Their Faith Isn’t Limited to Battles on Football Field

Richard Felix, president of Azusa Pacific University and the 1998 alumnus of the year at Olivet Nazarene University, was in the stands Saturday when Azusa Pacific beat Olivet, 17-14, in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics championship football game.

Back home, Felix’s wife Vivian, his most beautiful companion, the woman who caught Felix’s attention when he was playing in a softball game the summer of his graduation from college, his “co-president in the best sense of the word,” watched the game on television, too weak to travel but absolutely not too weak to cheer like crazy for Azusa even though, yes, Olivet is her alma mater too.

Viv Felix, 54, has been fighting breast cancer for two years. She has had a lumpectomy, a double mastectomy and four courses of chemotherapy. There have been radiation treatments and a bone marrow transplant, and in June doctors told the Felixes that there was nothing else to be done.

There is no quit in Viv Felix though, nor in her husband. This is a trait a football coach would love and it is no accident that Viv and Richard are such fighters, since sports have always been a part of their lives.

Richard collects baseball cards still, and he has so many that he drew a promise that the number would not be revealed. Viv and Richard’s sons are named Doak and Tris and you can figure out who won the naming battles there. The daughter is named Melissa. Viv got to make that call.

Richard, who grew up in Lafayette, Ind., was all set to attend Purdue. Then his pastor convinced the tall, skinny kid who loved to play baseball, basketball and football that his athletic determination, while admirable, was on a higher level than his skills. And, that pastor suggested, Richard’s deep religious faith would make him better suited to the Christian school, Olivet Nazarene, which was interested in starting up sports.

So Richard packed up his sparse possessions and clutched a box that contained $34 from a collection taken up at his church. He went to Olivet, in Kankakee, Ill., but it turned out the athletic program didn’t get up and running until the year after he graduated.

Still, there were always intramurals and, of course, that magical softball game when Richard looked over at the stands “and saw this most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her father was Chinese and her mother was an American missionary and there was this exotic, lovely Asian woman and she just captured my heart.”

Not much more than a year later, Richard and Viv were married. Life has taken the family to Indiana, where Richard coached basketball at Bethel College and where he got a doctorate at Notre Dame and “became a huge Notre Dame football fan.” There were stops at the University of Florida and at Friends College in Wichita before the Felixes arrived in Azusa in 1990.

The coincidence of this game between Azusa and Olivet--both teams being first-time participants in the national championship game and the alma mater of the president and his wife--at this time when Viv fights for her life and Richard fights at her side seems to have come from God. At least it seems that way to Richard and Viv, who make no pretense of hiding their Christian faith.

Yes, Viv says after another morning of chemotherapy with a new drug she hasn’t tried before, she prays for a miracle.

In his office earlier, three days before he flew to Savannah, Tenn., for the football game, Richard said that he prays for a miracle at the same time that they let the doctors at City of Hope hospital try everything.

And the coincidences continue. Azusa and Olivet played earlier, in September, the first meeting between the teams. Richard was instrumental in scheduling that game and it was the only game Viv felt well enough to attend in person.

When Richard was named alum of the year and invited to receive the award in person at the Olivet homecoming game, he decided not to go.

“It would have been too hard to attend without Viv and see all the people that are part of both our lives,” he said.

But Viv insisted that Richard buy a plane ticket and head to Savannah for this game. The ticket was for Friday morning and Richard had said he would not get on the plane unless Viv was having a good day.

With this new chemo regimen, though, Viv says she has felt better than she had hoped for the last 10 days or so. She planned to go to the student center Saturday to watch the game on the big screen TV and cheer, for?

“For APU of course. Who else?” Viv laughed and then added: “But if Olivet were to win, I’d be very happy for them too.”

The wonderful excitement that has grabbed the campus of this small, religious school over the women’s soccer team, which has already won an NAIA national title this fall, and the football team has made the pain that Richard and Viv are suffering seem more bearable somehow.

“It has been great for all of us,” Richard says. “There is no explanation for this game happening but I’ll tell you this. Sports can be very, very special.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com