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Source: Dayton Daily News, OhioDec.存倉 14--TROTWOOD -- As soon as his game ends in Danville, Ill., next Sunday night, Jesse Felten -- the veteran Dayton Demonz forward, team captain and goal scorer of note -- will get into his car and drive some 400 miles through the night to his family's picturesque 240-acre farm in the hills outside Cashton, Wis.On this quick trip home for the holidays, he'll take part in the family gift exchange, sit around the big Amish table -- special emphasis on big -- for Christmas dinner and certainly take part in a traditional family hockey game on a basketball/tennis court specially flooded and frozen into a sheet of ice behind the house."I'm taking my skates back so they better have that rink going," Jesse said as he sat just off the ice at Hara Arena after practice the other day.Out in Cashton, Ron Felten, Jesse's 77-year-old father, said his son had nothing to worry about:"We've had some beautiful cold weather and another of our sons, Devin -- he had the day off from the Amish Cheese factory where he works -- got up last night about midnight and was out there until 3 a.m. watering the court," Ron said. "He did it a few times the day before, too, so we've got a pretty good base. The kids will be able to skate."While Jesse said he has some nephews who are skating now, the bulk of the players -- enough for two full teams in what will be a spirited game -- are his own brothers and sisters.Jesse is from a family of 23 children.Five are the biological daughters of Ron and Carol Felten. There's also a foster child and 17 of the kids -- including Jesse -- have been adopted from around the world.As holiday stories go, few eclipse Jesse's when it comes to the yuletide themes of giving, love and family.The adopted children, all raised by Ron and Carol without financial or medical assistance from the government, came from Korea, Brazil, Taiwan and around the U.S., including Wisconsin, Chicago, Georgia and Dallas, where Jesse and his younger brother, Joey, were born. A few of the children had physical handicaps, others did not and several were just about the same age."Eight of them were in diapers at the same time, so that means eight were teenagers together and eight played hockey at the same time," Ron said.Over the years, all of them -- be they spectators or quite willing participants -- have been drawn to that behind-the-house court for the sporting confrontations. In summer it was rollerblade hockey and in winter the nets were separated by that sheet of ice."We had every position covered -- goalies, good centers, forwards and defensive players," Ron said. "Some other teams wanted to play us -- in fact, we had a game lined up once against another town but bad weather canceled it -- and that's too bad. I would have liked to have seen it even though I know we'd have been at a disadvantage because we didn't have enough substitutes."As front-line players go, though, the Feltens had some talent. Besides Jesse, who became a pro after junior hockey and a year at Briercrest College in Saskatchewan, Sandra played four years of hockey at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn."Oh yeah, when we were growing up the girls were almost more vicious out there than we were," Jesse said with a laugh. "My sisters could hold their own on the ice. They weren't afraid to play rough."'Thank you to God'Ron and Carol began adopting kids into their family after they nearly lost one of their own children.A certified public accountant for a firm from Wausau, Wis., in the early 1980s, Ron would be away from the farm for two and three days each week. It was during one of those business trips that Carol was doing laundry at home late one night.Kris, their fourth daughter who was just a few weeks old, was upstairs sleeping."My wife happened to come up there and she found the baby had stopped breathing and was turning blue. It was one of those crib-death type situations," Ron said."We had a 13-year-old, half-Japanese daughter -- whose own mom had died -- who was living with us at the time. My wife -- she's a trained nurse -- woke her and had her wrap her arms around the baby as they rushed to the hospital in Viroqua."The baby started breathing on the way, but when they got there, her fingers were still quite dark and it was evident some extremities had been without oxygen. After a night in the hospital, though, the baby was released and was fine. Today Kris runs my office. She's married and has five children of her own."But back then my wife knew if she had not come upstairs when she did, our baby probably would have died. As a thank you to God, we thought we'd adopt a child."They adopted a boy from Korea, then brought four more children from there back to the farm, where they raised horses, had a collection of other animals and Carol bred Saint Bernards.After the Korean quintet, they adopted four black children, including Jesse."We did that purposely," Ron said. "My wife was looking through an adoption magazine and read about a real need for adoptive parents for black children who often don't get adopted. We got Jesse when he was two months old and not long after that we got his biological brother who had been born 11 months later."The family then went to Sao Paolo, Brazil to adopt five more children, including 12-year-old