Thursday, November 04, 1999
A sister with a mother's touch
Child care center honors its founder
BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
DELHI TOWNSHIP — They still have the wooden slide she brought to the child care center, and the puppet theater, although they've had to give it new coats of paint over the years.
The slide and puppet theater survive, as does the legacy of Sister Redempta Wittberg, who started a child care center 20 years ago that has grown from a room in a basement to a portion of the new Harrington Center at the College of Mount St. Joseph.
The Children's Center at the Mount is a modern facility that now serves 60 children of students and faculty, with a staff of seven. On Wednesday, they honored Sister Redempta and what she started with a reception at the Harrington Center.
Sister Redempta already had retired from pediatric nursing in 1979 when she was asked by the college to start the child center. Students who already had begun families were looking for a way to either start or continue their college education; they needed someone to look after their children while they attended classes.
“All these mothers were wanting to go back to school,” Sister Redempta recalled. “They were bringing their children to school and leaving them in the halls with other students.”
They found themselves in a basement room at the library, with just three or four children that she looked after. Sister Redempta spent time in the school library, poring through books on children's activities, and scoured yard sales in search of toys and play equipment. Within four months, the center grew so fast that they moved to two rooms and Sister Redempta asked for an assistant.
While the philosophy has been fine-tuned over the years, the function has not — to give students, faculty and staff affordable care for their children while they attend classes or perform their work at the college.
Sister Redempta managed with whatever resourcefulness she could muster. They made their own paste and Play-Doh. They cut the legs from chairs and made them pint-sized for the children. Her friends donated cribs. She took the children on nature walks and showed them the wonder of leaves and buds.
“You can use your imagination, you can improvise,” says Sister Redempta today. “The children were happy.”
She is now 87 years old, animated and spry, gestures while she speaks and shuts her eyes as she tries to recall the face of a child or even a joke she heard in the past. She stays active at Bayley Place, a retirement home where she acts as a social hostess, lives at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Chari ty on the college campus and enjoys getting to the public library downtown.
Some current Mount students had been mere toddlers when they were under sister's care. They recall her fondly.
“She was always telling stories,” said Christine Heitkamp, 19, a sophomore at the Mount who was at the children's center when she was just 2 or 3 years old. “She was really sweet and good with kids. I recall more of her personality than anything. She was real bubbly.”
Myriah Pillow was about 4 years old when she was at the center, where she spent more than two years with Sister Redempta. Sister taught her how to color within the lines of a drawn circle and how to write her name on the blackboard.
“She was very sweet and very helpful mostly,” said Ms. Pillow, 23 and a freshman at the school.
Both recall the value of being with other children, making playmates out of what may have been different young faces. “The whole process of socialization and all,” said Ms. Pillow.
Sister Redempta retired from the center in August 1988 — “My heart misbehaved,” she explained — and cherishes the memories of those years.
“You get love and satisfaction of just being with them,” she said.
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