Although she leads a class of third graders every day, Christine Johnson wasn’t fully aware of her leadership potential until it was put to the test.

In the days following the March 10 tornado in Kankakee County, the Grace Christian Academy teacher discovered she was capable of more than she knew.

“It was an experience that I never knew that I would get to go through, but at the end of it, it was such a learning experience,” reflected Johnson, who coordinated the school’s post-tornado donation center.

An EF-3 intensity tornado and severe storms ripped through Kankakee and Aroma Township on a Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning, Johnson got a call from her principal, Aaron Most.

“He said, ‘Courtney, I just talked to the mayor. He asked us to open a donation center at our school. Can you be the head of this?’”

Not knowing what else she could say, Johnson agreed.

Some of the worst destruction of homes occurred less than a mile down the road from Grace, but the K-12 school was largely unscathed.

All hands on deck

The donation center started with four tables set up in the school gymnasium.

Johnson thought that perhaps a few families would come in needing items.

But the visitors and their needs quickly multiplied.

Soon, many more tables were needed.

Donations of food, water, clothing, toiletries, tarps and other storm survival supplies coming in left and right.

“Within 24 hours, we were a full-blown donation drop zone,” Johnson said.

Johnson coordinated with charitable groups as well as companies like Aqua, Target and Walmart to schedule donation drop offs.

Semi-trucks full of water and essentials kept arriving and needing to be unloaded and sorted.

“Any resource that you felt like you were lacking, it would show up within the next couple minutes,” she said.

It was an all-hands-on-deck situation.

Johnson can’t recall a time when her phone rang so frequently.

“Walmart called me, and I was like, ‘I didn’t even know I could talk to Walmart on the phone,’” she said.

Help arrives

A crew of volunteers kept things running smoothly, from Grace staff and students to community members.

Mercy Chefs, a non-profit disaster relief organization, set up an operation at Grace to cook and serve hot meals to first responders, volunteers and residents.

At one point, Johnson was radioed that eight volunteers were needed to assist Mercy Chefs in the cafeteria.

She didn’t know where she would pull eight volunteers from, as everyone already had their hands full.

Then, just as they were needed, exactly eight student volunteers from Kankakee Trinity Academy walked through Grace’s doors looking to pitch in wherever they could.

Johnson gets goosebumps thinking about moments like that when things seemed to work out perfectly.

“Stories like that just kept happening over and over,” she said.

Showing up

A 2016 graduate of Grace Christian Academy, Johnson began her teaching career there in 2020.

As a young teacher, she wasn’t sure if she was the best person to be taking charge of the donation center or assigning tasks to her colleagues.

However, she knew she needed to “just show up.”

“I think we just need to show up tomorrow,” she told her mother the night of the storms, though she had no idea what that would look like.

And show up, she did.

Before long, she could feel herself building confidence, as coworkers were coming to her looking for jobs to do.

One of her biggest takeaways has been to not question herself or her abilities so much.

She can’t help but laugh remembering how anxious she had been to call her insurance company the week of the tornado.

After sorting out logistics for the donation center all week, one phone call doesn’t seem so daunting anymore.

She also learned how important it is to “just say yes” when called to help others.

“If you’re called to be somewhere, then fully be there in whatever capacity it looks like,” she said. “If you’re called to be a teacher, be a teacher. If you’re called to be a good neighbor, be a good neighbor. If you’re called to volunteer, volunteer somewhere.

“It’s just a matter of not being scared to say yes; just show up as you are, and God works out the rest of the details.”

Right place

While Johnson might have had some doubts about her abilities, it was not a concerned shared by Principal Aaron Most.

In some ways, the coordinating role just fell into place for Johnson.

After the tornado, Most went out with a chainsaw to help residents navigate the debris around their homes.

Meanwhile, people were wanting to drop off donations at the school, which was becoming a center for emergency operations.

Most needed someone to be the point of contact. He knew Johnson would be in the building and could be relied upon.

But the decision was more than just who was in the right place at the right time.

“Courtney was born for that moment,” Most said.

He noted that Johnson’s late father was in law enforcement.

“That’s the way that Courtney thinks, is logistics and organizing people,” Most said. “So she just happened to be the perfect person for it.”

As weird as it feels to say — because he’d obviously never wish disaster upon any community — Most is grateful that like Johnson, Grace Christian Academy was able to be the right place at the right time.

The school was the closest location to the devastation that had been untouched by the storm.

“We just happened to be in the right location, and we were very, very glad to be able to open our doors,” Most said. “We would not have wanted to be anywhere else.”