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Graydon McCormick, mental health worker

Graydon McCormick helped organize a union chapter at Malden’s Tri-City Mental Health center.

As Graydon McCormick helped organize a union chapter at Malden’s Tri-City Mental Health center, some of his co-workers hesitated to sign their names on union forms, but colleagues say he was determined to advocate on behalf of their rights.

“He was one of the handful of people in the beginning that just stood firm and said: ‘This is what we need,’ ” said Ginny Steinberg, who worked with Mr. McCormick at the center. “He was assertive, but not aggressive. He was well respected by management.”

Colleagues considered Mr. McCormick a principled man who was not afraid to defend his beliefs, as was the case when he helped launch Local 509 of the Service Employees International Union at Tri-City Mental Health.

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“He was someone you could depend upon,” Steinberg said.

Mr. McCormick, who taught biology before working in the mental health field, died of bladder cancer Nov. 4 in Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers. He was 79 and had lived in North Andover for more than 40 years.

As part of his work at the center, Mr. McCormick supervised mentally ill patients and helped them obtain work.

“He really helped them reach a full potential,” said Teresa Brugman, who had worked with Mr. McCormick, and who added that he was “a huge part of everyone’s life.”

Mr. McCormick, she said, “added a lot of quality of life to dozens of people throughout the time that he was the director of that program.”

For about five years in the mid-1960s, Mr. McCormick taught biology at the private Newman School in Boston.

After receiving a master’s degree in counseling from Suffolk University, he led shelter work programs for psychiatric patients in Lynn before working at Tri-City Mental Health, where he developed a landscaping company and taught clients woodworking skills.

He also learned to sew, and he showed clients how to make hats, scarves, and gloves out of thermal fleece to sell or donate to homeless programs.

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“I think he liked helping people and helping to normalize the lives of some of these people,” said his wife, Mary.

She added that it was important for Mr. McCormick that each client was “doing useful work and being treated as a normal adult.”

Graydon Eugene McCormick was born and grew up in Waynesfield, Ohio. His love of the outdoors began as a child while fishing at lakes in Michigan and vacationing in Canada.

Upon graduating from high school in 1952, Mr. McCormick enrolled in business classes and then worked for an oil company in Ohio.

During the mid-1950s, he served in the US Army as a clerk-typist in Heidelberg, Germany.

Peers in the Army encouraged him to pursue engineering, so after returning home, he enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. While there, he changed majors and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education.

A day before commencement, he married Mary Aronson, whom he met while working as a hall adviser during the fall semester of 1960.

She postponed her acceptance to Boston University to move with him to Salt Lake City, where Mr. McCormick attended the University of Utah. He received a master’s degree, his first, in science education.

They relocated to Boston, where Mr. McCormick worked briefly in a biology lab and taught earth science at a school in Lexington.

Leaving teaching, Mr. McCormick managed a small gift store in Harvard Square and developed designs for beds, couches, chairs, and tables, which he sold as part of his side business he called Lifestyle.

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He received a second master’s degree, this one in counseling, from Suffolk University.

During his years at Tri-City Mental Health, Mr. McCormick was a union delegate to the Merrimack Valley Project, which helped the area’s low-wage nonunionized workers join forces to address common concerns, such as seeking better pay and working conditions. About a decade ago, the group created a center to educate the mostly immigrant workers about their rights.

“It’s a little bit like getting back to the old hiring halls of unions, getting back to the roots of the union movement, because you are trying to organize people,” Mr. McCormick told the Globe in 2003.

He added that “by working with other community organizations and churches, we think we can reach out to people that we don’t reach normally.”

The McCormicks moved to North Andover in 1970. After retiring from the Malden center more than a decade ago, he worked in landscaping and delivered items for Kokee Flowers in Andover.

He also volunteered at the visitor center in Lowell National Historical Park, and enjoyed sailing, gardening, canoeing, fishing, hiking, and camping near Bottle Lake in Maine.

In 2001, Mr. McCormick competed in a Democratic primary for a special election for a state Senate seat. He did not prevail, and he ran again unsuccessfully for state representative the following year in the 14th Essex District.

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As a candidate, he believed his extensive life and work experiences made him an “older and wiser” candidate. “I’ve been a high school teacher. I’ve been a factory worker. I was in retail,” Mr. McCormick told the Globe in 2001, “so I’ve had a lot of experiences.”

A service has been held for Mr. McCormick, who in addition to his wife leaves a daughter, Kate of North Quincy; a son, Seth of Cullowhee, N.C.; a brother, Clifford of Milbridge, Maine; and two grandchildren.

“He had very strong views about justice, what was fair,” said Jon Grossman, a fellow union member. “And he made no bones about expressing them, but he was always, in my experience, respectful and straightforward. He had no fear of, as we say, ‘speaking truth to power.’ ”

Mr. McCormick also was a gentle, patient, tolerant friend, and a “real guy,” Grossman said.

“I aspire to that,” he added, “but it’s hard to achieve.”


Michele Richinick can be reached at mrichinick@
gmail.com
.