BY JENNIFER FREY
The New York Times, August 10, 1993

WINDSOR, Ontario -- Adam Graves had bunk beds as a child. He didn't need them for sleepovers, he needed them for the constant stream of little boys who shared his room. There was always, it seemed, another child who needed a family, another child who needed a home.

Ottalene Leithwood, a children's services worker in Toronto, always knew she could call the Graves family when she had a foster child she could not place. It didn't matter if the little boy was violent and unresponsive. If there was still room in the Graves's home, they would open the door.

"I've never had them refuse a child," Leithwood said. "And they have had some extremely disturbed children in their home."

Leithwood is a hockey fan, treats it like a religion, and she has closely followed Adam Graves's career. She watched as he started out as a rookie in a Detroit Red Wings uniform in 1987, cheered him when he won the Stanley Cup with the Edmonton Oilers three years ago and stayed loyal even when he was suspended for three playoff games after breaking Mario Lemieux's wrist in 1992.

She knows that he was voted the team's most valuable player award with the New York Rangers last season, and she most certainly admires his hockey skills.

Open-Door Policy His goals, though, have not impressed her as much as his heart.

"I have taken foster boys to the Graves's home to meet Adam because he's a hero to them, "Leithwood said. "These aren't the Graves's foster children, these are other kids in care, but that doesn't matter to Adam. He has always been very gracious and very welcoming to them."

Other than Lemieux and his fans, there are few who have anything negative to say about Graves. In his two years with the Rangers, Graves has twice been voted the "players' player" by his teammates and has twice been selected by fans as the Ranger who gives an "extra effort" in the community. His parents taught him the value of sharing good fortune, and his summer hockey school for kids in Windsor -- one of two camps he runs annually -- is simply one example of his widespread efforts to do exactly that.

The cost of enrollment in the program, which is run with help from his family and friends, is significantly less than that of similar hockey camps, and any profits made from T-shirt or hat sales are used to help fund the Windsor youth hockey team that Graves sponsors during the winter. "He is a wonderful person," Leithwood said. "And that's because his family raised him that way."

One Visitor Adopted:
There is no way to know who will answer the phone at the Graves's residence in Caledon, Ontario, which is about an hour's drive north of Toronto. There have been too many voices that have echoed in their home. Lynda and Henry Graves, who is a retired police officer, only have three children of their own -- Adam has two sisters, Richenda, who is 28, and Lynette, who is 27 -- but since Adam was 3 years old, his family has played host to more than 40 foster children, or "Crown wards" as they are called in Canada. One boy, Mark, arrived at age 4 and was adopted by the Graves three years ago, when he was 12.

The foster boys always shared a room with Adam, the foster girls with his sisters. Adam slept on the top bunk when his new brother was a bed-wetter, on the bottom the rest of the time. They were always his friends, and they were always a part of the family -- to this day, Adam refers to his foster siblings simply as his brothers or his "sisters."

"He took good care of them," said Glen Featherstone, the Boston Bruins' defenseman who grew up 10 minutes from the Graves family, bunked with Adam during junior hockey and remains one of his closest friends. "I've seen a lot come in and out, and I don't know how they do it, but it was always a fun house to be around. Adam was a real big brother to those kids. It's hard to believe that anybody can be like that, but he is."

A Nonprofit School
Both Featherstone and Graves live in Windsor now, where they both played junior hockey for the Spitfires and boarded at the home of Kenny and Donna Parent, whom Graves considers a second mom and dad. Adam, who is 25 years old, has purchased his own place now, a home on the water in Windsor, the skyscrapers of Detroit visible from his dock. He rebuilt the deck last summer, and has practically gutted the downstairs this off season, in hopes that, with Kenny Parent's help, he can finish a pool room before Rangers' training camp opens next month.

Already, though, his home resembles that of his parents -- at least in terms of the open-door policy. On a Monday night in early August, the first day of his annual nonprofit hockey school in Windsor, there is an assortment of overnight visitors sprawled in his living room: his brother Mark, his girlfriend Violet Ravija, Violet's younger brother, one friend from junior hockey, another from Windsor, and a 13-year-old named Tyler Bouck, who once caddied for Graves at a golf tournament in Edmonton. At Graves's invitation, Tyler flew in for the hockey camp and is staying at the house.

"I think there are enough couches for everybody," Graves said, seemingly unfazed by his abundance of houseguests.

Always Volunteering
The thing about Graves, one friend explained, is that, when it comes to doing favors, he does not know the meaning of the word "no." If someone asks him to visit a hospital, he'll do it. If someone asks him to hand out awards at 6 A.M. to a group of kids in a local hockey league,he'll set his alarm for 4 A.M. and get in his morning workout a little earlier than usual. Members of the Rangers' public relations staff joke sometimes that Graves volunteers so often to do charity work they need one separate employee just to handle him.

"I don't think he really realizes what he does and how much people look up to him because of it," Featherstone said. "The thing about Adam is, if he picked up garbage for a living, he'd still be doing charity stuff. It's not about him being a hockey player. It's about what kind of person he is."

On one afternoon at the hockey camp, Featherstone and a group of Graves's friends racked their brains trying to think of funny stories to tell about their friend's childhood. They found they could tease him a little -- "he was afraid to jaywalk," Featherstone said, "and if the light turned yellow, he'd run back to the corner and wait" -- but it was hard to come up with any dirt.

"Let's face it," said Pete DeBeor, a former junior hockey teammate. "The guy is a saint."

A Special Case
If he is, Graves learned it from his parents. Lynda and Henry Graves both traveled to Windsor the first week of August to help with the hockey camp, and they brought one of their two current foster children. (They have two boys, ages 9 and 11, but the Canadian Children's Aid Department requests that the names of foster children not be printed, in order to protect their privacy and, in some cases, to keep their biological parents from knowing their whereabouts.)

When the foster child taken to Adam's camp first came to live with the Graves family, he was unable to speak and was not considered educable. His behavior was so violent it was impossible to keep him in the institution in which he had been placed. So Children's Aid turned to the Graveses.

The boy was supposed to remain with the family for two months. He has been with it nearly eight years. He not only talks now, but he also says "please" and "thank you," and he is able to read and write on a second-grade level.

"When the kids come to our house, my parents are unbelievable," Graves said. "My mom has so much patience."

"It was such a good experience for me," Graves added. "You learn to share, you learn to put up with certain things, you learn to have patience. If you were shy, having all these little guys around helps you open up.

"And you realize that you're in a fortunate position. Not everybody has a mother and a father. Not everybody has a home life to fall back on. Not everybody is as lucky as I have been."