Woman proves her mettle with medal

Donita McMillan doesn’t think things happen by accident — she thinks they happen because God wants them to happen.  

Like the day she picked up the phone while working at Hasty Awards, the day she answered the call from someone with the Catholic Church needing help with an elaborate medal.

“It just gives me goosebumps,” she said. “It was divine intervention.”

Anyone could have picked up the phone that day, McMillan, Williamsburg, said. But she’s the one who did.

McMillan, who is a member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, said officials with the Catholic Church were looking for an engraving company that could help them reproduce a 900-year-old medal that’s sacred to the Catholic Holy Orders. They found just what they were looking for at Hasty Awards.

“Fortunately I was the one who answered,” McMillan said. “I was glad because it was something I was very, very interested in.”

McMillan said she was sent information and photographs of the medal and quickly got started working with the artists at Hasty Awards.

“They weren’t really that good of pictures,” she said. “We’ve got a really good art department.”

After McMillan and other Hasty Awards employees put together a draft version of the medal, it took awhile to get it OK’d through the various churches and officials.

In the end, however, McMillan said 100 medals were created in the first batch. Each of them will be presented to members of the Catholic Church orders.

“They are such amazing people,” she said. “We do some pretty cool things, but this is just beyond everything else.”

Throughout the process, McMillan said she worked closely with members of the Catholic Church to make sure everything went smoothly — this interaction only enriched her faith, she said.

“It’s helped me in my own faith in life to be associated with people who are just so obviously dedicated to be doing the work of God,” she said. “Everybody is just so kind, so nice, so Christian. They are just exactly the way you would hope Christians would be.”

As a reward for all of her hard work, McMillan even was chosen to become a member of one of the Catholic orders — the Order of Saint Anne.

“I don’t deserve it,” she said. “I don’t deserve it at all.”

To most people, McMillan said she’s the same person, but when communicating with members of the various orders, she’s known as “Esquire Donita.”

“It’s been an absolute thrill and a wonderful blessing in my life,” she said.