When Donna Johnson graduated from Vandalia Community High School in 1966, the world was spinning with change. The Summer of Love was just around the corner, Vietnam was raging, and young people everywhere were questioning everything. But while some of her generation headed to Woodstock or chased dreams in distant cities, Donna found her calling closer to home—in the simple, profound work of helping people feel beautiful and find their place in the world.

"Oh golly, it was like a whirlwind, really," Donna reflects on those tumultuous years. The biggest thing weighing on her mind wasn't the cultural revolution, but watching her classmates ship off to Vietnam. "A lot of my classmates went to Vietnam and was in the service," she remembers. "It was kind of a sad time too, because they're going across the sea to fight to keep us free, and here we are living it up and they're over there fighting for their lives."

That awareness of others' sacrifices and her own good fortune seems to have shaped everything that followed. While still in high school, Donna began studying cosmetology, squeezing classes in during summer breaks and school holidays. Back then, you only needed a thousand hours to become licensed, though the requirements expanded to 1500 just as she was finishing. She graduated from cosmetology school in January 1967 and began what would become a remarkable 52-year career making people feel their best.

"I felt like sometimes I was a psychiatrist and a counselor, a marriage counselor," Donna laughs, describing her years behind the salon chair. "People was telling you their troubles." It's the kind of work that requires genuine care for others—listening to heartaches, celebrating joys, and helping people navigate life's ups and downs, one appointment at a time.

But Donna's gift for connecting with people didn't stop there. In 1986, encouraged by a local realtor who recognized her natural ability to talk with people and make them comfortable, she added real estate to her repertoire. For 39 years now, she's been helping families find homes, specializing in first-time buyers who need someone to guide them through what can be an overwhelming process.

"I love the fact that I can work with these people, especially first-time home buyers that's never bought a home," she explains. "You just want to make everything right for them, that everything goes smooth and that they have a good experience with it." Many of her clients are young people she's watched grow up—friends of her children who spent countless hours at the Johnson house during their school years.

"When my kids were growing up, my house was the house everybody showed up at," Donna recalls with obvious pride. "I would have 20, 30 kids in my house at a weekend at a time. Was nothing unusual." That open-door policy created lasting bonds that continue to this day, as those same kids, now adults, turn to Donna when they're ready to buy their first homes.

Her own family story includes four children—two daughters and two stepchildren—all Vandalia graduates. Her daughter Michelle teaches in Oklahoma, while Carrie works as a guidance counselor at the junior high right there in Vandalia. "I treat them as my own," she says of her stepchildren, embodying the inclusive spirit that has defined her approach to life.

Donna's journey has taken her away from Vandalia at times. Her husband's career with the Illinois State Police moved them to the Chicago area for a while, where they lived in Oswego near Joliet. But when the opportunity came for a transfer back to Vandalia, they jumped at it. "We've been here almost 50 years," she says, having returned to the place that shaped her.

When asked to describe Vandalia to strangers she meets—say, on a beach in Jamaica during a recent vacation—Donna's explanation is both practical and heartwarming: "Vandalia is very, I think, a very friendly little town. When I sell houses to people and they're new to the area, I say, believe me, you won't know anybody, but everybody will know who you are. They'll be waving at you, and you'll think, oh, well, who is that? But they know who you are."

That sense of being known, of belonging to something larger than yourself, threads through everything Donna values about small-town life. She's watched Vandalia Schools serve not just her own children but countless others, appreciating how "the teachers and the facility and the principal, the superintendent—I think they care about the kids, and I think they try to help them."

If Donna were to speak to today's graduates, her advice would be rooted in hard-won wisdom: "Don't forget your hometown. You want to get away from it, I know you do, but that's what made you who you are today. These people help mold your life." Her own daughters, she notes with amusement, couldn't wait to leave—"as soon as I can get out of here, I'm getting out of this town. And guess what? They're both back home."

Perhaps most importantly, Donna would tell young people to "be kind to all your schoolmates, no matter who they are." Time has taught her that "your enemy in school may become your best friend as you become adults. You got to be kind to everybody no matter what."

Through five decades of cutting hair and selling houses, Donna Johnson has built a life of quiet service, proving that you don't have to leave home to make a difference. Sometimes the most meaningful work happens in the chair where someone trusts you with their appearance and their troubles, or around the kitchen table where you help a young family take their next big step. It's a Vandalia story through and through—one of staying connected, lifting others up, and understanding that home isn't just where you're from, but where you choose to keep building community, one person at a time.