“You’re just going to have to do it. It has to be you.”
Anyone who has heard the story of how Sheryl Poole and Marcia Mitchell founded Little Light House might find this quote familiar. In 1972 when Poole and Mitchell, mothers of children with visual impairments, could not find a program for their daughters in Tulsa, a doctor told them, “Ladies, if you want this school, you’ll just have to start it yourselves.”
However, these are not the same words shared at the beginning of the article. Those come from just two years ago, when Gio Green heard them from her husband, Carter.
Gio, mother of a child with Down syndrome, was commuting from Oklahoma City to Tulsa once a week to bring her son Jack to the Little Light House Family Learning Center. She knew this weekly trek was not sustainable long term, and as she “waited for the bubble to burst,” she grew increasingly concerned about the lack of options in OKC that met her standards. As Gio became desperate to find a local program comparable to Little Light House, her husband echoed the sentiment that sparked mothers in her situation over fifty years ago: “You’re just going to have to do it.”
Remembering the moment Carter placed the responsibility in her hands, Gio said, “I don’t think he understood what those words meant at the time, but to me that was the moment the lightbulb turned on.”
Gio and Carter Green weren’t the only parents in their situation. While attending the FLC, Gio met another mother who commuted from OKC to bring her daughter to class. But sadly, more often than meeting fellow LLH families from her area, Gio met OKC parents who did not have the means to come to Tulsa once a week during the workday. She knew how lucky she was to have a flexible job that allowed her to make the weekly trip.
Gio and Jack began attending the LLH Family Learning Center in 2022 when Jack was three months old. The great gift of the FLC, according to Gio, was the ability to see how teachers communicated with him, learn techniques from therapists, form community with other parents, and best of all, spend quality time with her son.
All of this is unique to Little Light House, and while it made the decision to travel for the services “a no-brainer,” Gio knew she wanted to bring LLH closer to home. She decided to approach LLH Tulsa about opening an affiliate in Oklahoma City.
Meanwhile, Little Light House executive director Molly Smith had a problem she was also desperate to solve.
“I’ve been here twenty years, and our waitlist has always been a problem, but in the past three years especially, it’s gone up more than we ever thought it would,” Smith said.
Smith watched as the waitlist grew at a rate that meant just a fraction of children waiting would get to be a student here. At the time Gio and Jack attended LLH in 2022, the waitlist was around 200 students, and as of writing in early 2025, the waitlist is over 500.
Smith, along with other LLH staff and the Board of Directors, considered many options for how to address the waitlist, whether that be a new out-of-state affiliate or a Tulsa expansion, which are both still long-term goals. Ultimately, they kept asking the question “What does God want us to do?”
All the while, God was at work. Unaware of the journey the others were on, Molly, Little Light House, and the Green family were all heading toward the same destination: Oklahoma City.
“Our desire to serve more kids on the waiting list went up and up and up to where when Gio came to us and said she wanted to do this together, it was so easy for us to say Oklahoma City is the place we should start,” Smith recalled.
As plans for an OKC affiliate began to form, it became clear that an LLH location in OKC should be more connected to LLH Tulsa than its other affiliates. Of the 520 children on the Little Light House waitlist, 511 of them live in Oklahoma. Currently, LLH Tulsa’s developmental center serves 96 students, and the Family Learning Center can serve up to 126 students. This means the number of children on the waitlist in Oklahoma is over double the amount LLH Tulsa has the capacity to serve per year, and Smith believes an expansion to OKC is the first step in addressing that problem.
The OKC location will be a branch of the existing LLH in Tulsa, not only sharing a waitlist, but also a board of directors and leadership team. This means both Tulsa and OKC locations will be operationally and financially supported as one nonprofit organization. It also means the overarching Little Light House budget will grow to support both locations.
Little Light House OKC aims to open in March 2026, starting with one classroom and later serving four classrooms of six children each. To make this happen, LLH Tulsa staff are hard at work taking on new responsibilities, hiring new positions for both locations, and expanding fundraising efforts. Everyone involved is committed to opening Little Light House OKC in Jack’s memory.
“I have not encountered one person who is not excited,” Smith said. “We want to serve more families, so what could be better than that? We’re thrilled.”
This change may seem big, and it may seem sudden, but the reality is God has been planning this next step before Molly and Gio ever met. And one thing is certain: Little Light House OKC would not exist without Jack Green.
“I would have never even learned about Little Light House without my son,” Gio explained.
What began as fear and unanswered questions surrounding having a son with a disability grew into a beautiful desire to do whatever it takes. That desire brought Jack and Gio to Little Light House, and in turn will bring Little Light House to Oklahoma City, helping countless children across the state for generations to come.
When Jack passed away in April 2024, Gio fully devoted herself to Little Light House in honor of her son, leaving behind what she always believed would be a lifetime career in consulting to spearhead the launch of LLH Oklahoma City.
“This is where I’m meant to be,” Gio said. “This is what I love, and this right here, right now is what will make a lasting impact.”
Students and families of Little Light House Oklahoma City cut the ribbon to celebrate the opening of the new LLH OKC building on February 23, 2026.
Fifty-three years ago, in a world that said their children didn’t fit, Marcia Mitchell and Sheryl Poole made room. Their legacy has since served hundreds of children and families in Tulsa, changing Tulsa for the better, forever. While they must have hoped they could help others in their situation, their driving force was their love for their daughters.
Now, that legacy continues, once again spurred on by that unstoppable force: a mother’s love for her child. When children with disabilities in Oklahoma City receive the education, therapy, community, and love that Little Light House gives, they will always be able to remember one child just like them, whose mother stopped at nothing to give her son the very best.
