Community rallies to help Coral Springs boy find adventure before brain surgery
.jpg "LJ Howells poses for a photo in a Florida Panthers shirt.")
When 6-year-old LJ Howells is on the sidelines during a Florida Junior Panthers scrimmage, he goes full chatterbox — asking as many questions as he can , but more importantly, cheering on all of his friends on the ice.
He makes sure each and every one gets a fist bump.
“We would never know anything was wrong with him. He looks, acts, seems perfectly normal,” his mom, Megan Feeley of Coral Springs, said. “He’s just living with a time bomb in his brain.”
Her son, the third of four children, had a stroke when he was 7 days old. It was caused by an extremely rare cerebral aneurysm — a weak point in a blood vessel that can swell and rupture, leaking blood into the brain.
“We thought this most terrifying part of our life was behind us,” Feeley said.
After a miraculous recovery while LJ was a toddler, the aneurysm came back this year — and it’s growing. His doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital recommended surgery as soon as October.
“We’ve been going through my son’s aneurysm journey alone, and I just felt so uncomfortable asking people for stuff,” Feeley said.
She originally reached out to a local moms’ Facebook group to find “ special experiences” ahead of their 1,500-mile journey to Massachusetts.
“Within a day I was overwhelmed with a lot of suggestions and a lot of people reaching out,” Feeley said. “We don’t have much support and honestly just people caring about our son means the world.”
Hundreds of fellow residents — many of them parents — sent messages of love and support, and offered experiences of all kinds. Some offered open-ocean fishing expeditions, playdates with their kids, baked goods and toys.
LJ led the Pledge of Allegiance at the Sept. 25 city budget meeting, and Four Majors on Sample Road is hosting a surprise party for him from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on Oct. 4.
The commenter that perhaps made the biggest impact, though, was Coral Springs Commissioner Joe McHugh.
The commissioner moonlights as a referee for the Junior Panthers, his son’s hockey team. He invited LJ to ride the Zamboni and drop the first puck at the Junior Panthers’ scrimmage against the Boca Kings.
It turned into a much deeper connection than anyone expected.
“The way the boys accepted him and brought him into the hockey family — I was so overwhelmed, I had to walk out of the locker room,” McHugh said.
It has become a regular part of LJ and his family’s life — he goes to watch the boys practice and cheers them on from the sidelines. They even got him to make an Instagram account, so they can keep in touch off the ice.
“My 6-year-old reached out to this 15-year-old kid and was saying, ‘Do your best and try as hard as you can and we love you no matter what!’” Feeley recalled.
“Watching him not only have these opportunities at the Ice Den, but seeing a bunch of other kids and boys come together to support him, even as young as 10 years old, has been unreal. That’s what I was looking for. Not only did he get to do something cool, but we as a family now — our own little family of hockey moms.”
If you’re interested in helping LJ and his family, you can find his Amazon wishlist here.
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 3:31 PM.
