A steady line of people Sunday wrapped along the parking lot of the Warren County School Board office.

More than 200 people slowly entered the board’s meeting room to shake hands with Superintendent Dale Brown just two days before the head of schools officially retires.

Today is Brown’s official last day as superintendent before his assistant, Tim Murley, begins acting as interim superintendent as the search for Brown’s successor continues.

During his 29-year tenure, Brown has served in education as a speech pathologist, teacher, principal and director of gifted and special education.

He began his career in the Hart County School District in 1980 before eventually becoming assistant superintendent in Carroll County Public Schools 10 years later.

Brown began in Warren County as director of finance and personnel and then assistant superintendent. Since 2000, he had led the ever-growing school district – which has ballooned from 8,000 to 13,000 students under his charge.

For every hat that Brown has worn, a different colleague or co-worker from that time seemed to dapple the meeting room like a living timeline.

Brown said while it was a bit overwhelming to wrap up his Warren County career, he never sees himself fully leaving education.

“It’s been great getting up every morning to go to work knowing we have great parents, staff, administrators and students … everybody working together for our kids,” Brown said.

His wife, Patti Brown, said her husband has gotten up every morning for the past nine years with the same passion and drive for education that she noticed in him when they met in early education classes at Western Kentucky University.

“He lived and breathed it. He’s going to miss it,” Patti Brown said. “And I know he has education in his blood. He’s done it for 29 years. I know it’s going to be a void and he will fill that with something down the road education-related.”

Patti said her husband is a perfectionist who would work all day to make sure an employee or student had everything they needed to be successful.

“He took it to heart, he really did,” she said. “There’s days when he’d leave home at 5:30 (a.m.) to go to Frankfort and then drive back and go back to work.

“Then that night, he’d have a meeting or an important game he had to go to and he’d get home at 10 and go back to work at 6 then next morning. He really did spend a lot of time in this job.”

That dedication is what made him a natural fit for the job, said former school board chair Larry Causey, who was on the board that selected Brown as superintendent in 2000.

“Of the candidates, he was without question the best candidate at the time. There wasn’t much question in the board’s mind who to hire,” Causey said. “He’s extremely dedicated to education in general and the Warren County system in conjunction with that. History has proven we made a good choice and overall, I’d give him an A-plus on his conduct as superintendent.”

Moss Middle School Principal Tom Renick said he has worked almost his entire career alongside Brown, as the two began in Hart County, moved to Carroll County and then Warren County at the same time.

Renick said he was first struck by Brown’s strong faith, which was evidenced by his approach to difficult situations. He said having worked with and for Brown for many years, he knows employees feel safe and secure under Brown’s leadership.

“He is so practical, you know anything brought to the forefront regarding education, he’s already addressed it,” Renick said.

As a principal, Renick said he was touched when Brown made a special trip to the middle school to meet with a student who was getting off track. Renick said he watched Brown challenge the boy to get through school, and then saw the superintendent cross the student’s honor cords several years later at his high school graduation.

“He said that was a proud moment when he got to cross those cords,” Renick recalled. “He cared enough to go to individual schools and speak to individual students that maybe didn’t have an ideal life.”

Brown also served as president of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents and recently worked with the task force in establishing the new assessment and accountability guidelines for Senate Bill 1.

In 2007, he was honored by the Kentucky School Board Association with the F.L. Dupree Superintendent of the Year Award, in addition to numerous other honors from the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, the Kentucky Association for Gifted Education and the Kentucky Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Judy Glass, elementary instructional supervisor for the district, said Brown’s diverse experience gave him the understanding that allowed administrators to discuss issues with him without having to give him the background.

Glass said she was most impressed with how Brown handled the changes of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, where he could embrace change “and yet be balanced and flexible enough to know when revisions and changes needed to be made to make it better.”

She said one of his common phrases is “move forward” which is indicative of his leadership style, and that sometimes just his presence would gain the support administrators needed to initiate unpopular changes.

“Laws are sometimes made that don’t always get funding or support, but whenever we’d make announcements of what we needed to do, with just his presence everyone knew he supported it and it made the transition go so much better,” she said.

Glass said administrators and staff are certain that Warren County will continue to grow and move forward because of its solid foundation “simply because he was here.”

“He’s really a soft, kind-hearted gentle giant in his own way,” Glass said. “He has a lot of depth of feeling for those less fortunate than he has been and it gives him a good perspective of the world around him.”