Pioneer child care provider Mormon dies

Thursday, March 10, 2005 | 8:21 a.m.

Connie Mormon, a leader in the Las Vegas child care industry who operated the Montessori Academy of Southern Nevada child care centers from 1968 until 2001, died Saturday at Odyssey Health Care following a lengthy illness. She was 83.

Services for Mormon, a Las Vegas resident of 58 years who lobbied legislators for many of the current child care facility licensing regulations, will be noon Saturday at St. Thomas More Catholic Church, 130 N. Pecos Road, Henderson. Graveside services will follow at Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave.

Visitation will be 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. today and 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday with a rosary at 7 p.m. at Palm Mortuary-Eastern.

"My mother never turned her back on anyone and she never turned a child down," said Victoria Cloutier of Las Vegas. "She always had her door open to people, even those who sometimes could not afford to pay for her services. Accommodation was her thing."

Mormon started her business by taking care of her roommates' children at a time when there were no child care centers in Las Vegas.

She opened Happy House Child Care at Ninth Street and Bonanza Road in late 1940s and the Las Vegas Children's Nursery at Seventh Street and Charleston Boulevard in the 1950s, which became Las Vegas Children's Preskool in the mid-1960s.

At that time, Mormon went to Europe to study Maria Montessori's methods of teaching children, including the disabled. She returned to Las Vegas and over the years opened three Montessori centers that provided not only child care but also education for pre-kindergarten through the fourth grade.

Mormon employed a free-spirited method of teaching that allowed for classes to be conducted outdoors and allowed for children to sit on carpeted floors instead of seated at desks. Her classrooms featured numerous windows so that children "could look outside and see the world," Cloutier said.

Mormon, one of the founding members of the Clark County Child Care Association, was outspoken on issues regarding child care.

In an August 1995 Sun story, when parents bemoaned a lack of round-the-clock child care facilities in response to a federal report that supported their claims of a shortage, Mormon called the study "full of baloney."

"If there is such a shortage, I would be flooded with children here," said Mormon, whose Montessori facility at Oakey and Jones boulevards was a 24-hour child care center. "I am licensed for 50 children in the evenings and we're not averaging 25."

In a May 1994 Sun story she encouraged parents of mentally ill children who were angry over a system they felt was not doing enough to provide child care assistance to "use your anger to get involved and demand changes otherwise children will continue to suffer."

A woman of foresight, she told the Sun for its 1988 six-part series on child care in Las Vegas that she had long offered to provide operators of downtown and Strip casinos and other major businesses on-site child care for employees. But, she said, she was given the cold shoulder.

In 2001, a Southern Nevada benefits survey by the Eastridge Group found that big local companies, including resorts, were beginning to offer that perk to gain a competitive edge at filling jobs with top-notch employees. The Venetian was among the companies that began offering child care to its workers.

Born Concetta Annunciata Mormone on June 11, 1921, in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mormon quit school in the 11th grade.

A single mother, she moved to Las Vegas in 1947 and worked at the Club Bingo, which became the Sahara hotel, before receiving one of the area's first licenses to work as a private and commercial child care provider.

Mormon suffered a stroke in 2001. Financial problems forced closure of her school and child care center at 6000 W. Oakey Blvd. that November. Soon after, she sold her other two facilities.

Mormon was a member of the Sons of Italy.

In addition to her daughter, Mormon is survived by a son, Jeffery Lyons; a brother Patrick Mormon; two sisters, Constantine Solazzo and Dee Mormon; and three grandsons, Antoine, Kyle and Kody, all of Las Vegas.