Liz Carroll, right, founder of the Preschool at First Presbyterian Church of Maitland, is honored on Sunday at the school’s 50th anniversary.
On Sunday afternoon more than a hundred former preschoolers and kindergartners gathered inside a Maitland gymnasium to say hello again.
Some of them graduated when nearby parts of Highway 436 were still paved with dirt. Others had just started their first week a few days ago.
All of them had one connection, and Sunday they all came to see her.
Sitting in a corner of the gym, a silver-haired woman in blue shakes hands with old friends, some for the first time in half a century.
Liz Carroll remembers a little white church just a few yards from the seat where she sat Sunday morning. It’s gone now, along with the restaurant that used to be where she sits, and the orange groves just up the road. But Carroll is still here at the now much-larger First Presbyterian Church of Maitland, as dozens of friends and family mill about her on the church’s gym floor. They’re here to celebrate the golden anniversary of the first kindergarten in the city.
Fifty years ago today, in the fall of 1961, the first half dozen students walked through the doors of the Preschool at First Presbyterian Church of Maitland for the first time, and Carroll was there to meet them. The party today spilling into the church’s dining room is celebrating the school, but for most of the people here, it’s for the woman who started it all.
“The first year, I thought maybe it wouldn’t work,” Carroll said. “It’s amazing how much it’s grown.”
A parade of well-wishers stop by to shake her hand as Carroll sits at a table in the dining room, surrounded by generations of students, teachers and parents who have all been touched by the school that she built.
Just about lunchtime, Rex Beech, kindergarten class of 1962, walks up to say hi, and Carroll’s face lights up.
“What made you want to do all that?” Beech joked about Carroll’s risky idea five decades ago. The school started simply enough, but kept growing thanks to its founder’s tenacity. The second year it had nearly 20 students. Then after that, the numbers just kept climbing. It added preschool in 1965.
By the time the school began to reach its peak enrollment about the year 2000, other schools had started arriving. At the biggest the school ever became, 150 students walked through the doors. Today that number is closer to 90, current director Lynn Brown said.
There have only been two directors of the school at the First Presbyterian Church, and Brown is the second. She took over in 1996 when Carroll retired. Now serving on the school’s board, Carroll still stops by once a month to see how things are going. And the school keeps opening its doors every year.
“The endearing thing is the school’s connection to the community,” Brown said. “Central
Florida is such a transitional area, but it’s still here.”
She speaks from experience. Brown started teaching at the school in 1983. This week her granddaughter Finli started preschool for the fall. Steve Hampton, class of 1971, walked up to say hi to his old teacher with his 18-month-old son, Leo, in his hands. Leo started preschool here last week.
“I don’t think we’ve had a fourth generation here yet,” Brown said. “But we’re close.”
And she doesn’t see any end to that long line of tradition here, even if she thinks she’ll never break Carroll’s record tenure. The school’s founder turned 90 in August.
“It’s all gone by so fast,” she said.
On a table off to the side of the gym, a few students are scribbling thank you notes on a poster board. They’re supposed to be for the school but, once again, they’re all for Carroll. Off to the edge, in flowing cursive, a friend thanked her favorite teacher.
“What a wonderful thing you started, and think of how many children you have influenced.”