With a special nod to founder Sara Allen, the Lakes Region Child Care Centers on Thursday celebrated 40 years of providing quality, affordable child care services for local families.
About 100 people — including State Sen. Kathy Sgambati, who brought greetings from Gov. John Lynch — gathered at the Belknap Mill to mark the birth of the second oldest nonprofit child care centers in New Hampshire.

The centers serve hundreds of children ages six weeks through age 12 at the Laconia Early Learning Center, the Belmont Early Learning Center and through before- and after-school programs at each of Laconia's three elementary schools.

"I can sort of trace my career" in supporting child care and early learning through her experience "many, many years ago" as a member of the LRCCC board of directors, said Sgambati, who before being elected to the Senate in 2006 served more than 25 years in the state Department of Health and Human Services.

"Initially, it was about safety," she said, but later the mission of the LRCCC "was about the healthy development of the child."

The LRCCC is "a gift that keeps on giving," Sgambati said, in that it helps the many local parents who need child care, it helps the children develop their abilities earlier and it benefits businesses whose workers have children.

Child care providers are "unsung heroes," said Sgambati, adding that what the LRCCC has accomplished was heroic in its own way.

"Forty years in this community for a nonprofit," she said, "is a really important and impressive feat."

Rick Heller, who is the president of the LRCCC board of directors, hailed Allen for having the foresight two generations ago to launch a local child care center in response to the then-increasing number of women entering the workforce.

It shouldn't be a surprise that it was women like Allen who recognized the new need in the Lakes Region in 1968, said Heller.

"Frankly, I don't think 40 years ago men cared about child care," he said.

The LRCCC "has become her child," Heller said of Allen. "She has raised the center for years. Whenever we needed her, she was there. She came forward, she led us, she supported us."

Allen, said Heller, "brought the day care center to where it can now stand on its own."

Following Heller's remarks, Allen was presented a bouquet of flowers and received a standing ovation.

Allen said she couldn't have done what she did without the help of "a lot of people," adding, however, that "there comes a time when a person needs to retire."

Her words were met with cries of "not yet! not yet!"

State Rep. Jim Pilliod, R-Belmont, who is a physician, said he has been a supporter of the LRCCC since its inception.

In 1968, he and Allen were married and while his then-wife was back home in the Lakes Region, he was in Texas "learning about early child brain development and the need for early education well before they (children) were five and closer to before they were born."

"I was encouraged by Sara's desire not so much to have a child-care center as well as a place where a child could learn and be safe and she made it even more exciting because the teachers were being taught how to teach," Pilliod said. "This (the LRCCC) became a preschool school and many child care centers don't do that."

Allen "did a yeoman's job. She did a marvelous job. She was a one-woman typhoon and she's never looked for any credit," said Pilliod.

David Stamps, who is a past president of the LRCCC board, said Allen deserves all the credit she gets.

He said Allen's biggest contribution to the LRCCC was her commitment to making it "available to all regardless of income" by using a sliding fee scale and by seeking funding through partners like the Lakes Region United Way and Laconia Savings Bank as well as through private donations.

Full text available at Lanconia Citizen.