The Vocational Education of Melissa Saye

The Northeast Louisiana Children’s Museum Founder is December’s Bayou Icon

article by Michael DeVault | photography by Brad Arender

When Melissa Saye first developed the notion that she wanted to open the museum, she never expected it would one day be a place where kids who grew up there would bring their children. But two decades on, that’s exactly what’s starting to happen at the Northeast Louisiana Children’s Museum, the educational entertainment complex Melissa founded with her best friend, Martha Ryan.

Since opening its doors in 1998, the Children’s Museum has become something of a fixture in the lives of families across the region. BayouLife caught up with Melissa while she was preparing the 10th Annual Santa’s Christmas Village, one of the centerpieces of the region’s holiday activities. It’s one of the museum’s most popular annual attractions, and this year Melissa expects it’ll draw a record crowd. “We had maybe 4,000 people our first year,” Melissa recalls. “We were close to 13,000 last year–just in the month of December. Each year, it grows and grows.”

The Christmas Village is just one of the hundreds of ways the Northeast Louisiana Children’s Museum has entwined itself into the community. Each year, thousands of kids come on school busses or piled in the back of parents’ SUVs for educational programming that brings kids face-to-face with hands-on learning.

For Melissa, working in an educational, enriching environment is a continuation of the career she went to college to pursue. It’s been a long, winding road for this educator, after all.
Melissa was born in Chicago, but she’s quick to note she spent very little of her life there. At just six months old, her family relocated south to pursue career opportunities for her father. “He was a graphic designer and ad man for a catalog company, the artistic director,” she says. They settled in Mississippi for a time, but his work soon took them on the road again. By the time she was eight, she’d lived in Illinois, Louisiana and Florida.

Shortly before the fourth grade, one final relocation brought the family to Baton Rouge. There the family settled in for the long haul, and Melissa completed school, graduating from the all-girls St. Joseph’s Academy in 1983 and LSU in 1986.

Majoring in elementary education, Melissa expected to spend her career in the classroom. She loved children, and was, after all, from a “very large” family. There are 50 first cousins on her father’s side. But as she was finishing up her degree, she took a job at Fairchild’s, a popular French restaurant in Baton Rouge. The restaurant would have a profound impact on her life, she would soon see, with the arrival of a relative of the owners.

John Saye’s sister and brother-in-law owned the restaurant, and on summers and during the holidays, John would pick up shifts to earn money. Melissa remembers meeting him and getting to know him at Fairchild’s. “I asked him out,” she says with a laugh. “He was a bit on the shy side.”

John soon graduated Millsaps and entered law school at LSU. They continued to date, and during his second year at LSU, they married. When he graduated, John wanted to get some experience in the courts system. He accepted an offer to clerk for the judges of the 4th Judicial District Court and the young Saye family temporarily relocated to Monroe. John’s temporary post quickly turned into a permanent settlement. “We thought we were only going to be here for a year, but we truly fell in love with the community,” Melissa says.
With roots firmly planted in northeastern Louisiana soil, the Saye family settled in for the long-haul. While John clerked, Melissa took a job at Grace Episcopal School. Children followed and, over the next 14 years, the Saye family would expand by four. John’s career would also take a slightly different direction when he was offered a permanent position at the law firm of Hayes Harkey.

One day, while teaching at Grace, Melissa met Martha, and the trajectory of her life shifted. Almost immediately, they became the best of friends. “Together, we were one person,” Melissa says of Martha. “She truly was my best friend in the whole world. If you got one, you got the other, as they used to say on Fraiser.”

Able to finish one another’s sentences before words were even thought, Martha and Melissa were on the same page. From having lunch to getting their families together for playdates, they were nearly in perfect synch, and Martha was always the encourager. “That’s just the way she was,” Melissa says. “I’d throw out a ‘Hey, let’s do this.’ And she would say, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!’”
That’s how the idea for the museum became a reality. One day, Melissa expressed an interest and, before she knew it, Martha was on board with an infectious enthusiasm that propelled the project forward. Together, they laid out a plan.

They needed community support. They also knew they’d need money. Luckily, the late-1990s were a heyday for nonprofits in the Monroe-West Monroe area. First things first, they put a survey out in the community. “We sent out surveys to educators, local philanthropists and companies to see if we would be filling a need,” Melissa says. One by one, they started receiving hand-written responses. Each person who answered expressed resounding support. “We knew if we had community support, then it would be something that would do so well here.”

