Community bids farewell to historic haven for kids, families | SLIDESHOW

Published 11:02 am Wednesday, April 27, 2016

For 35 years the brown brick building at 4338 Auburn Way N. thrilled to the busyness, laughter and cheering chatter of children.

Shuttered, vacant and dark, now, ever since the Auburn Family Resource Center outgrew its cramped quarters, moved to Kent in 2014 and became the South King County Family Resource Center, its shingles are sliding, cracks are spreading in the stucco over the front door and vinyl sheeting shields the windows.

Recently its parent organization, the Children’s Home Society of Washington, sold the property.

Jason Krum, development services manager for the City of Auburn, said a term of the sale was that the building first be razed. While the City has already issued demolition permits, Krum added, the buyers have not yet filed plans for redevelopment.

Tuesday morning parents and former and present employees gathered on the front lawn to say goodbye.

“Buildings, of course, have a sentimental value, but part of the way we look at our work is it’s constantly changing, so you have to look at what the needs of the community are today,” said Sharon Osborne, president and CEO of the Children’s Home Society of Washington (CHSW). “Buildings like this, as beautiful as they are, are not extremely functional. It has a particular sentiment for me because this was our first Early Childhood Development Center, and we had to take this building and totally retrofit it 25 years ago.”

John Naegele, former community director for the Children’s Home Society of South King County and statewide director of Early Head Start, spent many a happy hour and day in the old building.

“I’ve worked a lot of places, but this was the best place I’ve ever worked,” Naegele said. “It was the best four years of my life. That was because of the people. The whole organization, from the top to the very bottom and all the volunteers, they really believed in kids and families, and you could tell.”

Cathy Garland, CHSW’s state director of Early Learning, recalled the day she posted a sign along Auburn Way North asking the community to supply desperately-needed diapers for struggling families. Within six months, she said, people responded with $5,000 worth of nappies.

“This place holds a big part of my heart,” Garland said.

Rodney Severance, who held more titles at the center than he can count, he said, noted something he won’t miss — having to coax the primitive heating system to life and having to get the old plumbing system and other geezer amenities going again.

“It kept my busy, but it was a good busy,” Severance laughed.

Stephanie DeBord brought her two children to the center 17 years ago because of her son’s heart defect. The experience changed her life.

“Four years later, I was still here,” DeBord said. “My children went to preschool here, I made friends here, and to this day my best friend is still my best friend, and her daughters are parents now, and they are best friends.

“This place was a huge part of my parenting, and I learned to parent better. This place put me on my career path today,” said DeBord, a visitation specialist for Pierce County who picks up foster kids and supervises them while their parents use county services.

The building started out during the Great Depression as Jeffs Home, an orphanage for boys. Retaining memories of his early life of deprivation, Richard Jeffs, who had come to Washington Territory in the 1850s, provided for the establishment of an orphans’ home in his will and worked with CHSW to establish a receiving home on his property on Auburn Way North.

In its many years as an orphanage, the building’s lower level served as family space; the children lived upstairs.

When the orphanage closed, the building was empty and idle for many years. The Auburn Family Resource Center remodeled it in the late 1980s, turning the upper level into office space and the lower level into a childcare area, a classroom and front office space.

Among its many services that support school readiness, the new center continues to run Early Head Start in Kent and home-visiting programs. Early Head Start sends trained educators into homes and provides support services to parents with children up to 3 years old.

Another program, Parents as Teachers, preps kids for a successful future by helping parents from pregnancy through age 3. This home-visiting program includes play, parenting education and a range of resources. The new digs offer a family resource area, where parents may come in and wait with their children.