The beginning of every school year brings new changes to Windsor High School. This year, a familiar and beloved face has been resurrected from the grasps of retirement and returned to his familiar base in the Windsor C-1 School District.

Officer Larry Michaels retired from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department in June. He then took a month off to travel, and by the last week of July, he was asked by Superintendent Joel Holland to return to Windsor as the Director of Security.

 High School principal Jason Naucke is pleased with the ‘new’ addition.

“One of the issues that is going on right now with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, as well as the general St. Louis area, is that they’re having difficulty organizing a police force. So, normally, when a teacher or an officer retires, the school district would replace that person. Well, this time, we weren’t able to do that,” Naucke said. “Last year, we had a district wide school resource officer, Officer Michaels, and the high school had its own officer, Officer Humphreys. After Officer Michaels retired, the district looked to see if there would be anyone to replace him. Once we realized that it wasn’t going to happen through the Sheriff’s Department, we kind of asked ourselves what are we going to do now. At that point, we started looking into hiring Officer Michaels as sort of a Safety and Security Director for the district.”

While the school district is very fortunate to bring back Michaels, a shift from a recently obtained retirement into a full-blown career might be difficult to manage, yet Michaels disagrees with that stigma. He does not mind working because he has had an eventful career.

He began as a photographer doing studio work and wet photography. He was a laboratory and scientific-technical photographer with the Air Force during his college years. As photography became more obsolete, he moved on to the Defense Mapping Agency where he continued to work until he became a reserve deputy, a non paid position. With time he was gradually promoted to a full fledged officer position in which he served for more than thirty years.

After all of those years of working, it was time for Michaels to take a break.

“Well, I started to relax. I took off and did some traveling, and then Dr. Holland called and asked if I was interested in taking a job here. At first, I thought ‘maybe, maybe not, I don’t know’. He said why don’t I come in and we could talk about it. So, I went in and we talked about the job and we negotiated salary and negotiated benefits. It was a very nice package they offered me, so I agreed to it. I decided I would go back to work.”

Even though Michaels barely got a taste of retirement, he is happy to be back at Windsor.

“I like it here. I know everyone here. I knew I wouldn’t go anywhere else. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to carry a badge and a gun anymore at another police department, so when they offered me this, I thought why not? It’s a fun job. I see kids at the high school that I saw when they were in kindergarten.  This last graduating class I was with for the whole twelve years,” Michaels said.