William Denihan’s office at the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County is distinguished by the sheer number of awards it displays. Two walls of the large corner room in the agency’s Ohio City offices are covered with plaques presented to the 80-year-old chief executive officer over four decades of service in city, county and state government. A long credenza is covered with photographs of his and fourth wife Mary’s combined 11 children — “I brought seven, she brought four” — 24 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren.
“The accolades are nice to have,” the native Clevelander acknowledges. “But you start over the next day. That’s the business. You start over the next day and do what you’ve got to do to make a difference.”
Denihan’s obligation to do that officially ended August 1, when he retired from the agency he created eight years ago at the county commissioners’ behest by consolidating the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Board and Mental Health Board. Friends, relatives and political observers may harbor skepticism that he’ll stay retired — he has, after all, done it twice before, only to take yet another government position.
“You see and you hear that he cares,” says ADAMHS board chair Eugenia Cash-Kirkland. “You hear people say, ‘Well, talk the talk, walk the walk.’ He walks the walk. What he says, he does, and you see it. So you know he’s for real.” She adds he is a “true change agent.”
Denihan took his first government job in 1973 as a way to go back to school. The owner of Skillstaff, an employment service with 50 to 150 people working temporary assignments on any given day, had graduated from St. Joseph High School and earned an associate degree in business from Cuyahoga Community College with the intention of earning a bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University (CSU). A friend heading the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation suggested he divest himself of his business and take a position as deputy administrator of the bureau’s Cleveland office so he could take off time during the workday for his studies.
“It never happened,” Denihan says — at least not until 1998, when he finally earned a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from CSU. “I got immersed in [the job]. I had to learn about it. And I could never take off time to go to school. I also didn’t think I had the right to do that. You’re the boss; you set the standard. You didn’t get paid to go to school.”
Denihan distinguished himself by uncovering a massive local operation that submitted $10 million in fraudulent claims. In late 1974, he moved to Columbus as the bureau’s claims director. But after two years of commuting between the state capital and his Cleveland family home, he resigned and took a job selling flower pots. In 1979, however, he approached Cuyahoga County Commissioner Robert Sweeney about a job and ended up as the county personnel director. He’d missed working in government.
In late 1981, Tim Hagan — who went on to become a Cuyahoga County commissioner — was preparing to serve out the term of a county recorder who’d died in office. He asked Denihan to become his deputy.
“No one ever questioned his integrity,” Hagan says. “He was absolutely somebody that everybody respected because his first responsibility and his first obligation was to be dedicated to whatever job he was doing.”
Denihan reduced personnel by 20 percent and implemented computer processing changes that resulted in savings of $400,000 a year. “He had the ability and the maturity to work with staff, to elicit from the staff a real dedication and loyalty to whatever focus he had,” Hagan recalls.
In 1983, newly elected Gov. Richard Celeste appointed him deputy director of the Ohio Department of Administrative Services Personnel. “There wasn’t an assignment that I gave him in which he didn’t prove to be more than equal to it,” Celeste says.
In 1984, Celeste appointed Denihan executive director of the newly created State Employment Relations Board. He got the agency up and running in a mere 38 days. Six months later, he moved to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, where he replaced a director who fell ill.
At one point, Denihan’s father, who’d spent his entire working life at Chase Brass & Copper, voiced concern about the frequent career moves. “He said, ‘But you change jobs a lot. Don’t they like you?’” Denihan remembers with amusement. “I said, ‘Dad, those are promotions.’”
In 1985, Denihan joined Celeste’s cabinet as director of the Ohio Department of Highway Safety, an appointment that put him at the head of both the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. During his tenure, he chaired a committee on drunk driving and drafted recommendations to the Ohio General Assembly for a new DUI law.
Cleveland Mayor Michael White recruited Denihan to serve as director of the city’s public service department in 1990. Denihan recently had married Mary, daughter of then-Cleveland police chief Ed Kovacic (who Denihan calls the best police chief he had ever known), and both wanted to return home. Three years later, White appointed him public safety director — a development that caused more than a little family drama when the mayor fired Denihan’s father-in-law shortly thereafter. Denihan then served as police chief from December 1994 to April 1995 and again in April 1997.
In late 1998, county commissioners approached Denihan about filling the executive director post at the Department of Children and Family Services. Denihan had firsthand knowledge of the challenges many client families were facing. He is a recovering alcoholic. A plaque awarded by Alcoholics Anonymous bearing his sobriety date — Feb. 14, 1975 — hangs among the awards on his office walls. The experience drove his efforts to reform DUI laws.
“Alcoholism is a disease,” he says simply. “Treatment works, and people recover.”
In 2001 Denihan retired from the department to run for Cleveland mayor. After he lost the race, he assumed he would remain retired. In 2002, Cleveland Catholic Diocese Bishop Anthony Pilla asked him to chair a commission reviewing policies regarding sexual abuse of children by priests. The Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board chairman invited Denihan to interview for the agency’s chief executive officer job. He accepted, even though he was 65 years old at the time.
“Whatever challenge comes in front of me, I think, ‘Well, I’ve got to do that. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what I’m built for,’” he explains.
Ask Denihan why he’s retiring, and he replies: “It was time to move on. I felt that I had conquered all the things I was going to conquer.” He’s looking forward to painting, teaching government and politics at CSU, finishing his autobiography and continuing his volunteer work — he teaches people how to paint at Edna House, Joseph’s Home and the East Side Community Center in Collinwood. He notes that he’s learned the most from interacting with those he’s served. “That turns me on,” he says. “It gives me the energy that I need.” Remarks like that will give those who wonder whether Denihan is really leaving public service for good a reason to keep guessing.
“I believe that there’s something for me to do out there,” he says. “I don’t know what it is. But I believe that as long as I’m healthy and as long as I can do it, then I should do it.”
