A massive Saint Bernard and a happy-go-lucky yellow lab guard the entrance to the house on Deergrass Drive, mostly happily greeting all visitors. Past the dogs and up the stairs, seven children and one woman move about in the kitchen, centered by an island with three bar stools,


one of which is occupied by a young boy finishing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; in a highchair at the end of the island a one-year-old girl sits as the woman scans through a white refrigerator, the entire scene surrounded by flowered wallpaper and hardwood floors. On a nearby coach sit two boys around the age of three watching Dora the Explorer. Beside the couch a baby swing gently rocks a small boy to sleep. To the right of the TV two young girls sit, playing with an interactive book. To their right is a hallway with five doors, one is to the closet at the end of the hall containing anything from diapers to a bucket of crayons, three of the five doors lead to bedrooms
and the final door leads to a bathroom.
To many, this may seem like an ordinary, everyday home full of relaxed children, but it’s not. This is a place where small boys and girls are cared for when their own parents are unable to themselves. This is a place where children learn the fundamentals of youth. This is a place where Maggie Donnelly prepares seven children – 30 in her lifetime – for life.
Donnelly lives in that very house on Deergrass Drive. She is a child care specialist that has been watching
children for the last 15 years; roughly 30 kids have stayed with Maggie when their parents could not watch them during the day, and not only has she helped raise 30 kids, but she also has four of her own.
“My mom is a very caring person,”
Maggie’s son, junior Patrick Donnelly. “She likes to help people and she likes to make a difference in their lives.”
Throughout her work over the last 15 years, Maggie has done just that.
”It was a lot better than going to a daycare at a school,” senior and former “daycare kid” Matt Davidson said. “If I didn’t have her I wouldn’t have been taken care of so good. At the time she was kind of a second mom.”
Not only has she changed the life of the people she has watched, but she has also changed her and her family’s lives.
“[Watching children] has made me a much more patient person,” Maggie said. “All four of my children are different, I think even though there are times when they’re off school and want to sleep in and they get frustrated [because of the other children], but overall it has helped them. When I grew up, I never baby sat. I didn’t know how to take care of kids. [My children] know how to feed a baby, change a diaper take care of and keep safe; I feel that if they get married and have kids they know what to do.”
Maggie has created an environment that is perfect for her “daycare kids.”
“It was a more personalized relationship, than going to some after school program,” Davidson
said. “It was a little cooler because our families knew each other. I was being watched by some one I could relate to, too. I remember always going there and having a good time.”
Not only was it good for the “daycare kids” but a great place for her own children as well.
“I like it,” Patrick said. “I ended up growing
up with some kids and made some good friends. I always had someone to play with and [the relationships have] grown, I feel like some of them are like my actual family.”
Like any parent, Maggie enjoys these kids while she knows them, but like her own, eventually
the kids grow up and move on.
“You get very attached,” Maggie said, “but you know, like your own children growing up, you know you’re sad but on the other hand you’re happy because they are stepping up in life.”
Maggie Donnelly is considered a true home town hero. Watching children may have made a huge impact on Maggie and the life of her own kids, however, it is incomparable to the impact she has had on the kids she has watched and their families. She devotes each day to the children of others and like any adult figure in a child’s life, she must discipline, but at the end of the day she is just like an “extra-loving mother with a mushy heart,” as Maggie says.
“I don’t know, I used to think a lot of people look down on me for only being in childcare – I had to battle that on my own,” Maggie says. “I had to look at those people who have the big jobs, they rely on me. I still wouldn’t look at myself as a hero, [I just] want to make a difference in their life and I feel like I have.”