Editor, First off, let me start by saying how grateful I am for the men from the fire and police departments who tried to save my business. From what I understand, they risked their lives by going into the building to try and save it. I would also like to thank all of the people who surrounded me, my family and staff with their love and support. I don’t remember very much about the night of March 28, but I do remember images and I know that a lot of people were around trying to help us. Unfortunately, because I don’t remember much, I can’t thank everyone personally so this is a blanket “God Bless you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart” to all the people who worked and risked their lives, and surrounded us with their care and love.
Second, I would like to thank my staff for all of their years of service and for helping me to build something we were very proud of. We were all family and I am going to miss being a part of that each day. Third, I want to thank the parents of my children, who allowed us to be a part of their lives and for the love we received back from them. We will miss the children most of all. No matter how bad your day begins, when a child comes up to you for a hug and tells you they love you, it makes it all worthwhile. Child care is not an easy business, but the benefits so outweigh the hassles. We loved our children very much. My staff and I have helped raised a lot of children over our 20 years in business and we hope we have made a positive difference in their lives.
At this point, I have not decided whether I will rebuild. I say this because I have parents calling me wanting me to start rebuilding immediately. I cannot begin to express my feelings when I hear this. It means so much to the staff as well as myself, because it means we were making the appropriate kind of impact in our children’s lives.
I apologize that my children and families have been displaced. I also know that I have a few parents who paid in advance. We were able to salvage the children’s files and payment cards, thank goodness, so we know who you are. We will be contacting you about reimbursement for the weeks you paid in advance for the time that we were not able to provide care for your child. We will contact you as soon as I am able to collect from the parents who have not paid yet for the weeks we did provide service for their children. Please contact me at 977-1104/369-5429 or Cathy at 977-3249 and we will try and give you a time frame for reimbursement.
Also, I have parents who owe on their accounts and I would really appreciate your calling the same numbers to make arrangements for payment as I still have bills to pay. Cathy is handling the accounts while I handle the insurance. We can make arrangements to meet parents who are wanting to make payments on their accounts.
Again, thank you all for your care and concern and for taking care of your accounts. While I have been very fortunate with parents contacting us we also have some who are refusing to pay their accounts up through the Friday prior to the fire for the services they received through that date as well as parents who still owe past-due balances. Please remember we were able to salvage the children’s records and payments cards for all parents and children and we hope you do the right thing so that this is not more of a tragedy.
The main thing is that we did not have anyone hurt and that the fire started at a time when no one was in the building. Again, thank you all who came to our aid and who continue to contact us to see how things are going. Most important, please take care of our babies.