Children take many paths during their school-age years.

For those who stumble, William W. "Tex" Sadler has been there to pick them up.

After 41 years, the man from west Texas with the cowboy boots who addresses everyone with a smile and a hearty Southern drawl is retiring from the Hanover County school system.

Sadler has worn a lot of hats -- from teacher and principal to most recently, hearing officer and safety director.

Others would add mentor, friend and a student's biggest advocate to that list.

"He's a man with big heart," said Superintendent Stewart D. Roberson. He can draw the line in the sand with tough kids, he said, but not before making sure they have a safety net to fall back on.

"He has a wonderful sense of humor and knows how to talk to kids without coming down hard," said Tonia Burruss, a former student who now works with Sadler at the county's alternative-education facility, The Georgetown School. "He knew how to relate."

There are few areas Sadler hasn't affected.

He taught science at Patrick Henry High School and designed practical biology and basic chemistry courses for non-college-bound students.

"I realized there was a group of kids who, like myself, weren't being prepared" for college, he said. "So I chose . . . as almost like a ministry . . . to elevate those young people to give them a dream of going to college, too."

He has been involved in everything from preschool for at-risk kids to adult GED programs.

But looking back over a long career, few things excite Sadler more than The Georgetown School.

The facility, which opened last year, serves middle and high school students who have gotten in trouble and are typically at least a year behind grade level.

Georgetown traces its beginnings to 2000 with a night-school program for seniors at risk of failing. That turned into help for students with long-term suspensions "who were out on their own on the street."

There was "nothing out there for them," Sadler said. "I saw it as a mission to create some form of alternative education."

He started taking kids to the teachers lounge across the hall from his office. There was nowhere else to go.

"It worked," he said. "I got a classroom."

The program grew and was moved to two trailers behind Patrick Henry. It stayed there for seven years, until Georgetown was built.

"Through my role as hearing officer . . . I see a lot of stress from parents" who are dealing with tough times, he said. "One last thing they need is a child who's in trouble to watch all day, so that's where Georgetown comes in."

"We got a caring staff that can take the world and slow it down for that child," he said, and "focus that child, get those grades improved and do some things on the inside [to] let them develop a little sense of worth, a sense of achievement."

In Sadler's words, get them "re-Hanoverized."

"You obey the rules, you work hard, you have character about you, you take a mission, set some goals," he said. "That's what we call Hanoverized."

Sadler said he's not entirely finished yet.

Before he takes off to fish and continue his writing career -- he's written one book about his childhood and plans another -- Sadler will work about 50 days in the upcoming school year as part of his retirement program. He'll spend it implementing a countywide emergency management plan.

"If I could just have a legacy, it would be that those children . . . have all that support in these times," he said of the county's students. "Hanover's like an island. People talk to each other, and that's what makes it work."
Contact Holly Prestidge at (804) 649-6945 or hprestidge@timesdispatch.com.