Maria Reed Montessori Pre-school was the inspiration of Maria Eva Reed. Maria was born in Duesseldorf, Germany, in 1915. Her experiences in the United States started in 1935 when she was an exchange student at the university of Vermont in Burlington. It was there she met an American student, Wallace A. Reed. She married Wallace in 1938 in Dusseldorf. They moved to California in February of 1940 . Their first child was born in September of that year, and five more children followed during the next seventeen years. In 1961, Maria became excited about a program she heard on the television program, "60 minutes", describing the wonderful features of method of early learning designed by Maria Montessori for pre-school children. The presentation featured Nancy Rambusch who was spearheading a reintroduction of Montessori principles in the United States. In 1962, encouraged by her husband, Wally (at the time he was a practicing anestheologist in Phoenix) Maria took their three youngest children to Greenwich, Connecticut, to attend a nine-month training course. In June of 1963, she completed the course with "Distinction". Coincidentally, in January of the same year, Maria and Wally celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in New York. Upon returning to Phoenix, she helped in the formation of the Villa Montessori and the South Phoenix Montessori school. She taught at both schools and was director of the South Phoenix school for a short period. This is the school that was later renamed in Maria's honor. She soon became convinced that the way to produce a better future for children from financially disadvantaged families would be to make a pre-school Montessori program available to them.. It was then that she conceived the idea of forming a foundation to provide the necessary help.