Lawrence Eagle Tribune

May 17, 2006

Head Start Center Dedicated To Long-Time Director

By Yadira Betances

LAWRENCE — Though she has been gone for 21 years, her memory lingers in the hearts and minds of staff members of the Head Start program at Greater Lawrence Community Action Council.

Now, the late Anne Minihan's contribution to the thousands of children and their families in Lawrence will live on at the newest Head Start program at 62 Park St.

The building was dedicated in her memory for serving as director of Head Start from 1965 until 1985, when she passed away.

"This is a wonderful accolade and well-deserved," said Vincent Dolan during the short ceremony Friday. Dolan, operations manager for Head Start, said naming the center after Minihan was a "natural choice."

Minihan was a Lawrence native who graduated from St. Mary's High and Emerson College with bachelor's and master's degrees. She was a commentator at local radio stations and was a script writer for the Columbia Broadcasting System. She also read during the Children's Hour at Lawrence Public Library.

Lawrence was one of the cities in the country to start a Head Start program, one year after it was founded by President Lyndon Johnson through the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The president's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, gave the city a flag for their pioneering vision. The flag has been used as background for every class picture in the city's program and it was brought to the dedication ceremony. The Anne D. Minihan Head Start Center has six classrooms serving 94 preschool children ages 4 and 5.

Dolan said 100 children graduated from Head Start in 1965 and there were 500 students last year. There are 540 children from Andover, North Andover, Lawrence and Methuen enrolled in the program at six different sites.

"She was a great mentor to all of us. Her most outstanding qualities were her sense of humor, and her dedication to the children and their parents," Dolan said. He first met Minihan in 1974.

Nelida Baez agreed.

"I am who I am today thanks to her guidance," Baez said. A native of Argentina, she came to Lawrence in 1970. Although she had a teaching degree from her native country, she worked in a shoe factory because her teaching credentials were not accepted here.

Baez started as a case aide, helping social workers and through Minihan's encouragement, she attended Simmons College before returning to Head Start. In September, she will retire after 33 years on the job.

In 1971, Minihan started a program that allows staff members who had no previous college credits or had graduated from high school, to gain college credit through Northern Essex Community College.

"The job was a vocation and dedication you felt for the children and their families," Baez said. "She taught us to get satisfaction from the parent's achievement."

Charles LoPiano, assistant executive director of Greater Lawrence Community Action Council, was 7 years old when he first met Minihan. He would walk from his house on Oak Street to the Lawrence Public Library to be among dozens of children who sat around her as she read on Saturdays at 10 a.m. Years later, Minihan moved the storytelling hour to the radio.

"I remember her very soft voice and the fact that she was very, very pretty," LoPiano said, but he will remember her most for other qualities.

"She had a very warm, gentle personality, and not just with the preschoolers," LoPiano said.

Next to his mother, Philip Laverriere Sr. said there was no one else he respected more than Minihan.

"She influenced everyone she touched," said Laverriere, executive director of the council.