Vesta Losen retires after 42 at Bethany Daycare

Hundreds of people throughout the community who have been influenced by 42 years of Vesta Losen and Bethany Daycare are invited to tell her goodbye at her retirement party from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday at Bethany Bible Church, where it all began.
The feisty redhead moved to Belleville with her husband Pastor John Losen and their family in 1970 when Pastor Losen was called to Bethany.
She said there were no child care centers in the area. She had been on the board of a child care in Traverse City when her children were using it. Losen always had a part-time job, she recalls.
“The church building is not used much and child care was something the community needed,” she said. She checked out the curriculum in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor centers and presented a proposal to the church. The board approved it in March 1974 and Bethany Daycare opened in November 1974.
“I never intended to be the administrator since I had five children at home and was an active pastor’s wife, involved in music. I was on the board and then the chairman left after a year.”
She said the daycare started with four children. Now it has had as many as 240, but about 200 currently.
Losen said they did a car wash to advertise and then never advertised again. It has been all word of mouth. She said that way the people have a good idea about the center and come in with a happy attitude.
She said six months after Bethany started, Belleville Childcare opened on the South I-94 Service Drive.
In 1981 Bethany started a Kindergarten because it had to, she said. Bethany was told by the Van Buren Public Schools that it couldn’t take its Kindergarteners to Edgemont, even though it was right next door and they could walk there by a path.
It wasn’t because of space limitations at Edgemont, she said. Losen was called to a meeting with School Supt. Jim Richendollar. She said he told her “no buses go by your place, so they can’t go to our school.”
Losen said they had nine children that were Kindergarteners whose parents thought they were going to Edgemont.
“I called the state to find out what you had to do to start a Kindergarten and they told me you don’t have to do anything, since Kindergartens are not required by the state,” Losen said. “We were forced into starting a Kindergarten.”
She taught Kindergarten for the first 12 years. She said she was still working part time at a nursing home and then her daughters-in-law took over the Kindergarten with about 25 students split into two classes.
“What I kept hearing from parents whose children went on to first grade in the Van Buren Schools is, ‘My child is learning in first grade what you taught in Kindergarten.’ Then, when they went on to second grade they said their children were learning in second grade what we taught in Kindergarten.
“I started thinking of running for the school board to work to raise the academics,” she recalled.
Tom Bowles was interested in raising the fiscal responsibility of the district, so the two ran and were elected to the Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education.
“And, you know what a fun time that was,” Losen said, recalling the opposition and harsh treatment by other board members opposed to change.
“That was what led to us starting a charter school,” she said referring to Keystone Academy in Sumpter Township.
Losen said a middle school teacher recently told her, “I can tell a Bethany student from the way they do their work.”
Losen said her daughters-in-law Susette and Cherie Losen, are pretty patient with the Kindergarten students at Bethany and if they miss a day of school, they work with them to catch up. With her retirement, Susette and Cherie are in charge, with Cherie the new administrator.
She said they’ve had up to 40 students in the two classrooms, but now it’s half of that since Keystone started.
“It was something that needed to be done,” Losen said of first, starting the Kindergarten, and then starting Keystone, which now has students in pre-5 to eighth grade. There are about 786 students at Keystone.
Losen started as president of the school board at Keystone and still serves in that position.
She said last year almost half of the National Honor Society students inducted at Belleville High School spent their preschool or Kindergarten days at Bethany. Also, half of the 2015 top-ten BHS graduates were at Bethany at the beginning.
“It sticks with them,” she said.
Losen said the curriculum at Bethany is not phenomenal and was borrowed from another school – but then they added on.
Losen said she was reading an article recently about Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and noted Joy Yearout, a graduate of BHS and Bethany, was Schuette’s spokesperson for 3-4 years until she got married last January.
Losen said the first 14 years of their licensed daycare went just fine with the state, but then a new consultant with the Department of Social Services told them they can’t pray before meals, can’t use Bible stories, and had to take the religious pictures off the walls.
Losen said they did character building using Biblical values and now were being told they can’t reference the Bible.
“We’re a church-operated center. If we can’t use the Bible, there’s no reason for us to exist,” she said.
Losen said the state would not budge and Bethany was told if you fight us we will not license your church nursery and that will have to close.
