Where Are They Now?

Lesa Durham Pearson has worked as a waitress at Highway 6 Cafe in DeLeon for 21 years. She loves meeting people in the community through her work, and is a steadfast fixture in the lives of the Cafe’s early morning coffee drinkers.

“Those people mean the world to me,” she said. “They’ve taught me things, shown me things, I have plants all over my place that they have given me. I really get attached to them.”

Pearson spent her childhood traveling with her father, who worked as a pipeliner and spend time all over the country, from the Great Lakes to New England. Dublin was always home base, though, and Pearson graduated from Dublin High School in 1978.

After graduating, Pearson started working the night shift at Saint Gobain (then Norton). She stayed there for a year, then spent the next few years in and out of relationships and for the most part not working. In 1984, her father was killed in a car wreck, and Pearson had a wake-up call and decided to get her life together. She married her best friend of ten years, Floyd “Trip” Pearson, and started working at Sunset Cafe in Dublin in 1985. She loved working as a server and getting to know the regulars, and stayed there until 1999 when the cafe closed.

After she left, Pearson decided to try something different and found a job working at the Housing Authority. “I learned how to manage a computer and all that stuff, but I hated it,” she said. “It just wasn’t what I was cut out to do.”

Then, when the Highway 6 Cafe opened in 2000, Pearson saw her chance to get back into the work she enjoyed. She applied as a waitress and has been there ever since (with the exception of a six month stint at the Blue Moon Cafe).

Pearson works the morning shift, getting into work at five and serving coffee to the daily crew of coffee drinkers. “Those people became like family and mean so much to me,” Pearson said. “I get close to them.”

She enjoys being a regular fixture in their lives. “I’m just a people person, I guess,” she said. “There’s a lot of older people that come in there, and I feel like I can make their day. And I form a lot of friendships.”

COVID was tough for the cafe, especially for some of the older customers. “We have a wall where we are putting up pictures of our coffee drinkers that we’ve lost,” Pearson said.

After 21 years at Highway 6 Cafe, Pearson is now semi-retired and only works two days a week. “It gives me something to do and a way to get out and see people,” she said.

When she’s not working, Pearson enjoys gardening, jogging with her dog, making fried pies which she sells at community events, and crafting. Lately she’s been painting gourds and cow skulls, and making her own jewelry.

Pearson also loves fishing and outdoor activities. She spent years volunteering for the Boy Scouts while her son was growing up (she was assistant scoutmaster for the DeLeon troop, as well as in the Order of the Arrow). Through the scouts she met a community of friends who enjoy spending time outdoors, and some that let her come fish on their private ponds.

She and her husband live in DeLeon and have one son, Floyd Edgar Pearson the 4th. “We call my husband Trip because he’s Floyd Edgar Pearson the 3rd,” Pearson said. “He’d tease me that we were going to call our son Quatro, and I’d be like, ‘No, we’re not.’” In the end they decided to give their son the nickname Pierce. He’s now 29.

Pearson’s mother, Libby Durham Lucas, still lives near Dublin. Her father Billy Durham passed away in 1984. His death was somewhat of a wake-up call for Pearson. “I just woke up and thought, ‘I need to get together and figure out who I am,’” she said. “And that’s when things changed for the better in my life. Daddy was my greatest inspiration. He taught me if I wanted anything, I better get it on my own and not expect nothing from nobody.”

Pearson’s advice to Dublin graduates is to live honestly, and to go for what they want. “If you have dreams, I think you should follow your dreams,” she said. “I think people can do anything they want to do, and life’s so short. You need to just be happy and follow your dreams.”

Pearson herself feels lucky to have found something she loves to do and built a life she enjoys.

“I love my life and I’m happy and I just wouldn’t change anything from the past that has ever happened to me,” she said. “I love life and I love people, and that’s just the way it is.”

Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.