Working for youth keeps McGraw young at heart

By Libby James
Correspondent

About Community Cornerstone Nominations

Brownie McGraw missed an important meeting--the first for a blue-ribbon committee. In her absence, the small group of influential men--among them a former mayor, a football coach, a bank president--elected her chair of a committee that would bring Inspiration Playground to life. In their wisdom, they chose this woman with an abiding passion for the welfare of children because they knew she could do the job best and that she would accept the challenge.

That's just the way Beryl "Brownie" McGraw is. In her quiet way, with an engaging smile and intensely expressive eyes, McGraw gets things done, and her focus is always on children. Inspiration Playground will open in October in Spring Canyon Community Park, the first fully accessible playground in Colorado, with more than an acre of play space and equipment designed for children with disabilities and typically able children. More than $1 million has been raised and the equipment is awaiting installation.

As important as the playground project is to her, it's only one among many close to her heart. After a long career in education, McGraw joined the district attorney's office 17 years ago as a juvenile specialist - an all-encompassing term that means she represents the DA's office in their work with children. She works with agencies concerned with health, drug use, restorative justice, before- and after-school activities - to name a few. She technically works 20 hours a week, but much of what she does has morphed, over time, into the wide range of services she performs as a volunteer. She works with the health district, with area businesses, the police and sheriff's office and Poudre School District. Her unique position and experience make it possible for her to assist various agencies in coordinating their efforts to ensure they are efficient and not duplicating services.

Particularly satisfying has been work with the diversion program for first-time offenders and restorative justice programs that allow victims to explain the effect of a crime to the perpetrator and allow young offenders to write a contract for restoration and avoid a court appearance.

"Parents get involved and often a whole new level of communication opens," McGraw said.

And she still has time to serve as a greeter and usher at church, on the Hospice board, Griffin Foundation Scholarship Committee, Poudre Valley Hospital Foundation, MS Meridian Society and the Healthier Communities Coalition. For as long as she can remember, she's been a Colorado State University Rams fan and booster.

McGraw credits an early experience with volunteering in the counseling office when she was a senior in high school for what has become a lifelong commitment to serving others.

"The top 5 percent academically were required to volunteer their time in the school," she explained. "That program was influential in my life."

Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., she grew up in Denver and attended CSU because she had her eye on Thurman "Fum" McGraw, a junior she'd met briefly at a track meet in the spring of her senior year in high school. "I went home and told my mom I'd met the man I was going to marry," she said.

They were married after Fum's first year as a professional football player with the Detroit Lions. After five years, when Fum's career ended with a blown-out knee, the McGraws returned to Fort Collins with their two young sons. Fum served CSU as assistant football and track coach and head wrestling coach - all at the same time. During his college career he'd been an All-American in football and track and third in the nation in wrestling.

By the time McGraw returned to CSU to complete her degree, the family had moved two more times - to Pittsburgh, where Fum became line coach for the Steelers, and back to Fort Collins, where he accepted a position in Special Services for CSU. When their daughter, born in Fort Collins, was in kindergarten, McGraw went back to school.

She studied social sciences education, she said, because she always hated memorizing all the dates she had to in school. As an educator, she wanted to find a more interesting approach for her students.

Former students still come up to her and sing "The Battle of New Orleans," remembering how she incorporated music and all kinds of projects to make history come alive.

After student teaching at Wellington Junior High, she took a job there because Principal Bob Eyestone assured her that her family would always come first and that if she had a sick child, her place was at home. When Blevins Junior High opened in 1965, McGraw joined the faculty, eventually becoming dean of students there and dean of girls at Rocky Mountain High School at the same time. "I felt like I was always in the wrong place when I had those two jobs," she recalled.

In 11 years at Rocky, she served as dean of students, assistant principal and principal. From there, it was on to the top post at Lincoln Junior High.

Any visitor at Lincoln looking for the principal would be told to "look for the lady in the bright clothes walking the halls." She doesn't talk about bad kids, only good kids who sometimes do dumb things.

At Lincoln she avoided a confrontation with guys wearing black jackets to class by asking them to form a group to offer some guidance to seventh graders during dances. "You'll need some kind of uniform and logo," she told them. They called themselves the Low Riders and decided to wear their jackets to the dances instead.

When her vice principal, Chuck Hagemeister, suggested student council was ineffective, McGraw told him to abandon it and in its place they formed "positive power" groups, which worked much better.

When she was offered her current half-time position in the DA's office, she'd been principal at Lincoln for five years.

"I hated to leave the kids but the timing was good because it meant that Fum and I could spend more time together," McGraw said.

He died in 2000, and she was grateful to have had those years with less responsibility. Even so, for three of those years, she worked an additional 20 hours a week as community liaison implementing a joint CSU/Poudre School District transition program to reintegrate students into the school system. McGraw has been honored for all she's done - there's an elementary school named after her and she's been acknowledged for community service and advocacy in education and mental health, but perhaps most significant is the "Citizens of the West" award she and Fum received in 1997. The only other couple to attain that honor was Gov. John Love and his wife, Ann.

Whatever McGraw's job has been, whatever volunteer work she's done over the years, her passion for children has never wavered.

"I'll always be active helping kids," she said.