Steve joined our Class after completing his service in the military.

Jim Stearns has provided this obituary, which appeared on Facebook:

The family of Steve O’Grady regrets to announce that he died on Monday morning due to a cardiac event. The ending, at least, was quick and he died at home next to his wife Sheila. 

This account will be memorialized shortly; the following is the obituary that will run in newspapers in New Jersey and Maine. 

The support and kindness he received during his struggle with cancer was overwhelming and his family will never forget it. 

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Having survived cancer twice, an infantry combat deployment once and – just in 2020 alone – five surgeries, two separate heart conditions, one shattered leg and an advanced case of mesothelioma, Stephen Gilman O’Grady Sr, “Steve,” was finally felled the morning of January 25th due to another cardiac condition. The last year of his life was, in his words, “pretty sucky,” but like everything else in his life, he endured it willingly to the very end.

As one of his lifetime habits was meticulously extracting the entire life history of virtually everyone he ever encountered, from taxi drivers to waiters, it seems only appropriate to document his life, in brief, here.

Born March 7, 1946 in Ithaca, NY, Steve’s family moved often in his early years when his father, an Episcopal minister, was called from one church to another. While more than capable in the classroom, as his education attests, his standout trait was his athletic ability. After a childhood spent roaming venues from the campus of Trinity College in Hartford to the International School in Geneva, Steve landed in Michigan for his high school years.

Just prior to his final tennis season at the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI he broke his right wrist and seemed destined to miss the season. Instead, with the help of his mother, a gifted athlete herself, he taught himself to play left-handed and managed to reach the state quarter-finals.

From Cranbrook he went on to Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where he eventually graduated in 1971. Originally scheduled to be a graduate of the class of 1968, Steve took three years off in between his sophomore and junior years to enlist in the United States Army, in which he served as a Second then First Lieutenant after graduating from Officer’s Candidate School in Fort Benning, GA and marrying the love of his life. He returned to Williams following his discharge, where together Steve and his wife Sheila ran the ABC House in Williamstown, part of a lifelong commitment to supporting and advancing the cause of minorities and women.

After graduating from Williams, Steve attended Harvard Business School, graduating with the class of 1973. It was during business school that he had his first bout with cancer. He attended classes in between his radiation treatments, though in one case he had to appeal to a dean because one lecturer would not seat him nearer the aisle to make it easier to get to the bathroom to be sick.

Upon graduation, he and Sheila left New England for New York City to work “for a few years,” an estimate that ended up proving overly optimistic as he spent almost the next

    

forty years working on Wall Street. After rising up through the ranks at institutions like Banker’s Trust, Chemical Bank, LaBranche and the New York Stock Exchange, he went independent and founded his own options firm. Being self-employed gave him the latitude to devote time to coaching his sons’ youth sports teams after moving out of New York City to Mountain Lakes, NJ. Later in his career, he moved into the exchange traded fund business, starting divisions at two separate firms.

His business success aside, he is best known to the people of Mountain Lakes for his long career coaching youth sports. While his athletic prowess and experience gave him credibility, what he enjoyed most about coaching was the opportunity to pass on to his players life lessons about sportsmanship, hard work and the importance of the team as well as a master class in sarcasm and giving his players the business. As one of his former players put it, “he was a great coach and I will always remember him goofing on us and caring about each of us and treating us as if we were his own sons.”

Steve was a devoted father, and delighted equally in taking the blame when his eldest son drove a golf cart into a ditch with his own mother in it and teaching his sons to be “tough”by swimming with them in the near freezing water off Rockport, MA with them on Memorial Day. He always sought to broaden their educational horizons, most notably by letting one of his sons and a friend watch ’Jaws’ at the age of five.

After his sons had graduated from college, Steve and Sheila bought a property in Georgetown, ME, where he resided until his death. In Maine, he remained quite active, sitting on the boards of several financial service companies and serving as a mentor and career counselor for local high school students and many of his former employees. He also became a volunteer fireman for the town of Georgetown, served on the town’s Board of Appeals and was active in the town’s Democratic party committee.

Retirement was, inarguably, the one thing he failed at in his life.

Late in 2019, Steve was diagnosed with mesothelioma. It is a rare cancer that most likely was the result of going back to work in the immediate vicinity of the Twin Towers in the aftermath of 9/11. It is also a cancer with a grim prognosis. The treatments are debilitating enough that most patients never make it past three or four sessions; Steve had endured a whopping 22, and was days away from his 23rd when he died. He approached mesothelioma as he approached every other challenge he faced: with a clear eyed, frank resolve and a focus on goals.

Steve’s greatest joy in life, apart from his sons, was doting on his five grandchildren, and of course subjecting them to the same incessant teasing he gave to all those he loved. Nothing gave him more pleasure than jumping off the dock with them in the summer or taking them down to swim at Reid State park.

Steve is survived by Sheila Hanabury O’Grady, his wife of fifty-three years; two sons, Stephen Gilman O’Grady Jr (Katherine Lynch) and Nicholas Lydon O’Grady (Erin Hargrave); his five grandchildren; his brother Gerald Burnett O’Grady III and his sisters Louise Young and Margaret Young. He was predeceased by his parents, Rev. Gerald Burnett O’Grady, Jr. and Ann Gilman Nichols O’Grady. If desired, donations may be made in his name to Williams College or the Fire Department and Working Leagues of Georgetown, ME. His family will be gathering in Maine to celebrate his life as soon as the pandemic allows that to be done safely.