Grace Under Fire
After the death of her husband, Crystal Feller courageously presses on to fulfill her entrepreneurial dream
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Editor’s Note: Excerpts of Crystal Feller’s written submission for the Starkey Entrepreneurial Woman Award are highlighted in this article about a journey intermingled with successes and crushing emotional setbacks.
Crystal Feller already had been awake until midnight finishing payroll for Talking Time Learning Center, her Noblesville-based preschool for children with special needs. Yet, on this day, between appointments, she sweeps the lobby area of this 6,000-square-foot burst of primary colors since she isn’t interested in paying someone else to do what she can do herself.
No matter how many hats she wears and how much midnight oil she burns, the school is definitely her dream come true, Crystal says as she proudly walks through the building to show classrooms, play areas, art areas, a sensory room and a spacious area filled with climbing toys.
Crystal typically works 75 hours a week. And she has many responsibilities that only seem to get bigger, but she has proven over and over again that she can handle a lot.
When it comes down to surviving difficult times, Crystal definitely is one of those women who lands on her feet. As a testament to her hard work and success, she was honored with this year’s Starkey Entrepreneurial Woman Award during a ceremony last month.
Her touching remarks about her life’s ups and downs brought tears to audience members’ eyes and earned Crystal a rousing standing ovation.
Stepping out on her own
Crystal’s life journey had been typical, for the most part.
She pursued an interest in speech therapy as a college student. That career choice was influenced by watching a speech therapist help her grandfather after a stroke affected his speech.
Following college, Crystal secured a job in speech therapy, married her late husband, Tony Feller, and looked happily toward their future.
At age 25, she bravely offered her employer a two-week notice and shared her intentions to go into business on her own. She announced she would become a contract employee for First Steps, a state-funded early intervention program for children from birth to 3 years.
“One of the people I worked with looked at me and said, ‘You’ll never make it. You have no idea how hard it is to be self-employed.’ If you tell me I can’t, I’m going to show you 10 reasons why I can,” Crystal says with a grin.
That is, of course, exactly how this strong-spirited woman conducted the next very successful eight years of her life. She made home visits and also visited preschool environments to provide speech therapy for children with developmental delays.
During those years, Crystal listened intently to a constant need voiced by parents of preschoolers with limited and delayed speech.
“I saw a need, and there was a market. I started researching what preschool options parents had for children with special needs in the Indianapolis area. I found nothing other than sending their child to their local school system’s early childhood classroom (ages 3-5). Parents consistently told me the problem with this option was ‘there were not enough typically developing peers in these classrooms,’ so parents had a fear of their child imitating maladaptive behaviors. On top of that, I knew that parents wanted their child to receive one-on-one therapy as their child had been getting in the First Steps program, and the public school system was not able to provide that same level of individualized service.”
Crystal not only saw the need the parents articulated, she also saw a community niche. She decided to provide this preschool model for all young children, not just those with special needs. Tony fully supported the idea, so Crystal set about researching this exciting career move. She and Tony also spent quality time with their daughter Ashley, who was then a 3-year-old, as they anxiously awaited the birth of their son Will.
But suddenly Tony complained of feeling like he constantly had to urinate. “And he said he kept dreaming about his mother, who died from breast cancer,” Crystal says. “He kept saying, ‘It’s almost like she is trying to tell me something.’”
Because Tony’s father had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, the family doctor recommended Tony undergo a colonoscopy, just as a precaution.
After the procedure, the doctor announced to Crystal that she and her still-groggy husband should return in two days to the hospital, “and bring family members.”
Two days later, Dec. 1, 2006, “was the last normal day of my life,” Crystal says.
Tony, only 32 years old, and Crystal, 36 weeks pregnant with Will, learned that Tony had stage IV colon cancer. It had already spread to his liver and lungs. He was given a 10 percent chance to live five years.
“ … the biggest tragedy in my life happened … I knew there was a good chance that I would become a single parent. It was time to make my passion for helping children a reality and create a business that I could have long term to assist me in providing for my children. Failure to implement this plan into reality was not an option. I was determined to get my thoughts on paper and into action so my husband could rest assured that if he did not defeat the odds against him, he would know I was going to be able to have a consistent future with our business.”
Life in slow motion
On the day Tony started chemotherapy, 10-day-old Will and 3-year-old Ashley were both sick.
