Joann Hensley

Joann Hensley has been a volunteer with the Historical Society for about 6 years. She loves history and was attracted to the one-room schoolhouse because it reminded her of her own school where she grew up. She enjoys doing school tours because it gives her the opportunity to show the young visitors all the “good times” that existed back then. She has vivid memories of Christmas pageants, shenanigans around the old furnace, and pie supper fund raisers.

Joann likes that we are promoting memories by teaching people about the past so that it doesn’t get lost. She hopes in the future we can get the support and the funding needed to take us where we want to be.

Joann started working in Hilliard as a teacher in 1964, then decided to move to Hilliard in 1988 because it reminded her so much of her southern Illinois hometown of Harrisburg. “So many people knew everybody” so it seemed like home, she said. There is some regret that the town has grown so much. She remembers when she moved here there was only Davidson High School, which had grades 10, 11 & 12 and only 800 students. When she retired in 2000, there were two high schools with a third in the works and each one had 2,500 students.

When asked what the historical society has meant most to her, she responded with the simple yet wise words “it gives me purpose in retirement.” We all need purpose in our lives.