Advertisement
Letter: After 26 years, Hoeme leaving WB daycare
Op-Ed · July 30, 2015


In August, the West Branch Community Early Learning Center (formerly the West Branch Community Daycare Center) is celebrating 31 years of caring for the children of our community.


For 26 of those years, Dea Hoeme has been the director. She is retiring this summer after an outstanding, nurturing and dedicated career. Over 700 children have received exceptional care and quality pre-school at the Center over the years and have gone on to become leaders, model parents and contributors to this community and others. The WBCELC has provided more than 400 with employment.

The Center began in a home on Fifth Street but soon outgrew it. The Friends’ Church generously offered the basement of their Church so the Center could expand. In 1998, under Dea’s leadership, a permanent, new Center was built on Orange Street After the original mortgage was paid, another one was obtained to expand and finish the lower level which now provides room for additional children and staff.

To acknowledge Dea’s dedication, love for children and their families and vision for the future of the growing town of West Branch, a volunteer group of community members is working on retiring that mortgage.

What is left? $16,000. We would love to see this mortgage paid off before Dea leaves us at the end of August.

Thank you!

Very gratefully yours,

Sheila Dalton

West Branch