Jennifer Lemke wouldn’t want to be anywhere but Wade’s Playhouse

WINFIELD — Wade’s Playhouse and the woman behind it remains a staple in the Winfield community for over 20 years.

While much of the community still knows her as Jennifer Wade, recently married Jennifer Lemke continues to care for the youngest members of her community just like she did when she started her day care in 1992 after the birth of her first child.

“I was working at a factory here in town, then I had my baby and I was supposed to go back to work,” Lemke said. “I just couldn’t do it.”

For Lemke venturing into child care was one of the most natural choices she could make.

“I had started babysitting in this town as a child at like 10 years old,” she said.

So, armed with a passion to be with her new baby and the skills from years of babysitting, Lemke slowly started watching a few children from her former co-workers.

While Lemke loved working with the children and being home with her own children, when her daughter had an accident, she took a break to care for her.

After taking a year to care for her daughter, Lemke took time to try to figure out what she wanted to do following a divorce.

So, she moved, went back to school, and tried her hand at a couple of different jobs.

“I was a dental hygienist,” she said. “I’ve worked for a law firm as a legal assistant. I’ve had other positions thinking I would love them, thinking that was what I want to be professionally.”

For Lemke, though, being home and caring for children always called her back to it.

“That’s what happened at the law firm,” she explained. “I was a couple of the attorney’s secretary and it was fine. I was in a cubicle and I was doing dictations and working with lots of paperwork. I enjoyed some of that, but I remember the first time a parent waked in to do something with one of the attorneys, and he brought his two little children.”

Lemke says she immediately stepped out of cubicle and started offering to get the kids snacks and play with them while their parent met with the attorney.

“I was playing with them that day and I was smiling and it was so much fun!” she said. “I had such a good time and some said something about how good I was with kids.”

That’s when it hit her and she thought, “I need children in my life.” It didn’t take long after that realization for Lemke to make the move back to child care where she gets to be her silly goofy self.

“I just actually do this better,” Lemke said.

According to Lemke things took off right away when she restarted her day care, and she hasn’t looked back since.

“When I started back up. My first baby was four weeks old,” Lemke said. “Now she is like 12 and in 7th grade. And still, if I am at a game, she comes up and she hugs me and she sits with me for a little while.”

Lemke says when she first got together with her current husband, he made the observation that wherever she goes, she is surrounded by children.

“They were all here for so long before they went off to school or schedule changes meant they had to make a change,” she said. “We still leave with a bond and that to me has been worth all of this. Those connections with so many little kids and to watch them grow. Yeah, that is fun!”

While her own children are now grown with children of their own, Lemke still gets to be the mom-type person in the lives of many other children, including her grandchildren, and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com