FEBRUARY 25, 2010 ISSUE
Cove Creek Principal Tom Trexler Retiring, Running for Clerk of Court
Cove Creek Principal Tom Trexler will retire after this school year. A Blowing Rock native, Trexler has served the school system for the past 32 years, wearing a variety of hats that included P.E. teacher, coach, assistant principal and principal. Photo by Corinne SaundersAfter 32 years of service with Watauga County Schools, Tom Trexler, principal of Cove Creek School for the past three years, will retire after the current school year ends, with his retirement effective July 1.
“I’ve had fun everywhere I’ve been,” Trexler said. “It’s not felt like work to me.”
On February 9, Trexler filed to run for clerk of court for Watauga County.
“I’ve served different parts of the county,” he said. “At the high school you did, but only a certain population. If I’m lucky enough to be elected as clerk, I could serve the entire county.”
As clerk of court, Trexler would be serving the people of the county “sort of like what I’ve done in administration over the last 19 years,” he explained.
The May primary will determine if he runs for election in the fall, but regardless, Trexler said he wouldn’t have traded his time serving Watauga County Schools for the world and he feels like “I’m going out on top.”
A Blowing Rock native, Trexler attended Blowing Rock Elementary and Watauga High School and earned a B.A. and M.A. in health and physical education (P.E.) from ASU, he said.
In 1978, Trexler began teaching P.E. at Blowing Rock Elementary, and in 1981, he moved to Watauga High School.
While at the high school, Trexler coached girls’ softball for 10 years and girls’ basketball for 14 years, he said.
“Girls listen better,” he explained. “They’re teachable. I really enjoyed coaching girls. They didn’t know it all [and] they’re not trying to slam like Michael Jordan.”
While he was a high school student, Trexler had played baseball for four years and basketball for one year—an injury kept him out of basketball all but one year, he said.
His passion for sports led him to want to be athletic director for the high school in the mid-1980s, but “I was told to do that, I had to get an administrative degree,” he said.
Trexler re-enrolled at ASU in 1985 and, after going to school part-time while continuing to teach and coach, he earned his administrative degree in 1989, he said.
When an assistant principal job became available in 1991 at the high school, Trexler applied for and was hired for the position, he said.
Although he never did become athletic director, Trexler served as principal at Bethel Elementary for three years, when the superintendent asked him to relocate there in 2001, he said.
“There have been different turns in the road, [but they have] all been good,” he said. “It worked out great.”
Trexler returned to the high school as assistant principal for three years and then, in 2007, “I was asked to come out here to Cove Creek,” he said.
He added that because of having the opportunities to work with different people at schools in different communities around the county “I feel privileged and blessed.”
Of his time at the high school, Trexler said, “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve not had these wild stories you hear off the mountain. I’ve not had to deal with a lot of that stuff.
“Probably the roughest year” was the 1995-96 school year, when the administrators “had to move to three different locations in one year because of remodeling,” he said.
The reconstruction in the building involved workers taking wheelbarrows down the hall, mixing concrete onsite and knocking down walls, he explained.
“They’d wall it off, but you could still hear it,” he said, adding that at the new high school, administrators and students “won’t have to deal with that. Everyone should be proud of [the new school].”
He’ll miss the interactions with students, Trexler said, whether it’s with a six-year-old or 16-year-old, once he leaves the school system.
“I guess that’s what keeps me young at heart, dealing with the kids,” he said.
Far from the common stereotype of an authoritative and condescending principal, Trexler said he is “laidback.”
After resolving the issues that send students to his office, Trexler said that 10 minutes later, they are on good terms and talking as they walk down the hallway.
“I just enjoy what I do,” Trexler said. “I try to find the good and the positive in everything I do and everyone I meet and work with.”
In a press release, Superintendent Dr. Marty Hemric said, “Tom Trexler has been an exemplary professional at Cove Creek and throughout his career. He has touched the lives of thousands of students as he fulfilled his calling in public education, and we are grateful for his service.”
Trexler, married “28 years to the same wonderful woman, Sandra Edmisten,” who is administrative secretary at Grace Lutheran Church in Boone, plans on spending more time with family after his retirement.
“Dad recently turned 80 [and] I would like to go fishing with him more than once every six months,” Trexler said.
Also, his 24-year-old daughter Sarah is in her second year of a five-year chemical engineering doctoral program, doing valve research at the University of Colorado, and he hopes to see her more often, too.
“She comes home at Christmas, we go there in July,” he explained.
Trexler’s 21-year-old daughter Heather will graduate ASU in May with a degree in graphic design and will get married two weeks after that. “We don’t know where Heather will end up, either,” he said.
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