HOFFMAN — Cleveland Allen Graham, teacher, coach and mentor at Morrison Correctional in Hoffman, received a Richard Caswell Award Tuesday at the North Carolina Museum of History.
The award is given to those with at least 45 years in public service. A career educator, Graham’s first teaching job in 1973 was in the public schools, but he transferred two years later to the former Department of Correction, where he has coached thousands of inmates as an athletic director and Title I reading teacher.
While grateful for the benefits and job security provided through state employment, he says the satisfaction of helping people from all walks of life to obtain their GED diploma has been the best part of his job.
“I watched my students grow physically, mentally and emotionally,” Graham said. Being able to mentor “young men in the prison setting who have made some mistakes in life but want to get back on the right track and become respectable citizens” is what has kept him working for the state all these years.
Graham also takes pride in sharing his musical talents on the job. He has played trumpet at GED graduations, staff retirements, holiday receptions and other celebrations. He also has performed solemn taps in an honor guard “to pay respects for coworkers that have passed on.”
He was one of twenty-one state employees with 45 years of public service honored with the Richard Caswell Award Tuesday. The recipients, who work at nine state agencies, join the distinguished ranks of long-serving employees who have earned the award since it was established in 1998 in tribute to North Carolina’s first governor.
Collectively, the 21 state employees have devoted more than 945 years to public service.
“Many workers think about retiring as soon as they are eligible, but Caswell Award honorees demonstrate an extraordinary commitment and dedication to public service,” said Barbara Gibson, Director of the Office of State Human Resources. “With their deep institutional knowledge and capacity to grow with our evolving workplace, they have contributed substantially to a remarkable scope of work across state agencies – all for the betterment of the people of our great state.”
Recipients of the 2019 Richard Caswell Awards include:
• Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services: Timothy A. Batten, Kay Glenn Harris
• Department of Commerce: Raymond E. Grace, Leonard T. Tyson
• Department of Health and Human Services: James L. Butler, Andrew L. Coward, Steven Freedman, Tom Leeder, Barbara Roseboro Myers, Rosalie A. Pugh, Susie Sherrod-Sanders, Robert V. Young III
• Judicial Branch: Frederick G. Lind
• Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: Martha Battle Jackson
• Office of State Human Resources: Ronald C. Condrey
• Department of Public Safety: Cleveland Allen Graham, Patricia C. Jackson
• Department of Public Instruction, Governor Morehead School: Frederick McEachern
• Department of Transportation: William L. Faulk, Stephen W. Jackson, Douglas Sossamon
Richard Caswell was a Maryland native who dedicated most of his adult life to North Carolina. He was the first Orange County clerk of court before taking up arms during the Revolutionary War. He later became a member of the colonial assembly, where he was a champion for free public education.
With our young nation’s independence from Britain, Caswell became North Carolina’s first governor, serving from 1776 to 1780. He next served as state controller, returning to the job of chief executive from 1784 to 1787. Caswell also was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, then served again as a state senator. In 1789, at age 60, he suffered a fatal stroke while presiding over a senate session in Fayetteville.