Jackson Heitt, almost 2, got all the attention on the last day of the 56th U.S. Women’s Open. On Sunday, he was alone in the LPGA’s day school at Southern Pines Primary School, working puzzles with Director Tony Verive.
Little Jackson was the last one left out of 10 kids who had spent the tournament week in school. His mother is contestant Pat Hurst.
The tour is off to Rochester next week, but Verive is going home to Palm Springs for some well-deserved down time.
“I haven’t been home in eight weeks,” Verive said. His flight was scheduled to leave for California on Sunday at 4 p.m., and he was planning to head for Raleigh three hours early.
“There’s no way I’m going to miss that plane,” he said.
For all the nap times he supervises, and for all the snacks and goodies he fixes and boo-boos he soothes, Verive is a real child development professional.
He holds a master’s degree and has his teaching credentials. He has worked at the university level as an instructor in early childhood development and has worked in the Head Start program.
“This is more than simple babysitting,” Verive said.
Indeed, Jackson, who will be 2 on June 18, is working a jigsaw puzzle at the 3-year-old level.
The center concentrates on motor and intellectual skills for three hours a day. The children complete puzzles and participate in problem solving. They play outdoors on nice days. They nap, they interact with each other and they prepare for the day they graduate from the child development school and go to kindergarten.
Verive has the concept of providing quality child care down to a science.
For children, mostly toddlers, who travel with their parents on the golf tour, they need a sense of stability in their lives, he said.
“They have to be well- adjusted because they are always traveling, always in airports and in different types of hotels and lodging,” he said. “It’s bound to be a little stressful.”
The child development centers in each venue are always set up the same way, Verive said. The nap area, play area, work stations, video monitors and televisions are all placed in the same location in the various churches, schools, hotel ballrooms, or wherever the center is during the tour. This makes for the creation of familiar surroundings. Verive is a constant in their lives, and the children become friends with each other as they grow up together on the golf tours.
The program, administered by the LPGA, is in its ninth year. The child-care road show follows the tour through all 30 tournaments and some special events.
“When we first started, Juli Inkster’s daughter was just a toddler. Now she’s almost a teen-ager,” Verive said. Age has no limit in the program, but by the time the kids reach their teens, they mainly show up to hang out and help with the smaller ones. The center is set up to handle infants as young as 10 weeks, but Verive has taken care of babies as young as three weeks old.
The presence of six pregnant golfers this year means the child development center will have some new children on the next round of tournaments. They’ll come along just in time to replace five who are going to be in kindergarten and not in the program full time.
“We’ll have a net gain of one next year,” Verive said.
Verive doesn’t like to admit this, but he’s a whiz at diaper changing. He recalled one particularly long rain delay when he and an assistant changed 45 diapers.
He’ll put diaper-changing and Barney and traveling behind him for a week now. But even though Palm Springs is a golfer’s paradise, he won’t be hitting the links.
“I don’t even like golf,” he said. “I’m going to spend the week relaxing and going hiking in the mountains.”
