Karen Brothers will tell you this from her desk at People's National Bank, unprompted, to anyone who asks. She means it the way you mean something you've said a thousand times and still believe completely.

She was raised in Centralia — but more specifically, she was raised in its school.

Her father, Larry James, taught biology at Centralia High School for 32 years. He coached. He eventually served on the school board. CHS was not just his workplace; it was the organizing fact of the family's life. And because of that, Karen grew up inside it.

On summer afternoons, she'd ride her bike up to the school and find her way to her father's lab — microscopes, dissection specimens, experiments in various states of completion. "It was so crazy cool," she'll tell you. She worked in the health office for Mrs. McMillan when she reached high school. On Sundays, the family shot baskets in the quiet of Trout Gymnasium, and she ran laps in the balcony — terrified of it, but doing it anyway.

When Karen was nine years old, her father had a heart attack. While he was hospitalized, her mother had to pass the kids around. Karen lived at teachers' and coaches' houses. The school community simply absorbed the family until it could stand on its own again.

"You talk about being raised by a village — I was," she says.

She graduated in 1988, played tennis at Kaskaskia College, earned her associate degree, and began working on a bachelor's in accounting through SIUE. Then came marriage, two boys, and the practical math of a young family. She put the degree on hold. Her husband's construction work took him away during the week, so she was working full-time with the boys at home — and eventually, taking night classes online. She finished her bachelor's in accounting from the University of Phoenix just before she turned 40.

She wanted her sons, Jake and Jared, to see it done. Something worth beginning is worth finishing. "There's time for all of it," she'll say. She says it often.

Her career has covered terrain most people never cross. Fifteen years in community banking. A graduate of the Midwest School for Community Bankers. Thirteen years managing operations for a family-owned oilfield services company in Centralia — cement casing, drilling fluids, a boss who believed in horizontal drilling before it was fashionable, and eventually hit big down in White County. She always knew she'd return to banking. In 2019, she joined People's National Bank, where she now works as a treasury management specialist — helping businesses, municipalities, and school districts manage cash flow, protect assets, and navigate financial systems that most people never have reason to think about.

It turns out a life spent in accounting, banking, and running a small business is exactly the preparation that the job requires.

Throughout it all, Karen kept showing up for Centralia. She served five years as treasurer for Mission Centralia, the local helping hand association. She was active in the CHS Booster Club from 2013 through 2024 — including several years as president — four years past her younger son Jared's graduation. "I bleed orphan red," she says. She still parks by the tennis courts when she goes to church in the old school building and walks through B Building just to walk those halls.

Her father was on the school board when Jake graduated in 2016. He handed Jake his diploma. Larry James passed away in January 2020 — months before Jared walked across that same stage. The circle was completed for one son and held open for the other.

That's Centralia, Karen will tell you. It's not a building or a program or a record. It's the people who showed up when her dad was in the hospital. The coaches who let a little girl run laps in a terrifying balcony. The teachers who handed her around when her family needed help.

"Get involved," she tells young people at the bank. "Find things that you enjoy. You'll find your people that way."

She found hers early. She never really left them.