Contrite grandma gets jail for drunken-driving fatality
by Jessica Heslam

Thursday, December 14, 2000

As she stood trembling before the family and friends of a well-known Salem man she killed while driving drunk, a 54-year-old Chelsea grandmother yesterday apologized and asked for forgiveness.

Salem Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein ordered Henry to serve 2 1/2 years at MCI Framingham and 5 years probation, a sentence recommended by O'Grady's family.

"I hope that someday you'll be able to forgive me. I hope my incarceration will help,'' said the soft-spoken Henry.

O'Grady, a Little League coach and former gym teacher, was killed on Sept. 26, 1999.

"Maureen, I wish I could find it in my heart to forgive you,'' O'Grady's mother, Theresa, said in court yesterday. ``If you didn't choose to drink and drive on Sept. 26, my son would still be alive.''

Henry was driving her Mercedes-Benz southbound on Interstate 95 in Boxford when it hit the Jeep carrying O'Grady.

Witnesses told police Henry was driving at 80 mph and trying to pass a car when she clipped the Jeep, which was driven by O'Grady's friend and secretary at the Boys and Girls Club, Roseanne Cross, 44. Cross suffered minor injuries, but her husband, Wayne Cross, 44, was hurt more seriously.

Henry told police she drank two to three rum and Cokes before she left her Maine cottage that night, said prosecutor William J. Melkonian. She registered a .14 on a breath-alcohol test; the legal presumption of impairment is .08.

Yesterday, O'Grady's family and friends spoke of what he accomplished in his short life.

"I will never make a dent in replacing what we have lost as a family, and as a community,'' said his 40-year-old sister, Beth O'Grady of Salem.

Theresa O'Grady said when Stephen was 9 months old his father died in an accident. She said no parent wants to outlive her children.

But outside the courtroom, Theresa O'Grady said she felt sympathy for Henry. "I know she truly is sorry,'' she said. Henry - whose family members and friends offered condolences to the O'Gradys - said she had not had a drink since the accident.

A secretary for the Teamsters Local 25 Charlestown office, Henry had suffered many losses leading up to the accident.

Her daughter, Donna, one of two adopted children, was shot to death in Revere by her husband in 1994. Before the accident, her companion, brother and father died.

Henry prays each night for the O'Gradys, wrote her best friend, Connie Hall. Hall said she asked Henry a few months after the accident if she was still drinking.

"She said, `No - if I have the urge, all I have to do is close my eyes and remember what I did,' '' Hall wrote.


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