For more than three decades, long before Food Service Director was part of her title and long before she stood in an office juggling ISBE requirements, commodities orders, and the labyrinth of state documentation,  Colleen Reams was simply someone who loved feeding people. Her story in Vandalia doesn't begin in a school kitchen at all—it begins in 1982 at Bonanza, where she worked alongside a few cooks who also happened to work for the district. They planted the seed almost casually: This is a great job if you've got kids. You ought to think about it.

She did think about it. In 1993, she followed that nudge into Vandalia Schools as a sub cook, walking into the high school kitchen for her first day. She floated from school to school before being hired full-time in 1996, later settling into the junior high and becoming head cook in 2002. And she stayed—through countless breakfasts and lunches, through changes in menus and regulations, through years of students whose faces she can still picture.

She stayed because the place felt right. She raised her own two children here. Now she sees her grandchildren in the same lunch lines—an experience that still catches her off guard in the best way. "I've served children," she says softly, "and now I'm serving their children."

That generational sweep is no small thing. It's the kind of quiet legacy that happens only in a district where people remain, where relationships endure, and where the work is about far more than food.

Colleen lights up when she talks about the kids. She loves slipping out from behind the line to sit with them and talk, even for a few minutes. She can tell immediately when a child is hungry—especially on Monday mornings, when meal counts jump because some students haven't had enough to eat over the weekend. "They learn better when they're fed," she says, and she means it as both an observation and a core belief.

This is where the programmatic strength of Vandalia shows through clearly. Colleen points to Nourishing Greatness, a district-driven initiative led by generous community members and supported by donations from local residents and businesses. The program currently provides bags of nonperishable food to roughly 100 students. In her eyes, it changes lives. "It's well needed," she says, and she emphasizes the dignity it provides. Feeding a child should never be a source of embarrassment or shame.

She knows this because she's seen the opposite. Years ago, in other districts and other eras, students who couldn't pay were handed peanut butter sandwiches—a practice she calls what it was: discrimination. When she became head cook, she made herself a promise. "I will never give a child a peanut butter sandwich." If a student ever needed a meal, she would give up her own lunch first. And she would. She still would.

Her compassion stretches even further, into the relationships formed shoulder-to-shoulder in the kitchen. The work is physical, and the space is tight; people share more than duties. They share hardships, heartbreaks, laughter, prayer, gossip, and every joy and sorrow that happens between the clang of trays and the steam of ovens. Some coworkers became lifelong friends. Some have passed. All are part of her story.

And though she didn't grow up in Vandalia—she came from Nokomis and stayed after meeting her husband—this place became her hometown, too. It's where her church family is, where her children grew up, where her grandchildren now run toward the lunch line with the kind of excitement only a school cafeteria can inspire.

After 30 years full-time, she is retiring at the end of this year. She'll be 62. And in a symmetry that feels almost poetic, she and Terry Sutherland—the longtime custodian who also graduated from Vandalia in the early 1980s—are retiring together. Two pillars of the district, walking out the door at the same time.

Like her predecessor, Janine Lotz, who "left big shoes to fill" and came back to coach her through the complexities of the director role, Colleen plans to return and help the next person. She wants to leave things better than she found them. She wants the transition to be gentle. And when she's not helping at school, she'll be volunteering more at her church, spending time with her grandchildren, and enjoying the life she's earned.

What will she miss? She smiles—a small, knowing smile that tells the whole truth without needing many words. "The people," she says. "The kids."

In Vandalia, that has always been the heart of the work.