Mary Shaver’s house is much quieter these days following her recent retirement from operating Busy Bee Preschool & Child Care.
For 42 years, Shaver, 73, taught and took care of a dozen or more children five days a week throughout the year. She and her husband, John, had considered retirement for several years but always managed to put it off.
“We’ve been talking about it for the past four years,” Shaver said. “Each year we’d say, ‘Next year.’ But finally, it was time. It was a hard decision. I miss the kids.”
Originally operating out of their former home on Diagonal Road, the Shavers moved to their home on W. Alder Avenue 37 years ago.
Shaver said she wanted something to do and always liked children. She had a 2-year-old daughter at the time and decided to try opening a preschool and child care center.
“I didn’t know I’d be doing it for 42 years,” she said.
Several years after opening Busy Bee, Shaver went back to school at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Wash., to get her degree in early childhood education.
“I just wanted to learn more about what I was doing and be more knowledgeable,” Shaver said.
Surprisingly, not much has changed when it comes to kids, Shaver said.
“Kids are kids,” she said. “But they are into electronics a lot more than they used to be.”
Shaver said she chose the name Busy Bee because she knew she needed to keep the kids busy.
And did she ever. Throughout the years, Shaver would take the kids on field trips, do endless arts and crafts activities and introduce them to academic subjects.
“We had a curriculum,” she said. “My goal was to be something between a preschool and a child care center.” At the end of each year, she would hold a graduation ceremony for the children.
Since she closed Busy Bee in March, Shaver has been busy sorting through four decades of items she no longer needs such as playground equipment, puzzles, games, toys and a book collection numbering more than 1,600. She had a large yard sale recently and is planning another in August.
When you’ve run a day care and preschool for as many years as Shaver has, you tend to get to know multiple generations of the same family. Shaver said kids she used to care for returned to Busy Bee just to visit. Others return to enroll kids of their own.
“I call them my ‘second generation’ kids,” Shaver said.
And while she misses her kids, Shaver said there are some benefits to a house that’s not teeming with youngsters.
“It’s kind of nice to be able to go to the bathroom without someone complaining about someone else sticking their tongue out at them,” she said with a chuckle.
