County’s 2019 Daycare Provider of the Year heads to Texas for retirement

The winter of 2019 is proving to be something different for Judy Ruport of Kasson.
After 44 years operating a daycare center in Kasson, Ruport, the 2019 Dodge County Daycare Provider of the Year, is spending the winter in Texas.
Ruport said she retired from her daycare business in April. Her husband, Keith, retired on Feb. 1 when he sold his business, Narveson Well Service. She said their Kasson home sold on May 9 and on May 10 they were headed to Mission, Texas where they will be spending their winters.
They are not entirely leaving Minnesota, she said, because they will be spending half the year at a place they own on French Lake in Faribault. And, of course, she said, they will be coming back for Christmas to spend with their children and grandchildren. Plus, Ruport’s mother still lives in Dodge Center while her husband’s mother lives in Mantorville.
In addition to retiring from her daycare business, she also just retired as executive director of the Dodge County United Way, an organization she worked with for 35 years.
“It’s a lot of changes, but good changes,” she said last week as she and Keith were traveling from Nashville to Texas. They had been visiting their son and his wife, Jessica, in Louisville, Ky, she said, and had stopped at Nashville where they celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary.
Ruport said she enjoyed her years operating the daycare center. She said she had worked for several months when living in Stewartville but when the family moved to Kasson she didn’t want to leave her two sons to go to work. Her mother had done daycare so she decided she would too.
In 1982, she said, they adopted their daughter, Tara, and she said she would do daycare until Tara went to kindergarten.
Tara graduated from college in 2007, she laughed, so obviously that did not happen.
Operating a daycare has changed throughout the years, she said.
There have been a lot of rule changes, discipline changes and changes in parenting. The cost of daycare has also increased.
“It’s so expensive to send a child to daycare,” she said. “I tried to keep the rates as low as I could.”
Not only is it expensive for parents, she said, but also for the provider. There are a lot of regulations, she said, and that means fees, licenses, background checks and insurance.
“There are a lot of expenses to keep up,” she said.
She was licensed to take care of 12 children, she said, but when she retired she had eight children in her care. Most of them, she said, were three-years-old and under.
Despite the hard work, she said, she loved doing daycare.
“It was a job, but I really loved it. I like kids and have a tendency to find kids.”
Still, when it was time to retire they had already made their plans as to what the next step would be.
Ruport said she had gone to Texas 40 years ago to visit her grandmother. Two years ago she visited an aunt in Mission and she and Keith have bought a mobile home in a 55-plus community. She also has five cousins there, she said.
While Ruport said she has been to their new home three times, twice in the winter, Keith has been to Texas only in the winter so he has never experienced the heat of a Texas summer.
While she is planning on returning to Texas after Christmas, her husband, she said, is making plans to stay in Minnesota in January so he can go ice fishing.
Still, she will not be leaving the daycare world completely behind.
Daughter Tara also works in daycare as an administrator at a daycare in the Twin Cities.
Ruport said she has already volunteered to help out at the daycare one day a week when they are in Minnesota.
“I’m hoping to be in the baby section,” she said. Primrose Daycare, she said, has children as young as six weeks so she anticipates she will find many babies to care for on her visits.
She also has one granddaughter and five grandsons so being around the younger generation will not be a problem, she said.
Son Travis and his wife, Kristi, live in the Twin Cities and have a daughter, Morgan, who is 17, and 7-year-old twins Cooper and Crosby. Tara and her husband, Trent Nelsen, have three boys, Ethan, 7, Reid, 5, and Colin, 2.