Stephen O'Grady.com

Two families, two tragedies

By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff, 12/14/2000

SALEM - Two tragic stories collided yesterday in courtroom 208 in Salem Superior Court and ended with the sentencing of 54-year-old Maureen Henry for her role in the drunken-driving death of a beloved Salem man, Stephen Michael O'Grady.

In the end, there were no winners. While O'Grady's family said they were ''a little relieved'' after the sentencing hearing, Henry's family walked away without comment as she was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, marking the end of the latest chapter in the Chelsea woman's sorrowful life.

Henry, who saw her daughter murdered by her son-in-law and who lost her father, brother, and a longtime companion within a period of months before the accident last year, was sentenced to 21/2 years in the county jail and five years probation after she pleaded guilty to driving drunk on the night of Sept. 26, 1999.

At that time, Henry - a longtime secretary for a Teamsters union official in Charlestown - lost control of her car on Interstate 95 in Boxford and slammed into a Jeep Grand Cherokee in which O'Grady was a passenger, and another car.

The Grand Cherokee turned sideways and flipped, killing O'Grady when the roof collapsed. Three others were injured.

O'Grady, 30, was the youngest executive director in the history of the Salem Boys and Girls Club, a role he relished, friends and family said. He also coached Little League in Salem for 12 years.

He had just bought a house, asked his sister to move into the duplex above his, and planned to surprise his mother by becoming a foster parent. He was set to begin looking over photos of prospective children the week after he was killed.

His mother, Theresa O'Grady, 67, heard the news while in the hospital recovering from an illness, waiting for her son to come visit her. Family members couldn't make it to the hospital in time to tell her the tragic news before she heard it on the radio.

''I wake up at least one night a week with [the words from the radio broadcast] going through my head,'' Theresa O'Grady read from her statement to the court.

She had been there before. When Stephen was 9 months old, his father was killed on Route 1 in an automobile accident in which his seat suddenly slipped forward, sending him through the windshield.

''Today I feel I am not living, just existing,'' she read.

Later, after some quiet words from John Burke, her attorney, Henry stood shaking and read a statement in front of the family.

''I wish I could change it, but I cannot,'' she said, her hands trembling. ''I only wish it had been me. ... I hope that someday, you'll be able to forgive me.''

What was left unsaid was found in the letters sent to the court by Henry's friends and coworkers, all of whom said Henry suffers every day for O'Grady's death and the other tragedies that have beset her life.

Donna Bianchi, Henry's adopted daughter, was murdered in 1994 by her husband, Robert Bianchi, 32, who shot her five times as she was dropping her son off at her mother's home in Revere. Robert Bianchi, who is serving a life sentence, had a restraining order against him at the time of the shooting.

As a result, according to a doctor's letter in the court file, Henry suffered ''extreme depression, shame and guilt feelings that she should have been able to prevent this murder.''

At the same time, Henry was going through a bitter divorce. She later met a man named John McCarthy and the two bought a cabin in York Harbor, Maine. Henry called it ''her sanity place.''

But within a period of 18 months before the accident, Henry's father, brother, and McCarthy died.

''I think, at this point, that she lost control,'' wrote a fellow employee, Jane Hagen, ''even though she tried very hard to put on a false front.''

She began drinking. And after closing up her Maine summer camp, she toasted the end of summer with Bacardis and Cokes with her neighbors and headed home to Chelsea. O'Grady died a few hours later. Since then, Henry has been sober, her lawyer said.

But Henry's pain was more than balanced by that of O'Grady's friends and loved ones yesterday.

''I live in the cold shadow of the memory of his death,'' said O'Grady's sister, Beth, who cried throughout her statement. ''I'm losing touch with how it felt to see him, or how it felt to hear his voice and his laugh.''

At the end of the victim-impact statements, Superior Court Judge Issac Borenstein, who had tears in his eyes, commended the compassion the O'Grady family has shown toward Henry, which he said was ''beyond words.''

''I cannot even fathom how that would be possible to do if I were in their shoes,'' he said. But, Borenstein said to Henry, ''You've stopped [O'Grady's] history, if you will, and that is one of the most horrible parts of this tragedy.''