Johnston Now Honors: A love of children and a can-do attitude powers entrepreneur award winner

By Randy Capps

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a proverb that actually borrows from Plato, who wrote something very similar about 2,800 years ago.

If one was seeking proof, Pam Ryan would make for an interesting study.

A lack of childcare options in 1985 led her to start her own business, and 39 years later, Kid’s Country has two locations in Wilson’s Mills and Clayton that have served countless area families.

That vision makes her an ideal choice for the 2024 Johnston Now Honors Dynamic Entrepreneur Award.

“It's just the relationships that you build with the children, with the parents and with the staff that has made me feel proud and accomplished,” she said.

Back in 1985, Pam and her husband, Clifton, welcomed their second child, Joshua, to go along with April, who was about to start kindergarten. They had just bought property in Clifton’s home town of Wilson’s Mills, and with Pam being a Smithfield native, it was the perfect fit.

What wasn’t perfect was the childcare situation.

“When I got ready to go back to work, there were no child care center,” she said. “I had a friend in Clayton that had one, and I had been leaving April there, but when she started kindergarten, there were no afternoon spots.” 

Not wanting to burden her parents, Ryan decided to solve her own problems.

“I conjured up this plan that I would just start keeping kids,” she said. “I involved my parents and we sat down and figured it out. … My husband came home from work, and I said, ‘I got it all figured out. I'm not going back to work.’ And he was like, ‘oh, really?’”

The Ryans leased a metal building in Wilson’s Mills for $1,000 per month and, with the help of her parents, borrowed some money from the bank. So, on July 8, 1985, Kid’s Country was born.

“I (kept) five kids in my home,” she said. “My mama would come over and help me keep them. While I was doing the inspections, I took out all of my state retirement money and put it toward the upgrade of that little metal building to get it child care approved.”

After getting the building up to code, there were other hurdles to clear.

“I found a very good lady that had been in child care her whole life, teaching preschool here in Smithfield, and her name was Julia Godwin,” she said. “I hired her, and she taught me the ropes because I did not know about any child care things. I just knew how to love kids. 

“And she showed me all of that. I would not be where I am today without her. So she worked with me and we stayed (in the original building) about a year and a half.” 

That’s how long it took for five kids to turn into 55, which made space an issue. So, like in the beginning, she solved her own problem again by building a 2,500 square foot addition onto the family home.

That worked for a while, but as the business grew larger, the family’s living area grew smaller.

“As the years went on, we kept growing,” she said. “Eventually, I took our living room space in our home and we took out our furniture. My husband and my two children moved into a bedroom together. They put tape down the middle of the floor so that they could (mark) the sides.” 

“I was trying to date, and we were watching TV in the kitchen,” April said, with a laugh.

Finally, the space crunch got a little too tight, and it was time to find another solution.

“We purchased the lot next door,” she said. “My brother in law, who's passed away now (from) pancreatic cancer, was a house builder. So my husband and he started working in the afternoons after they had (worked their other jobs) and got our house built.”

Staffing wasn’t as pressing an issue as space was, but April helped take care of it anyway by deciding to go into special education and bringing those talents back to the family business.

That created an opportunity for expansion, and they did just that.

“We built two new buildings and we moved over there. Now we're licensed for 169 kids, and that's how we got there, one step at a time.”

The second location came about in 2018.

“I had a daycare friend that was having some health challenges and she was not allowed to go back into her center,” she said. “She was really struggling with trying to hire managers. So, she just pretty much coerced us into taking over that center.”

With three grandchildren, Ryan is closer to the end of her journey than the beginning. But she’s not done quite yet.

“When you take something that is nothing and you build it, and you build it, and you put your whole life into it, and you struggle, and you have happy moments and you have sad moments — it's hard to give it up,” she said. “It's hard to let it go. 

“It's always the same thing. All these little kids want to be loved, that's all. I mean, I sit down on a bench and I see these kids maybe once a week, … but I had five on the bench with me just sitting there, all of them just smiling at me, you know, wanting to be talked to, (wanting to be) loved. They just want love and attention.

“It's going to be hard for me. But one day, I am going to retire. I'm doing less and less of it now. One day, I’m going to give (April) the reins. I’m not sure that she wants them.”

That’s a problem for another time.

Thank you to Coates Hearing Clinic for sponsoring this award.