An Ode to Bette

To be honest, I’ve spent much of my life stumbling forward with no real vision—just a whole lot of passion. When I first moved to Pennsylvania, someone asked me (in what has since become a legendary family inside joke), “So Jenn… what’s your plan?”

A plan? At that point in my life, I was just trying to survive. I could barely even say the word plan.

Over the years—after many unplanned twists and turns—I eventually learned to plan. Quietly. Constantly. A never-ending waterfall of risk analysis, what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios running laps in my mind every single day. No one saw the hours, days, months, or years of thinking I did before I finally jumped into something with both feet… usually followed by, “You’re crazy,” from everyone around me.

I’ve always been a dreamer, but I learned to dream bigger. To push past the limitations I didn’t even realize I had set for myself. I even wrote Dream Bigger on the huge chalkboard facing my front door so it’s the first thing I see when I walk in. A reminder: there is more to do—bigger dreams to dream.

Everything changed when I finally stepped out of corporate America. I didn’t know what I wanted next, but I knew it needed to be radically different while still letting me use the skills I spent 20 years building in operations management.

I had no idea that a short drawing class my son took at Edgewood Elementary would change my life.

In October 2022, I got an email from the owner of Young Rembrandts Southeastern PA announcing she was selling her territory after running it for over 15 years. I read it, shrugged, and moved on. Then the email came again in January. Interesting, I thought—but me? Running a children’s art program? I had spent the last five years running myself ragged in commercial real estate, managing seven offices, massive corporate moves, a finance role that wasn’t the right fit, and then an executive assistant job I only took as a last attempt to stay with a great company.

Still… something about Young Rembrandts stuck in my mind.

I talked to my family. They said, “Go for it.”And I did—fast.

Suddenly, everything had to change, right away. I had just bought my dream home in my dream neighborhood, but I knew I needed to be closer to my son’s school. With no long commute anymore, moving became possible.

So, in 60 days I needed to:

• Buy a business

• Train to run the business

• Train my replacement at my current job

• Find a new house

• Rent out my existing house

• Move

• And do it all before I quit

It was chaos. (Only one ER trip from what turned out to be a very dramatic anxiety attack.)

In the midst of that whirlwind, I drove to Elgin, Illinois to meet Bette Fetter, founder and creative force behind Young Rembrandts, to see if my sister and I would be a good fit as franchisees.

Bette was extraordinary. She built an incredible legacy that has impacted thousands of children worldwide—starting from her own kitchen table with neighborhood kids learning to draw. Young Rembrandts has never been “just” an after-school program. Bette understood that teaching children how to draw changes the trajectory of their confidence, creativity, and sense of self. Since 1988, her curriculum has touched hundreds of thousands of young artists. Every time we see a child discover something new about what they’re capable of—that’s Bette.

She passed away last weekend. And while I felt the sadness, one overwhelming thought rose above everything else:

Damn… what a legacy.

Her vision and passion changed me. Buying Young Rembrandts, learning to run my own franchise, and watching kids make creative connections through art gave me the confidence to open Blank Space Community Center—to build something meaningful, local, and lasting in my own community. I hope I am honoring her memory in a way that would make her proud.

If Blank Space has made an impact on you or your family—even in our short time—we would truly love to hear from you.

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