“Like I lost my identity”

Connecting the Dots – #YesThisIsAnArtsStory Repost from The New York Times In Her Words

Alisha Haridasani Gupta | 10 April 2021

Aug. 28 was both a somber and a monumental day for Valerie Norris. It was a Friday. It was pouring rain, the kind of rain that falls sideways, and thunder rumbled in the distance. It was the day that Rockport — a child-care center where Ms. Norris had worked for almost four decades — shut its doors forever.

Located in Rocky River, a small suburb of Cleveland, Rockport had been open since 1981, and Ms. Norris, who started working at the center in 1986 and became its director in 1996, had watched generations grow and flourish before her eyes.

“I literally have had moms who came to Rockport as children bring their babies to Rockport,” said Ms. Norris, 61. “I’ve also hired teachers who were babies at Rockport.”

“One little boy who I was really close to discovered that he had this wonderful baritone singing voice,” she recalled. “Years after he left Rockport, his parents invited me to come to his high school solo recital.”

The average cost of infant care in Ohio is $9,697 per year — or about $800 per month — according to the Economic Policy Institute, an independent think tank. Rockport, which was owned by a church, cared for children as young as 6 weeks old all the way up to 6-year-old first graders. It took in only privately funded children. Full-time fees per month ran about $1,068 for a 6-week-old, which made it “not the most expensive center in the area, but not the cheapest, either,” Ms. Norris added, meaning the center wasn’t in a financially vulnerable position at the start of last year.

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“Like I lost my identity”

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