Tiny Tots day care getting fresh start after more than 4 decades
STRUTHERS
Dee Fontes likes to say that a spaghetti dinner saved her business.
It was 1977 — or “somewhere around there.” The steel mills had just closed, and residents were leaving with them. As such, enrollment at Tiny Tots, the day care she and her twin sister had started a few years prior, was declining rather noticeably.
“We thought we were going to have to close our doors,” Dee recalled. “You just push forward and do what you have to do. We did everything we could to stay open.”
That “everything” included their hosting of a fundraising spaghetti dinner, where the offerings were entirely homemade and the day care’s teachers helped to serve them. Dee and her sister, Diane Rouzzo, who died in February 2013, had the dinner at their 310 Argonne St. location, which today houses the day care’s school-age children and its after-school program.
But not for long.
By December, those children and that program will move to 586 Youngstown-Poland Road. Taking their place at the Argonne Street building will be infants, toddlers and preschoolers who now report to 275 Wilson St. — a former primary school building that Tiny Tots began leasing from St. Nicholas Church in 1988.
Earlier this year, Dee and her husband, Tony Fontes, decided not to renew the lease for the Wilson Street building. Instead, the business owners are funneling their efforts into the two buildings they do own: the Youngstown-Poland Road and Argonne Street locations. Both are being renovated to better serve the day care’s children, who range in age from 6 weeks old to 12 years old.
“It’s pretty much a fresh start,” said Anthony Fontes, Dee and Tony’s son, who has helped out at Tiny Tots since he was a child.
Read the complete story in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.