WALES —The only athletic director Oak Hill High School has ever known is retiring.

Bill Fairchild, a long-time coach and the school’s athletic director since it opened in 1976, will retire after 35 years on the job when his contract runs out at the end of June.

The RSU 4 school board Wednesday night voted to consolidate the athletic director’s duties with those of the adult education director and named Jim Palmer to fill the new position. Palmer is currently Oak Hill’s Director of Adult Education and has coached varsity football and baseball at Gardiner High School.

Fairchild said the time was right to retire with his daughter Samantha, the youngest of his two children graduating from Colby College in the spring.

The 60-year-old Fairchild added that the grind of the job had become too much for him physically in recent years.

“The main reason is I think I’ve run out of gas,” he said. “I’ve tried to go as hard as I can as long as I can.”

Fairchild followed in the footsteps of his late father, Monmouth Academy principal and superintendent Thomas L. Fairchild, who was a major force in starting Oak Hill High School.

Plans for the formation of Oak Hill High School were drawn up on Bill’s kitchen table, but Fairchild said the plans did not include him at the time.

“When the plans were unfolding, I had no idea that I would actually end up here,” he said. “I was still in college and then I went to Leavitt for a couple of years. It really came down to this job opening up when the phys ed person at Monmouth at the time, Ted Goff, decided to stay at Monmouth.”

Fairchild taught physical education at Oak Hill for 30 years before becoming the AD full-time in the fall of 2006. He also served as assistant principal.

He coached a number of sports at Oak Hill, both varsity and junior varsity, including football and basketball. But he was best known for his 28 years as baseball coach, where he led the Raiders to Class C state championships in 1978 and 1981 and a Class B title in 2003.

Fairchild said he wanted to teach and coach at a small school because “talent’s not geographical,” and the students from Sabattus, Litchfield and Wales

“I liked teaching the games to these kids and letting their work ethic drive their success,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate over my years here to find a populace of students who have a good work ethic. That was the main thing that kept bringing me to school. If they want to work hard, you’ve got to love it. That’s a coach’s dream.”

Grew on the job

While he felt an instant connection with Oak Hill, he had to learn a lot on the job. He said he’s grateful the locals were patient with him.

“I want to thank the people in these three communities for allowing me to pursue my career and actually grow while doing it,” he said. “I came out of school with all kinds of idealistic ideas about coaching with no experience, and at the time there wasn’t a lot of mentoring going on by old coaches. I made mistakes, but these three communities stuck with me and I appreciate that.”

Jim Hodgkin knew Fairchild from being a principal at Monmouth Middle School and as an umpire briefly before becoming superintendent of RSU 4. He said there are many different opinions of Fairchild’s plain-spoken, commanding style, but little dispute about his dedication.

“I don’t think there’s anybody that I’ve met that doesn’t respect what he’s done, his commitment to the schools, his commitment to the kids, is really second to none,” Hodgkin said.

“I think people are going to miss Bill a lot more than they realize,” he added.

Oak Hill principal Pat Doyle coached girls’ varsity basketball when Fairchild coached boys’ varsity basketball. She said he wouldn’t allow kids to take the easy route to success, demanding the extra effort of his students and players and holding them accountable when the did not.

Doyle described Fairchild as an “old school” teacher, coach and administrator and a “plank-holder” as one of the school’s original teachers.

“Bill and I talk a lot about being an old school coach and administrator, where the hours in the day is not what is measured, it’s the job that you do and what you get done,” said Doyle, who has been at Oak Hill for 32 years, the last six as principal. “Bill has always been one that has not shied away from work. He puts in the time it needs to get the job done and to do it well. That’s something that’s really hard to replace.”

No vacation

Fairchild stepped down as baseball coach in 2004 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and was succeeded by current coach Chad Drouin. The cancer went into remission but his AD duties still took a lot out of him physically.

“There are no vacation days. You work at least six days a week, and you get home, if you’re lucky like us and have no lights, you get home at dark, and in the winter it’s whenever you can make it home,” he said. “I admire so many of the people in the state of Maine that have this job for the amount of time they spend and the work ethic they have to have to do it right.”

Most recently, he oversaw the refurbishing of the school’s gymnasium and commenced coordination of the district’s athletic program from Grade 6 up.

“I’m not saying by retiring that I got everything done, because there are certainly more things that I could get accomplished,” Fairchild said.

“There’s a part of me that’s surprised he’s retiring now,” Hodgkin said, “because we just restructured our district and we finally have a middle school and he was so excited about that because he could finally start to coordinate the (athletic) program. Now, we’re finally in a position where we should be able to be competitive in all areas, and he’s stepping down.”

Hodgkin said Palmer will continue to oversee grades 6-12.

Fairchild said he will spend his retirement on his hobbies, golf and woodworking, and with his and his wife Ann’s two children, Tip and Samantha. Tip was drafted by the Houston Astros and retired from baseball after an unsuccessful comeback from Tommy John surgery. He now owns and runs his own baseball clinics. Daughter Samantha starred in several sports at Monmouth Academy before enrolling at Colby.

“I love working around my house, and my yard is… I can’t get that done, period. So I’ll always have something to do there,” he said. “To say that I’m not going to work at all, that’s not going to be the case.”