Paulo,儲存who was a quadriplegic suffering from a degenerative arthritic disorder and had been in an orphanage since he was 2.Once back in Wisconsin, by the way, Paulo soon was sledding, going to horse shows in his wheelchair and becoming one of the family's most outgoing ambassadors.The last child they adopted was Mei-ling, a 2-year-old from Taiwan who was blind and had been living in an orphanage since her birth.Today, she is a celebrated fiddler -- she also plays the piano and is trained in classical violin -- touring with cowboy singer Michael Martin Murphey.That there are so many success stories in the Felten family is a credit to Ron and Carol and the way the kids were raised. Many were home-schooled, all had chores (Jesse took care of the horses and did farm work), some helped with the nearby Living Waters Bible Camp of which Ron was a founder and the original director, and along the way all the kids learned how to share and get along."With all those kids, we never once had a broken bone," Ron said proudly. "To be truthful, I saw more conflict in families that had just two kids than I ever saw in our home. There was always something to do for the children and if they didn't want to be with one person, there were plenty others to play with."Special trip homeJesse said he was about 6 the first time he saw hockey on TV:"I had always wanted to be just like Michael Jordan and then I saw my first hockey game and asked my mom if I could play," he said. "The next year she signed me up for a team and I fell in love with it."Although few black kids played the sport, especially in rural Wisconsin, Jesse said he was not dissuaded or overtly discriminated against:"My parents had warned me growing up, even before I went off to play hockey, that occasionally I'd hear stuff because that's just the world we live in. They told me, 'You can choose to listen to it or you can turn around and keep smiling and try to make somebody else happy.'"I follow that advice even now. Sometimes I'll hear something and it will make me a little angry, but other times if a guy is throwing racist slurs, I just try to embarrass him on the ice."And he certainly can do that.From the time he was small -- and he's still just 5-foot 8, although, as Demonz coach Trevor Karasiewicz said, "He's a pretty strong, tough kid who's got some real muscle to him" -- he has shown speed and skill on skates.Following three years of prep hockey at Viroqua High School, he played his senior season with the Madison Capitols youth team, played two more years of junior hockey in North Dakota, Minnesota and New York and then spent a year in college.He turned pro in 2008, played with the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Aces of the Eastern Professional Hockey League, then joined the New York Aviators of the Federal Hockey League for a season and the following year was part of the renamed Brooklyn AviatorsHe came to the Demonz last season and had a stellar campaign, scoring 35 goals and adding 31 assists in 49 games.Karasiewicz, in his first year as coach after playing for the Demonz last season, said he made sure Jesse was a part of his roster this year:"He was a huge part of our team last year, a real goal scorer, and I knew he'd be a great leader for our young guys. I've played with him on the line, played against him, too, and I know he brings a lot of grit and heart to the ice."Now 27, Jesse said he wants to keep playing as long as he can and then, one day, become a coach:"I know I don't have too many years left, but I also don't think when anybody's on their death bed they look back and say, 'I played too long.' "Of course, the grind of minor league hockey has kept him from making it back home some recent Christmas seasons.That's why this return trip will be special."My parents are just great people," he said. "They wanted to give a bunch of kids a chance at a better life and they did that. My brothers and sisters and I, we all really got lucky. We became part of a family that supported us and loved us and taught us some great lessons along the way."And he puts those lessons into practice when he can.When he was in New York, he helped instruct youth league teams and took a young black player -- who is now playing in high school and wants to follow Jesse's footsteps to the pros -- under his wing.Back home a few years ago he worked as a counselor at a group home for adolescent boys with emotional and behavioral problems. Here in Dayton he's always signing autographs for kids after games and is involved in the team's various community projects.Last week the players worked on a Trotwood home as part of a Habitat for Humanity project. This week the Demonz will be volunteering as Salvation Army bell ringers outside various stores in the Dayton area.Jesse said "doing for others" is something his parents instilled in all their kids:"If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here. I think of that every day. Without them, none of us would be where we are today."And where he will be Christmas Day is out there on that patch of ice behind the family home, part of a spirited hockey game, part of a Christmas tradition ... part of a family.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) Visit the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) at .daytondailynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