School owners excited to reopen after flood Summer pipe burst damaged facility and forced its closure BY DAN NEWMAN Staff Writer MIDDLETOWN — Most businesses that thrive need not fret about having a grand re-opening or shutting down for remodeling work. For the first 14 years as co-directors of Teddy Bear Learning Center, Ruth Ann Laird and Karen Phillipps had no such worries. Their business venture on Middletown-Lincroft Road near Route 520 had a loyal following of children from ages 6 weeks to 6 years. “We never had any problems at all,” Phillipps said. “Things were just fine. We passed all of our inspections by the state. We felt that things were running smoothly.” At least that’s what she thought while she was on vacation in West Virginia four months ago during Labor Day weekend. Meanwhile, Laird thought she’d stop by the school on her own leisure time to paint the back door. What seemed like a simple task turned into something out of a movie. “It was like ‘Jumanji.’ The door was opened and then water everywhere,” said Suzann Brucato, promotional coordinator for Teddy Bear. “It was very bad in here.” Nobody knew that better than Laird. “The water was all over the place,” Laird said. “It was coming from upstairs, but it was deep everywhere throughout the building.” The culprit was a small pipe located in the back of an upstairs toilet. Following a state inspection, it was determined that the pipe could have been defective. Fourteen years of building young minds, along with good times and a lifetime of memories, was washed away. “After such a long time of being in here each day, it was heartbreaking to see it all go away so fast,” Laird said. “It wasn’t about the equipment that was lost or anything like that, it was about so much more. It was about 14 years of educating kids in our area. That’s what hurt the most.” The next day, Phillipps and Laird were busy calling parents, telling them that the school would be closed for about a week. The reality of the situation was that it was going to be a lot longer than just a few days. “After that first week, we just realized that it was going to be awhile before we got going again, and so we called our parents back and tried to place kids elsewhere,” Laird said. “We had to tell the parents just how rough things were. Thankfully, they were all sympathetic and understanding about it. They were just as shocked as we were about all of this.” Rather than closing up shop and calling it a day, Phillipps and Laird are doing the opposite. “It’s been a major feat, working with the insurance companies, but we are determined to get this place up and running again,” Phillipps said. The two women met 23 years ago and thought maybe one day they would open up a place of their own. While many local child-care facilities are run out of a church or temple, Teddy Bear had no such backing. “We both had previous child-care experience and our own children were a bit older, so we thought the time was right to go for it,” Phillipps said. “We really felt this could work from the start. We did three years’ worth of research on things like construction, demographics and location. Even before the first day ever came around, we were prepared.” Laird also mentioned that not being affiliated with a religious organization may be a benefit to their operation. “We have a private campus. This is our place. It’s a safety thing around here, and I think it helps parents to know that there are not going to be outsiders wandering in and out of our facility,” Laird said of the acre-and-a-half property. Location was one thing that Brucato knew was a huge positive for Phillipps and Laird. “It wasn’t just Lincroft-area kids that were coming in to the center,” Brucato explained. “It was also kids from Tinton Falls, Colts Neck, Holmdel, and we even had three kids from Brooklyn [N.Y.] here because they had a parent that worked nearby, so it really was perfect.” Brucato also had her two children, Maria and John, enrolled previously and said that even though other schools were popping up in the area, there was always one constant at Teddy Bear. “Things are never stagnant here,” Brucato said. “Ruth Ann and Karen have kept up with the times, educationally. You can come in here at anytime and no matter what the age group is, there’s always something educational going on. Kids are having fun here but they’re also learning at the same time.” Another quality that has remained constant is the staff. On average, employees of the school have been around for eight years, and all of them plan to come back to work once the school reopens, which should be in the first quarter of this year. “Our nine staff members had other opportunities to go to other places, but they like it here enough to want to come back, and I think that says a lot about the work that is going on here,” Laird said. “We’re excited that we’ll be back up and running again really soon.” While some may see this as an uphill battle, to restart in a community where similar setups saturate the community, Brucato views this as a great chance to take up where things left off. “This is a great opportunity for two people who have 14 years of experience at this,” Brucato said. “Nobody starting something like this has that much experience on the first day.”