The Bethany board turned in its license to the state and the nursery and daycare continued to operate. That was in 1987.
Losen said she went to Van Buren Township Supervisor Dave Jacokes for help and he didn’t help her.
She said Bethany was told that if they continue to operate police will come in and charge parents who leave their children there with child abuse.
Losen said they told the state they would take them to court and the state said, “Don’t bother, we’re taking you to court.”
The next morning, Losen got a call from a man in Clarkston who told her 12 churches were having the same trouble with the state as Bethany and he invited her to join with them. She said they had no money and he said she could join in anyway.
The Michigan Association of Christian Schools took the case all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court and won. It took seven years and Bethany continued to operate. She said Bethany complied with all fire, health, and safety rules, but when it got to the curriculum the state couldn’t go there.
“They were scary,” Losen said of the state, who referred to the churches as “the Bible-thumpers from Grand Rapids.”
The court combined the churches’ case with current cases involving homeschooling parents. At the time, those parents were being threatened with jail time in Michigan and Losen knew some of them who were jailed.
Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that “the state has no compelling interest in the program or personnel in church-operated centers” and the state cannot control this.
Because of the cost and length of the battle, most of the churches lost everything. Just five remained.
The state has a book of rules on child care and 300 pages of interpretation of the rules. In that interpretation, Bethany is listed as being exempted, along with the four other churches. She said two of those are still in business and the other three are now out of business.
Homeschoolers also gained their freedom as a result of the court’s decision, and it has lasted to this day.
“We have a lot more freedom in this country than we claim … But you have to claim it … It takes a lot of work … It was a worthwhile fight and I met a lot of wonderful people,” she said.
Losen said the state will tell you only those five are exempt, but that’s not true. But, she emphasized, “You have to claim it.”
She said Gov. Engler ordered there be no more interpretative manual, to just have rules that are easy to understand. It was gone for 3-4 years, but now it’s back. She said a few years back she downloaded the whole 300 pages to have on hand and then was told by a state worker that they change it every week.
Losen said other centers not connected with churches teach Biblical values and the state ignores it.
She said Bethany takes no federal or state money because, “We feel we can’t afford to… They still try to send us clients. I don’t want any.”
Losen said there has been very little staff turnover over the years. Kay Brooks has been director of the curriculum for the preschool for most of 42 years and developed and upgraded it. There is a staff of 18 and last fall, for Boss’ Day, they counted up 300 years of total staff time at Bethany.
“Just to have the continuity is wonderful,” Losen said. “They don’t make a lot of money. There is a lot of dedication.”
Losen grew up on a farm with three brothers and three sisters. Her parents Ellis and Ardis Bracy moved the family to town when her dad took a job with the county. They lived in a big house in Charlotte across from the courthouse. Their garage used to be the original courthouse. The jail was next door.
The four-story house had lots of room and Vesta’s mother took in children who needed a place to stay for up to a year. She also took care of children during the day. “That was my introduction to child care,” she said.
Her mother died at less than 50 years old and her father remarried and they had 30 years together. She had a very stable home life, with three of her family going into the ministry or being a pastor’s wife.
Music has been a big part of Losen’s life since her youth. She said she bought her first musical instrument, a clarinet, by raising chickens.
She was active in Lansing Youth for Christ and played the accordion and sang in Spanish to the braceros working in mid Michigan.
Through a music group she met Pastor John Losen, a 28-year-old widower with two young children. They married six months later. She recalls she was almost 21 when she moved into the parsonage.
She said one year and one day later, Johnny was born. Then, Kevin two years later and Andrea. With Pastor Losen’s two children, Brian and Valerie, that made five children in the family.
When the children were young, in 1973 the “Seven Singing Losens” toured South Africa with an evangelist known as the Billy Graham of South Africa. In order to afford the trip, her sons took jobs, Vesta got a job, and they cashed in their life insurance policy.
“It was great,” she said of the trip, noting the children saw racial discrimination up close and were upset when their black driver couldn’t eat with them.
She and Pastor Losen have 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
“Common Core is a big fake,” Losen said of one of her current projects. She said people say Common Core is “rigorous,” but it’s not rigorous enough for college and career readiness. She said obviously the standards were not written by classroom teachers.
“I hope it’s on the way out in Michigan,” she said. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do in retirement.”