Grace Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten is still young at heart

Old teachers never forget a face — names, on the other hand, have a much shorter shelf life.

Linda Domin was looking at a newspaper clipping featuring photos from the early days of Grace Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten, the State College educational program she co-founded with Gwen Bunnell.

One little girl, rendered in black and white, caught her eye.

Complete with a ponytail and dress, the child was the spitting image of a certain genre of youthful innocence and vitality. In the absence of any competing photographic evidence to the contrary, it seemed almost impossible to believe that same kid could be anything other than forever young.

Today, Domin mused, that girl must be in her 50s.

“It’s just funny how times goes,” Domin said.

On Wednesday, the little school that could will celebrate 50 years in session at Grace Lutheran Church. The festivities will include official proclamations from the Borough of State College and the Centre County commissioners, who will be competing for the attention of the children with a buffet of cake and ice cream. Throw in a puppet show and some balloon animals and it doesn’t sound half-bad, as far as 50th birthday parties go.

Adding to the sense of occasion will be the presence of Domin and Bunnell, who will be among the few people present able to remember the labor pains that made this baby possible.

Back in 1966, the women were friends, colleagues and churchgoers who were dissatisfied by their experiences teaching at another school.

They approached Pastor Dale Bringman and some of the other elders at Grace Lutheran about setting up shop in the church.

“That was something they had never thought of or heard of,” Bunnell said.

Grace Lutheran eventually gave them the green light and $50 in seed money, which even in 1966 stretched about as far as a cheap rubber band. Half went toward securing an ad in the Centre Daily Times and the rest was sent to the state Department of Education.

Fortunately, the ladies had no shortage of gently used toys at home, hand-me-downs from their own children unto the next generation.

What they lacked in crayons, they made up for in philosophy.

Domin and Bunnell wanted their fledgling school to be a hub of physical, social-emotional and spiritual development.

“A lot of these kids, it was their first school experience and you want to create a classroom community,” Domin said.

Their first class consisted of 30 preschoolers split evenly between two rooms. As is prone to happen throughout the years, those numbers have since inflated significantly.

Today’s enrollment clocks in at 127 morning preschool students and 45 kids for afternoon enrichment. There’s also kindergarten, physical education and a Spanish language and culture class.

Grace Lutheran’s continued growth in the preschool and kindergarten sector is both the inevitable outcome of success and the unenviable struggle to top oneself that usually follows.

Education Director Cathy Smarkusky said that the school is always on the lookout for new trends in education.

“I think we do a wonderful job of meeting kids where they are, meeting their needs,” Smarkusky said.

Still, you can’t raise a child without a village. In the heyday of Domin and Bunnell, the school was able to squeak by with just the two of them. That number has happily quadrupled in the intervening decades.

“I believe that our longevity rests on the fact that we hire wonderful staff who are committed to bringing out the best in every child,” said Laurel Sanders, the school’s executive director.

It’s a nice idea — but hardly an original one. Domin and Bunnell had always seen teaching as more than a convenient way to occupy that stretch of hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

After a few years at Grace Lutheran, the program’s founders were both seduced by the siren song of public school. It was more of a graduation than an abandonment, the well-earned confidence that their child could survive in the world without them.

Domin still volunteers at the school once a week and is gratified to know that even at the age of 50, it has not yet settled into the rigid and cantankerous grip of old age.

“I see that they’re still searching for the same goals that we started,” Domin said.

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 8:58 PM with the headline "Grace Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten is still young at heart."