ROANOKE, Va. – The journey of a Roanoke education center with a long, colorful history has come full circle. After the Northwest Child Development Center shut its doors in 2015, a friendly face right across the street stepped in to save it.
The Melrose Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church righted the ship and this week the center crossed a major milestone, graduating its first class. The class members represent a new way of thinking in Northwest Roanoke, and they're ready to take on what's next.
Smiling faces at graduation Wednesday night are the living proof that dedication pays off. The graduates stood stood proudly in front of the crowd at a ceremony some thought would never happen.
"There's no words. The biggest thing I keep saying to everyone is, you know, man's failure opened up a lot of opportunities that God took," Melrose Adventist Child Development Center Executive Director said Angela Williams said.
Management at the old Northwest Child Development Center failed. Accusations of money mismanagement and negligence flew, leading the United Way to pull its funding. Those were just footnotes to the glaring fact that the doors closed leaving families outside.
"God can really take something negative and turn it into something positive," Williams said. "This was a center that people gave up hope on."
Supplementing the hope was the Melrose Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church taking over a year after the old center shut down. They did a makeover to the building that makes you do a double take. The doors reopened fall 2017.
"It is absolutely wonderful to see that this child development center has risen once again," Roanoke Vice Mayor Anita Price said. "It has restored its place as being an educational institution."
In its first year open, enrollment boomed. The school has 60 students on the books and their parents are thrilled.
"It has grown tremendously and it developed so much more," Edwards said. "I love it here for my kids. I really do."
The five smiles standing proudly on the stage Wednesday night are just the first graduates of a new opportunity, one school leaders just would not pass up.
"Because of what the church did, this building is back here flourishing," Williams said. "We have children learning sign language, we have children that are learning Spanish, we have children that are ready to go to school."
School leadership said it is looking to expand programs and the facility to better serve the community, and it's clear the school is looking forward to more good things to come.