Every lunch period, five days a week, students crowd the cookie corner in search of a sweet treat. Behind the counter, Mrs. Donna Smith has become a familiar face to generations of North Penn students, even if many never knew her name. While many recognize her face, few know the woman who wakes up at 4 a.m. to help keep the cafeteria running.

This June, following 35 years in the North Penn school district, Smith will serve her last cookie and say her last goodbye to the cafeteria.

The 1971 Souderton High School graduate spent her first five years out of high school doing data processing for American Olean Tile close to home in Lansdale, before she transitioned from that role to a stay at home mom doing the work of raising her first of four children. She would continue in that role until her youngest started first grade.

“When my youngest started first grade, I thought ‘I need to do something,’ so I volunteered in the library at Oak Park, and then I thought, ‘gosh, I should be doing something I get paid for,” Smith shared with a laugh. “Over the summer, I applied with food service, and I got a phone call right away. They said, ‘do you want to go to the high school?’ I said, ‘Oh, I think that’s the place I didn’t wanna go.’ They said, ‘well, why don’t you just try it? If you don’t like it, we’ll switch you.’ Well, I liked it.”

Smith started that year, in September of 1991 as a cafeteria sub of sorts, working at schools across the district when she was needed. Following that year, she became a permanent fixture of first floor B-Pod.

“I have done every job in the kitchen except a cook and a boss. I’ve been in the dish room, I’ve been in the pots and pans sink, I served, I sliced. Everything,” Smith said. “In the last couple years, I’ve cashiered at the cookie corner, and I love it in there because the kids are all hungry, so they’re nice to you because you’re giving them the food.”

Her morning begins much before any of her customers though, waking at 4 and coming in at 6 in order to get the cafeteria ready for the bustle of everyday.

“I come in and I set up the lines for breakfast and then I’m just out there to refill and keep watch, then I restock for the next morning,” Smith said. “After that I come back to the cookie corner, and I start bagging up the cookies, which sometimes is about 600 of them and just get the cookie corner ready.”

Leaving any job is hard, but for Smith, the people are what is going to sting the most.

“I just enjoy the kids, most of them are really nice and polite. [Going to miss] the kids and some coworkers too. I won’t miss getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning,” Smith laughed.

No more early morning wake up call isn’t the only thing calling Smith’s name, as she looks forward to having the time to herself. This Memorial Day weekend, her family is going to a campground near Knoebels that has been a yearly trip for them for almost 50 years.

“I enjoy being outside, gardening, camping. Flower beds, I love flowers. I could never get enough flowers. Don’t let me in a greenhouse,” Smith chuckled. “I love carnations, but to plant, begonias, impatiens, vincas, any annuals. I just like something that flowers all summer long.”
“I like sewing. I’m trying to learn quilting. My mother was a big quilter, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to learn while she was still alive.”

While she only gets a few seconds with each kid, she tries to make each one a positive experience.

I don’t get a whole lot of time with each kid so I try to just say a little something to them, just like ‘how’s your day going?’ I like to treat people the way I want to be treated. Don’t treat people rude if that’s not the way you want to be treated,” Smith shared.

Surrounded by cookies all day, anyone would become quite the connoisseur.

“We used to have oatmeal raisin cookies, which we don’t have anymore, and that was my favorite, and we used to have what they called a whoopee cookie. It was two cookies with cream in the middle. That, with two oatmeal raisin cookies, was, like, I could’ve ate a whole bunch of them,” Smith said.

For 35 years, Mrs. Donna Smith proved that a job in the cafeteria is as much about connection as it is about serving food. To the thousands of hungry students who passed through her line, she was the positive experience we all need in the middle of a school day.

In June, the early alarms will finally stop, the cookie corner will change hands, and Mrs. Smith will get her well-deserved summer that lasts all year long. North Penn might not serve her favorite oatmeal raisin or whoopee cookies anymore, but for over three decades, Mrs. Donna Smith served up something much better: A daily reminder to treat people exactly how you want to be treated.