Overwhelmingly, the community was on board. Up next, they enlisted the help of a diverse board from all corners of the community to start planning and raising funds. Finally, Melissa and Martha knew they’d need space–and lots of it. Not just any old building would do.

The building they wanted had to check off all the boxes on their list. It needed to be large enough to house the museum. Also, they wanted to locate the museum centrally, so that it was truly a community-wide destination. The Children’s Museum they were building didn’t need to belong to any “one” community. Most importantly, it needed to be affordable to operate.
As word spread of the project, they learned of the Walnut Building, a sprawling old industrial facility in the heart of Monroe’s warehouse district. Originally the site of a produce company, the building was constructed in the 1920s as a stop along train tracks where much of the region’s fresh vegetables would be offloaded for distribution to stores throughout the area.

Just roughly half-way between Louisville Avenue and DeSiard, the building they found was close to both the north and south ends of Monroe, and the stretch of Walnut Street, upon which it sat, was bookended by the Lea Joyner and Endom Bridges. The building was within a ten-minute drive of more than a dozen elementary schools and, more importantly, right in the middle of all of the many neighborhoods they needed to serve.

By the end of 1996, a board in place and their eye on the prize of opening a children’s museum on Walnut Street in Monroe, Melissa and Martha moved onto the next stage of evolution of their endeavor: they started raising money. Melissa recalls the creation of the museum as a family endeavor. “Our families were definitely on board,” Melissa says. “They were all in.”
The Saye and Ryan families were all-in in more ways than one. Whenever there was work to be done, the kids pitched in. At pitch meetings for funding or community support, the Saye-Ryan clan was in toe. “They were there, playing with their Hotwheels under the table,” Melissa says.”

Taking the kids to the meetings helped illustrate the target demographic. In dozens of meetings, the two best friends pitched their dream of a museum and, quickly, the dream went viral. Soon, they were moving forward with renovations of half the Walnut building. The Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana took the other half.
“We were founded at the same time, actually,” Melissa says.

Remember, the late 1990s and early 2000s were a period of tremendous community building and non-profits in the region. In addition to the Children’s Museum and Food Bank, other organizations founded or expanded during the time spanned the full spectrum, from homeless shelters to the Family Justice Center, which opened in 2005. Melissa believes the community was in a phase, where it was seeking to answer needs as they arose—including the Children’s Museum. “It worked, because the community wanted it,” Melissa says. “And it was something that, being in this town, where the focus is on family, it seemed like it was the right thing to do.”

The Northeast Louisiana Children’s Museum opened its doors in 1998, with Melissa and Martha sharing management duties. Melissa reflects on those early days with joy and excitement. “It’s always been a job that one person could have done, to lead it,” Melissa says. “But it was just so much more fun with the two of us.”

Melissa is quick to credit her best friend with bringing excitement, joy and a positive, can-do attitude to the Children’s Museum. And, it’s clear, Melissa still feels her best friend’s loss today. Martha passed away in 2014, and since then, Melissa has shepherded the museum on her own.

That’s not to say Martha still isn’t around.

“We knew each other so well that I know, when I think through things, this is how she would think about it,” Melissa says. “I have her perspective without her physically being here.”
She’s also had a lot of help, too. Her kids are still involved—whenever they’re in town and free from this practice or that study group. With ages ranging from 28 down to 14, their schedules are full, and they’re not always available. Martha’s children, too, are involved.

“It’s definitely been a family business, of sorts,” Melissa says.

Melissa also notes that the museum manager, Sarah Sehon, “has a bit of Martha in her.” Sarah joined the staff a couple of years before Martha’s passing, and since that time, Melissa says Sarah has filled part of the void Martha left behind. “There’s this great balance and this great connection to Martha,” Melissa says. “Sarah’s amazing, and I’m thankful to have her.”
These days, Melissa is getting ready for Santa’s Christmas Village and the holidays. She’ll have all her kids together for Thanksgiving and Christmas—Martha’s kids, too, she notes. (“Every time there’s an opportunity for family and celebration, we’re together,” she says.) But she’s also keeping a constant, enthusiastic eye on the future.

The Children’s Museum is currently working to add activities for the “middle” ages—kids over the age of seven but younger than teens—so that they, too, can have the enthusiastic fun the younger children enjoy when they visit the museum. In addition, they’re adding more permanent exhibits every year, continuing to grow, and continuing to inspire a new generation of children and parents to devote time to learning.

It’s a far cry from where Melissa thought she would be at this point in her life.

“I just thought I would be teaching,” Melissa says. “And the thing about the museum is that I get an opportunity to have my hands in that.”