“I remember standing in the middle of the Infusion room at IU Hospital, crying and thinking, What in the hell happened to my life?” Crystal says.
As she tried to cope with her fears about her husband’s health and how to care for him and for their children too, Crystal was also in the midst of launching Talking Time Learning Center, with 20 students, two teachers, a helper and no salary.
“Timing is everything, right? I work harder under stress. It was time to make the dream become a reality. Tony and I developed a business plan, pitched our idea to the SBA, received the financial backing needed, purchased a 6,000-square-foot building, began advertising, recruited potential preschoolers who I knew could benefit from this unique preschool and opened for business in September 2007 with approximately 20 students and three staff members.”
Slowly, though, cancer became a part of their young family. Cancer made their home serious most of the time, sad a lot of the time and frightened of the future. Crystal continued to pour as much energy as possible into her business. In that secret part of her heart, she feared that Tony would be taken from her and all she would have left would be the business her husband enthusiastically helped her start.
Three years later, Tony’s body stopped responding to conventional treatment.
Friends, family and neighbors rallied with fundraisers to provide the means for Tony and Crystal to go to Europe every three months so Tony could undergo experimental treatment. First they went to Rome and later to Germany, trying to save his life.
“When you’re a woman, you think you can do it all,” Crystal says of those years, which were, in many ways a blur. “But I learned that I just could not do it all. It just meant everything to me to go home after chemo and find that someone mowed our grass and made dinner. We have the most wonderful neighbors and family.”
On Sept. 14, 2009, Tony’s very courageous battle ended.
Knowing that she was dangerously close to not being able to function, Crystal was back to work a week after her husband’s death.
“I just said, ‘This is the day I’ve got to make myself get up. I’ve got to make that choice,’” she says.
Susan Reising, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Talking Time who has known Crystal for seven years, says Crystal’s dedication in the face of tragedy was unwavering.
“She had an inner grace that was an inspiration to all,” she says. “Crystal used her struggles to make her stronger and never stopped dreaming.”
“Tony never quit fighting and he always believed in me. Watching him work through the physical and emotional struggles of living with cancer taught me to never give up either. It has been challenging, but I know he would be proud to know that TTLC now has over 60 students and 12 teachers. In 2010, I also started another division of TTLC Inc. TTLC is now also an approved early intervention multidisciplinary agency for the state’s First Steps program.”
Photo by Andrew Scalini
For the last 18 months of his life, Tony, an aspiring writer, had written a blog. Crystal had the memories printed and bound to one day give to their children.
“I’m so blessed that Tony wrote the blog,” Crystal says. “What a gift to our children.”
Life alone with the children was difficult and lonely. But she was accepting of it.
More than a year after Tony’s death, she still struggled socially as a young widow. When friends invited her to attend an outdoor concert, Crystal initially refused then timidly agreed.
When a cute guy seated behind Crystal flirted and asked her out on a date, she refused him.
Eventually, she agreed to meet him for lunch.
And just when Crystal believed she knew the end of her life story, she grew to know Todd, a fun-loving man, and added an entirely new chapter.
“He has brought such a renewal to my life,” Crystal says of the man she will marry next month. “I feel like I am my age again. I feel fun and energetic. Laughter is back in my house.”
Todd helps to keep Tony’s memories alive for Ashley, 9, and 6-year-old Will.
“He says things to Ashley like, ‘Tell me that story about your dad again,’” Crystal says as tears fill her eyes. “He has been so good about understanding that I need to talk about Tony every day. Will’s memories of Tony are not as good as Ashley’s.”
When her children lost their father, they seemed to also lose their smiles.
But not anymore.
“Todd throws the kids over his shoulder and tickles them. This is how I want them to live,” Crystal says as she sits back and smiles.
Thomas L. Cates, partner of The Wellington Group LLC, says Crystal should be looked at as a role model for all ages.
“She carries the characteristics worthy of our utmost respect,” Cates says. “If during life’s trials, I can be one-half the person Crystal has been, count me as a success.”
“As an entrepreneur, one needs to believe in oneself, be willing to take a risk and manage the adversities that are sure to arise along the way.”
Crystal’s tenacity has paid off. Her business has grown, her heart has a new love, and her children are smiling again.
“It’s truly a miracle that I am where I am, knowing that two and a half years ago, my world came tumbling down,” Crystal says with a smile.
