Fifty years ago this month, my wife, Sandra, and our year-old son Elliott returned to Inverness from a summer in Southern California. What a reception awaited us. 

Our home, the iconic main building of Inverness’s historic Highland Lodge, had been transformed during our absence. The blackberry-choked yard had blossomed into a landscaped playground keynoted by a magnificent wooden climbing structure. New paint gleamed in the entry hall, and the cavernous main room that had once been the lodge’s dining room had emerged as a fairy-tale retreat outfitted with Hobbit-sized furniture.

The story started around our kitchen table one morning earlier in the year. Our neighbor Stephanie Sanchez, mother of 3-year-old Dante, was lamenting to Sandra about the lack of a nursery school in the area. It was a familiar refrain in West Marin: plenty of anxious parents eager for a structured play option for their preschoolers, but the hurdle was the lack of a venue.

After a moment, Sandra said (prophetically!), “What about our unused main room?” 

Once Stephanie’s husband, Tom, and I were drawn into the idea, we decided to call a community meeting to test the interest in moving forward. We picked the evening of Monday, May 29, which was Memorial Day in 1972. Each of us took an assignment to make the meeting happen: publicity, agenda, seating, refreshments.

Publicity consisted mainly of posting flyers at the post office and around Inverness and Inverness Park. Our phone numbers were included for more information.

Memorial Day arrived, and were we dejected. It seemed our idea had fallen flat—only one phone call had come in, and that from someone without a preschool child. Three of us were ready to call it quits, but Tom was adamant: “No,” he insisted. “It’s going to happen.”

And was he right! Well before 7:30, people began to arrive. And continued to arrive. They came in their V.W. vans, in their Volvos, with their kids in tow, with their dogs afoot, with their friends, neighbors and exes tagging along. The room was soon overflowing and people were looking in the windows from the porch outside.

Shades of “Hey, kids! Let’s put on a musical in this old barn!”

Only this time the musical was a preschool and this community was ready to make it happen. The school was given a name, The Playgroup, and a sort-of board of directors was selected, chaired by Lowell (“Banana”) Levinger. One of the attending parents was Susan Mondini, who had a preschool teaching certificate and was interested in the position of teacher. She was hired on the spot, and a call was put out for an assistant. It took only a few days for the assistant’s job to be filled by a 19-year-old named Lisa Doron.

A list of committees was drawn up for the myriad tasks to be undertaken if the school were to open its doors in September. These included creating a playground, building cubbies, rounding up pint-sized tables and chairs, collecting toys and supplies, writing bylaws and setting a schedule for the school year. 

What was most memorable was that 27 (that’s right, 27!) 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled for the fall semester. To appreciate how the demographics of West Marin have changed since that night half a century ago, almost all those 27 preschoolers were living on the west side of Tomales Bay.

At the end of the evening, a newcomer to the community raised his hand hesitantly and asked, “Aren’t there some permits that will be needed?” He was roundly hooted down.

The Playgroup was a rousing success that first year, so much so that the following year Sandra and I reconfigured our use of the house so the school could use a second room and, importantly, a second bathroom.

Yet by the end of the 1973-74 year, the arrival of our second son, Michael, was imminent, and The Playgroup was looking to “go legal,” which presented certain permitting difficulties at the Highland Lodge. So, The Playgroup rented a house on Aberdeen Way, and sometime later moved to Pine Hill Drive. By the time Michael was old enough to attend, it was located on Silver Hills at what became the Holly Tree Inn.

Eventually, what started out as The Playgroup in Inverness became today’s Papermill Creek Children’s Corner in Point Reyes Station. The program fulfilled a burning need 50 years ago, just as Papermill Creek is a vital asset in today’s community. It deserves your support, especially during this 50th anniversary year. 

Stephanie Sanchez became a noted landscape painter and retired recently as chair of the art department at Santa Rosa Junior College. Tom Sanchez is the author of acclaimed novels, including his seminal work, “Rabbit Boss,” which he was working on in 1972 while living next door to Highland Lodge. Wade and the late Sandra Holland became involved with Waldorf education and eventually welcomed a Waldorf-inspired kindergarten in the space where The Playgroup had its beginning. Some of the children who attended The Playgroup in 1972 are already grandparents (!).