After 55 years in public education, Selena Johnson had hoped to slip into retirement today without a lot of hoopla.

No such luck. The teachers and staff at Villa Heights Academic Center weren’t about to let that happen.

All morning Thursday, students and teachers streamed into the school's library to say goodbye to an educator who began her career a full decade before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. Some brought flowers; others carried cards or small gifts.

In one corner of the library, staff had set up a small breakfast celebration, which the guest of honor proceeded to ignore.

Johnson, a 75-year-old media specialist at Villa Heights, preferred to take it all in stride.

“It’s a big day for me because it’s another milestone in my life,” she told Qcitymetro.com. “I’m just glad to be 75 years old and worked 55 years and be able to move around and come to work every day in the week, every day in the month, every day in the year. No aches, no pains.”

Indeed, Principal David Legrand said Johnson has not missed a day this school year.

“Ms. Johnson will definitely not go unmissed,” he said. “She has been committed to the students and staff here at Villa Heights, and not only to Villa Heights but to education as a whole.”

When Johnson first became a librarian in Charlotte public schools, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, and what is now CMS was still divided into Charlotte City and Mecklenburg County schools.

Johnson worked at Billingsville Elementary and Tryon Hills Pre-Kindergarten Center before moving to Villa Heights in 1995.

She said she graduated from West Charlotte High School back when it was housed in the building that’s now Northwest School of the Arts. She earned degrees in secretarial science and library science from Bennett College in Greensboro.

Johnson said she has no regrets about her career choice. She said being around young students has been an education for her, as well.

“If I had to live my life over,” she said, “ it would be the same way.”

Johnson said the next phase of her life will involve doing volunteer work, especially at Loaves and Fishes. She also wants to be a regular at Monday night Bible study at Memorial Presbyterian Church on Beatties Ford Road. She typically couldn’t go while working, she said, because her job required her to be at school by 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

As for the district’s current budget woes and the proposal to lay off hundreds of CMS teachers, Johnson said she has no criticism: “Sometimes you have to make cuts in your budget,” she said. “We’re into a situation now and we don’t know when we’re coming out of it. They have to do what they have to do.”

And her advice to teachers just starting out: “Like what you’re doing and put your best into it.”

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