Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The LaGrange- Troup County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting on Thursday to celebrate the reveal of the new playground at the Maidee Smith Early Care and Learning Center.

Located on Union Street in LaGrange, the Maidee Smith daycare is a local institution that has served the community for over 70 years. Several of the ribbon-cutting attendees who helped bring the playground to the facility went to daycare at Maidee Smith as children decades ago.

The new playground was funded through a grant from the Callaway Foundation, which provided $300,000 for all the improvements to the daycare center.

“It’s a pleasure to know that we’ve got the support of the community for over 70 years. That’s really an achievement,” said Director Maxine Maddox.

Maddox said they were worried that the ongoing widening of Hamilton Road would affect the daycare.

“I thought this year was going to be a little slack because of construction out there, but I thank God and the parents are coming in,” Maddox said.

Maddox said the ongoing construction was one of the reasons the new playground was needed. The fenced-in playground allows the kids to play outside behind the facility and not get hurt in the construction.

Maddox thanked the Callaway Foundation and the United Way for their continued support of Maidee Smith.

“We’re proud to be part of this,” Callaway Foundation President Tripp Penn said. “We appreciate Miss Maxine and her board. She’s got a big, big heart. She loves these kids. These precious little people, they’re the future of our community, and being here is going to better prepare them for school.”

“We have been partnering with Maidee Smith since way back when I first started as a volunteer,” United Way President Sharon Alford said. “We’re proud of the love and care that these children get and going out into the world, we know they’ve been taken care of. And we’re just proud of that partnership.”

Maddox said Maidee Smith was started over 70 years ago to allow working mothers to have a safe place to leave their children. She has been at the daycare center for 14 years.

“This is my passion, these children in the community,” Maddox said. “As a mother, I understand how hard it is to go to work and worry about your children. I don’t want parents to worry about their kids while they work.”