It would be difficult to find a William and Mary alumnus from the last four decades that does not fondly remember Sam Sadler. Indeed, an alumnus from the class of 1961, Sam did in fact serve four decades at The College and its students as Assistant Dean of Admissions, Dean of Men, Dean of Students, and then finally as Vice President of Student Affairs. He retired in 2008, and I remember the strange feeling walking into his old office for the first time following my return to The College as the officer in charge of the Coast Guard Auxiliary program there. I had met Sam on a campus visit when I was in high school. He had lunch with me -- I ate a chicken sandwich -- and his evident love for The College was all the convincing I required to apply and accept. He pointed several friends and I in the right direction when, during our sophomore year, we decided to start a business in Williamsburg. I saw him personally and compassionately help another student through her own dark days a year later. Then, one spring day when I was nearly out the door and on with life, the Queen of England visited campus, and Sam, seeing me in a crowd of people, called me over, shepherded me through the crowd, and situated me right in her path walking down from the portico of the Wren Building. Then, more than a year after I graduated, I found myself having lunch with Sam once again, soaking up the best advice as I tried to determine where I wanted to take my life, and what sorts of adventures I wanted to go one next. And so it was that Sam Sadler helped to shape some of the most formative (or, in the case of meeting the Queen, simply coolest) experiences of my life... and I was just one of thousands of students whose four years at The College occupied a mere tenth of the time he spent there. I always found it incredible how available he was to the thousands of students that called The College home at any given time, how knowledgeable he was of the lives of so many of them, and how sincere he was in his hope that they all succeed.
It seems that everyone to pass through the Wren Buildings doors over a span of decades can tell similar stories, thus making it no surprise to anyone except for the recipient himself that W. Samuel Sadler ’64, M.Ed. ’71 was awarded a prestigious Alumni Medallion at Charter Day celebrations for the nation's second (or first, depending on your perspective) oldest college earlier this month. I am sure he was just as surprised when students and alumni alike donned tee shirts emblazoned with the slogan "William & Mary & Sam" during his last days before retirement, or that soon thereafter the University Center was renamed the Sadler Center (thereby confusing every freshman on campus when twenty years worth of alums converged on campus the following Homecoming asking if they could find the event they were looking for in the "UC"). Indeed, the alumni magazine reported in its current winter issue:
“I truly have never felt that I did anything to deserve the attention I’ve gotten in the last few years,” he says. “My joy has come from the friendships and the associations and the opportunity to be of help in some way.
“To have an opportunity to spend your life trying to give back in appreciation for that is just an amazing gift,” he says. “I’ve been blessed with that already.”George Srour '05 explains why, exactly, Sam Sadler does deserve the attention that he's gotten in the last few years:
So with this post I join the throngs thanking Sam for his service to to The College, to education, and to us -- for the way he was, to so many, a hero in our midst. Congratulations, Sam Sadler on the award of the Alumni Medallion, a small but fitting thanks for the decades you spent making a difference to so many.