Alex Paul
It’s been a hectic year at Sweet Home High School due to the major reconstruction program.
For vice principal Steve Fletcher, the project meant a temporary move to offices where the walls were painted like a dungeon.
“I guess it was kind of fitting,” Fletcher said with a laugh, since the vice principal’s job revolves around discipline issues.
In two weeks, Fletcher will wrap up a 31 year career in education that has been spent entirely in the Sweet Home School District.
“I thought I’d stay here two or three years and move on to greener pastures, but it turns out the green pastures were right here,” Fletcher said.
A graduate of Central Washington State College, where he was a safety and tight end on the football team, Fletcher spent 16 1/2 years as a social studies teacher, 3 1/2 years as a junior high administrator and 11 years as the high school’s vice principal.
“I like moving up to new challenges,” Fletcher said of his job growth.
Although Fletcher said he enjoyed his tenure at SHHS, he said the junior high administrative job was a more positive experience in that it included advising the student council, etc.
“Here, I mainly deal with discipline issues all day,” he said. “But, the positive part of that is seeing a kid who has had an issue turn things around and become successful.”
Success is common to Fletcher. During his days at the junior high, he and Larry Johnson coached a wrestling squad that lost only one match in three season. He also enjoyed coaching football.
But it was perhaps chess at which his teams really shined.
He coached six state championship chess teams and had five national teams that never placed lower than 11th.
“We won the national championship in 1978 in Minneapolis, Minn., and defeated a defending national championship team from Philadelphia that came from a school with 2,000 students,” Fletcher said. “We had maybe 400 at the time.”
He also coached a high school team that earned three state championships and won the Valley League title three years in a row.
“When we were state champions, we played and beat the Washington State champions,” Fletcher said with pride.
He called coaching chess a different challenge but he brought years of athletic work with him to the table.
“We not only practiced chess, but we also worked out physically because that’s an important part of the process,” Fletcher said.
In addition to coaching, Fletcher was president of the Sweet Home Education Association, chaired the grievance committee and was a negotiations spokesperson before becoming an administrator.
Out of school, Fletcher enjoys tournament archery, tournament chess and computer and photographic technology.
His knowledge of computers includes being the school’s webmaster, a job he’s turning over to the high school’s business education program a little at a time.
Fletcher’s wife, Karen, plans to continue working one more year at Hawthorne Elementary School. During that time, Fletcher plans to work on their home and consider his options.
“I’m too young to quit working,” he said. “There are several things I’m looking at.”
The Fletchers have two grown children, Steven, studying to be a nurse at Clark College in Vancouver, Wash. and Amanda, who is employed by Verizon corporation and lives in New Jersey.
Fletcher said he would have liked to have spent a year or two working in the new building that will be opened this fall.
SHHS Principal Pat Stineff said she was fortunate to have Fletcher as her vice principal.
“He’s fair, yet firm and he knows the law,” Stineff said. “I never had to worry about his decisions.”