A dream come true

After 34 years, Fassel family finally finds happy ending

For the past 34 years, Jim Fassel had a hole in his heart. Never would it go away. He'd often think about the cause of that hole around the time of his greatest triumphs, such as when he led the Giants to the Super Bowl two and a half years ago.

"If there's one thing I want to do before I die," he recalled saying to himself over and over, "I want to see my son. Before they put me in the ground, that's what I want to accomplish."

Fassel's story, of course, has a happy ending. But when it began, in 1968, Fassel and his future wife, Kitty, were starting college in southern California. Kitty got pregnant with a baby neither of them felt ready to keep. Abortion, to them, wasn't an option.

Though it might seem like a prehistoric practice today, Kitty was sent off to "business school" in Colorado, a euphemism for going to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. There, on April 5, 1969, she gave birth to a boy and gave it up for adoption three days later, and until 10 days ago never had any idea if the boy was alive, dead, rich, poor or successful. On Mother's Day, Fassel and his wife finally spoke to the son they'd never known -- John Mathieson, 34, who was living with his wife and four daughters in Colorado. The Fassels finally met Mathieson a week ago in a hotel in a Denver suburb.

Stories about the reunion ran in the New York Times and Denver Post last Friday. Fassel then retreated to New Jersey for a few days with his family. He'll answer another round of questions about his meeting with Mathieson beginning Wednesday morning on NBC's Today show. But he first discussed the feel-good story with SI.com, explaining how the family secret began, how it tore him up for almost all of his adult life and how incredible the past few days have been.

"The most incredible thing," Fassel said, "is here I sit, and I've got four granddaughters now. Unbelievable! So much about it is really overwhelming. Imagine you've tried to keep an important secret over the years. What would be the worst thing? That it'd end up on the front page of the New York Times. But then it did, and what a wonderful story it is -- for everyone."

He's right about that. There is something about Fassel that I've always felt made him different from most NFL coaches. Human interaction is quite important to him. When he talks to you about how you're doing, he actually seems to care.

Football coaches are the type of people trained to leave things in the rearview mirror, even things as huge as a first child, born out of wedlock and surrendered for adoption when one is still a teen-ager. Think of the typical stone-faced NFL coach. Can you picture him not being able to put even the most painful of personal secrets behind him so he can prepare to compete on sports' highest level? I think a lot of coaches would have given up. Most would have consigned the painful memory to another lifetime and moved on.

"I couldn't," Fassel told me. "It was the hole in our lives."

Fassel said he and his wife were not ready for marriage in 1968. Their parents advised them they should not wed because they felt they "had to," that it was no way to start a marriage. "It was tough," he said. "For both of us. But I never questioned it, even over the years. It was the right thing to do. There are times in your life you have to make the tough decision, and this was one of those times. You know that (Giants co-owner) Wellington Mara is a strong anti-abortion guy. He told me this is one of the reasons why there shouldn't be abortions, that there are good homes for these children."

And through the years, the status of the baby they never knew tugged at the Fassels, who have four other grown children. They would try to find their son but get bogged down in Colorado adoption rights laws. Finally, last August, the laws were relaxed. If an adoptee wanted to find his birth parents, and the birth parents wanted to find the adoptee, it became legal for a meeting to occur. And for the Fassels it did, in Highlands Ranch, Colo., last week.

"We were braced for anything," Fassel said. "We could have had a kid that turned out to be deranged, in and out of jail or even dead. But John's just great. Now his world has changed a lot. CNN's at his house. It's a big change."

Just then, Fassel sounded awed by something.

"Wow," he said, as if he were realizing this for the first time. "I've got two sons named John now."

All through this half-hour conversation, Fassel would stop and marvel at things like that. It's clear that he and his family will need some time to let the news fully sink in.

"This is not only a dream come true," he said. "It's like winning the Super Bowl 10 times."

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.

 

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