Patricia Root Wheeler '50 wears Levi's 505 straight-leg jeans, men's sizes, because the knees hold up best.

At 73, Wheeler spends most of her days on the floor, and eventually the jeans wear out and she gives them to her son who's a plumber--a profession that isn't as physically demanding as teaching pre-school.

Wheeler eats macaroni and cheese for breakfast and watches Sesame Street so she isn't out of touch in her social circles. She knows there are dinosaurs in the backyard, that peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth, that nap time is necessary.

For 37 years, she has run Sand Box Nursery School, a small private pre-school in a church basement in downtown Jaffrey, N.H. Jaffrey, just north of the Massachusetts border at the foot of Mt. Monadnock, is a working-class town built on New England saw and textile mills. Everyone who can work, does. Few families can afford a stay-at-home parent or a full-time babysitter.

That's been true for decades and it's a big reason why Wheeler opened the Sand Box. It was the 1960s, and though Lyndon B. Johnson's Project Head Start was just getting off the ground, a government program in Jaffrey was still decades away.

The Sand Box was to be an affordable half-day preschool, and Wheeler began it on a shoestring budget. Little has changed. She's still in the same basement room, and the decorations and photographs that adorn the walls are patchwork from decades past. The school copy of The Little Engine That Could was purchased new, for 39 cents.

"The boy on the floor there, in the black shirt, I had his mother," Wheeler said. "I had Nathan's dad. The little one coloring right there, I had his aunt."

For years parents paid just dollars a day. The Sand Box abhors a fee increase and today they pay $10 a day.

"She's served the town well over the years," said Cyndy Burgess of the Jaffrey Chamber of Commerce. "She's very motherly, and she's just done wonderful work for the children of this town."

In September, Burgess and the Chamber named Wheeler their Citizen of the Year, an honor they managed to keep secret until the night of the banquet--no small feat in Jaffrey. She was shocked to find out the whole night was about her. "She's always thinking of herself last," Burgess said.

Wheeler's husband, Alan, died in a plane crash in 1972, and she raised their six children. Along the way she served three terms on the Jaffrey School Board and sat on the Recreation Committee. She's been a Girl Scout leader, a deacon and a church trustee.

She taught Sunday school, and it looks like she will again, as church officials have said they will end the program if they cannot find a teacher. For years, when only Boston hospitals had the technology to accept platelet donations, she would drive nearly two hours each way each month to give blood. She's type O negative, the universal donor--and that's a phrase that doesn't just apply to her blood.

For the past 18 years, she's served as a court liaison for an early youth intervention program. Jaffrey pre-teens charged with minor crimes are sent to her. She sets up community service, makes sure they follow through and files the paperwork with the court.

Originally Wheeler wanted to go into social work, and she got her Colby degree in psychology and sociology. Now she says she can spot in pre-school the children she'll likely be working with six years down the road--the ones whose parents don't or can't read to them, who don't get a fast start off the blocks in the race of life. "That's the toughest part," she said. "When you get assigned by the court to work with a kid you remember."

There are lessons to be learned in life, and Wheeler begins teaching them early. It's not just about the ABCs, though all Sand Box alumni enter kindergarten knowing how to write their names. There are other things to be learned, and one of them gets reinforced every day before snack. "Please and thank you helps to make the world a happier place to be," the children say in unison.

After snack time is nap time, accompanied by soft children's music from the record player. Just recently, the school's original record player checked out after three decades on the job, leaving Wheeler scrambling for a replacement. She plastered the town with fliers seeking a used record player. In the end, she shelled out $134 for a new one.

Her retired friends, who are more inclined to act their age, don't quite understand such passion.

But Wheeler, who now has 27 grandchildren, says she will continue spending her days on the floor, wearing out the knees in her jeans, at least until her knees wear out.

--Matt Apuzzo '00