affiliate of the ECHL's Wheeling Nailers), Felten lives with 11 teammates in a house near the beach in Rockaway Park that is rented by the team. "We have a lot of fun," said Jesse, who works in the offseason as a counselor at a group home in Viroqua, WI, aiding adolescents with behavioral issues. "We're dedicated to playing our best hockey and seeing where the road takes us. We're a bunch of guys around the same age who know when to be serious, but also have a lot of fun. When you've got twelve hockey players in the same house, it can be a little crazy at times."

To Jesse Felten, sometimes it feels a little bit like home.