Don’t blame Peter Gretz if he feels like he just won the lottery because, in many ways, one could argue that he did just that.
Gretz, the 39-year-old director of instruction and testing in Buckingham County, was hired last week to fill the vacant assistant superintendent’s position for Goochland County Public Schools.

The position has been vacant since current superintendent Dr. Linda Underwood was hired last August. Underwood, who served as the assistant for four years prior to Dr. Frank Morgan’s departure last summer, is thrilled to have been able to hire Gretz.

“He is a great match for the needs of our organization and our community,” she said. “He has the skills and experience that we need and he’ll be an asset to Goochland County.”

Gretz was one of six candidates for the position who were interviewed last month and one of three brought back for the second round of interviews. His career reads almost like a grocery list of desired experience: a former language arts teacher at both the middle-and high-school level who also coached wrestling, was an assistant principal at the vocational and high-school level, and a middle-school principal who has worked in both Washington and Orange counties.

Most recently, he spent the past two years in Buckingham, the first as the director of special education.

“His experience in a variety of positions and school divisions allows him to bring a different perspective to Goochland,” Underwood noted.

“Goochland has such a great reputation and the school division is fantastic,” Gretz said. “And having my child being able to go to Goochland schools was a big factor.”

That child, Jonathan, is part of why Gretz calls the past few weeks “a fairy tale,” mainly because he was born on the exact date of his father’s interview with GCPS.

Gretz and his wife, Sara, thought setting the interview for April 25 was a reasonable risk, considering all of the assurances from doctors that Jonathan wouldn’t make it to full term. But sure enough, that Thursday night, the couple was on the way to the hospital.

Oddly enough, with their son born shortly after midnight, Gretz and his wife settled in at about 4:30 a.m., her for some well-deserved sleep and he to let local school officials know he’d have to reschedule.

“The last couple of weeks have been a fairy tale for me,” he said. “I’ve got this beautiful baby, absolutely healthy, and I’ve got this perfect job in the place we wanted to be. It’s just the best I could ever imagine.”

The icing on the cake, he added, is the proximity to family.

“Being able to come back to the Richmond area is also a great thing for us, because it puts us closer to family,” Gretz said. While his wife’s family is just up the road in Orange, his mother and sister live in nearby Henrico.

The family, he said, has already contacted a Realtor and is looking for a home in Goochland.

“When the opportunity was out there, one of the first things we did was visit, even before we thought it was a real possibility,” he said. “And coming here, seeing Goochland, we just fell in love with it. We knew this is where we wanted to raise our son.”

Gretz actually has a connection to Goochland far removed from the duties of an assistant superintendent. As a 16-year-old, he worked on a horse farm and remembers eating lunch every other day at Satterwhite’s Restaurant.

“Coming back to the area will be a great thing and I’m looking forward to the challenges of the position,” Gretz added. “I’ve been mentored by some tremendous leaders and I’m glad I’m coming to a place where I can not only learn but my family can invest itself in the community.

“We just feel like Goochland is the place for us,” he said.