Lewis Romano didn't intend on being a school administrator at first, but he also hadn't figured on being a special education teacher either. After his education at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, N.C., with a major in business and a minor in sociology, he took an office management position with the Great A&P Tea Company.

"After I first got there in January, I got restless," Romano said. "I couldn't quite figure out what it was." Before too long, he decided to take a job as head baseball and assistant football coach in Chesterfield County Public Schools.

But to coach, he was told he'd have to teach special education. "What's that?" was his first response, but when he got to his makeshift classroom, the band room, he just took it one step at a time.

"There were a whole bunch of kids, 23 I think," Romano said. "And in the late '60s, that wasn't unusual." He went one by one, around the room, and chatted with the students. He got to know them.

It took all day long, he said, "but you know what happened -- I changed." With his certification classes at Virginia Commonwealth University, he developed a strong passion for teaching and special education to go along with his love of athletics.

A little more than ten years later, he and his wife, Nancy, had two children. Romano had earned his master's in special education, he'd been an administrator in Charlottesville Public Schools, but there was more.

Something moved him to Roanoke and to Virginia Tech where he began working on his doctorate, and they were in Roanoke watching the birth of the Salem City School System unfold in 1982.

As he was writing the final chapter of his dissertation, Romano called the number listed in a newspaper ad for the newly forming City of Salem school system. He ended up talking to the superintendent Wayne Tripp. And he was hired soon after that.

"It was just a grueling, wonderful thing that we were all doing," he said of the early days of Salem City Schools.

"If you want to have a strong community, you've got to have a strong school system ... it has a synergetic effect," he said.

Twenty-six years later, Romano retired on July 31, 2008. He's still excited about what the school system is capable of, citing a growth even accounting for inflation from about $10 million in 1982-83 to almost a $45 million budget in 2008-09.

"There's so much more to offer students now," he said. But for now, he'll sit on the sidelines. And he plans on playing a lot more golf.