{"id":4915,"date":"2025-10-15T19:36:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2025-10-15T19:36:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T19:36:28","slug":"william-mccarthy-meaning-is-found-in-helping-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/william-mccarthy-meaning-is-found-in-helping-others\/","title":{"rendered":"William McCarthy: Meaning is Found in Helping Others"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Adam Stone\u00a0<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"BILL<\/strong><\/p>

William McCarthy, J.D. \u201987<\/span><\/b>, retired recently after 16 years as executive director of Catholic Charities of Baltimore, the state\u2019s largest private provider of human services. He inaugurated or expanded a slew of programs there, and the organization grew exponentially under his leadership.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

McCarthy says UBalt Law started him down the road to public service and helped to drive his success. \u201cMy legal training taught me to think things through in a long, logical way, with a healthy perspective,\u201d he says. That matters, he adds, \u201cbecause in every issue, there’s at least two sides, if not more.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

McCarthy took a winding road from law school to human services.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI went to law school thinking I wanted to change the world: Seeking justice, representing people in the cases that mattered and that would bring about fundamental change,\u201d he says. He started out in litigation at a small downtown Baltimore law firm and found that those cases <\/span>didn\u2019t <\/span><\/i>actually bring about societal change.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

From there he migrated to tax and estate work, and after a few years of doing that, \u201cI realized I had become one of those regulatory or statutory lawyers,\u201d he says. \u201cI woke up one day \u2014 it was when our son Ryan was born \u2014 and I knew I wanted to do something different.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

He had done a lot of work on trusts and tax planning, \u201cso I went to the First National Bank of Maryland, in the personal trust area,\u201d he says. He rose through the ranks; a merger took him to M&T Bank, and from there became president of Baltimore-based SunTrust.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

He was successful, but he still wasn\u2019t saving the world. It took a family tragedy to get him back on that path.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A turning point<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>

A daughter, Erinn, came along, \u201cand when she was 11 \u2014 this would have been 18 years ago \u2014 she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer,\u201d McCarthy says. \u201cI watched her live every day with courage, grace and purpose, as she fought this terrible disease for 3\u00bd years.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Erinn spent 32 weeks in her first year in the hospital, receiving chemotherapy and a partial knee and femur replacement. \u201cThen after a year, the cancer went into remission and she was able to stay up with school and continue her relationships with her friends,\u201d he says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

But the cancer came back, with vigor. Before Erinn passed away, at age 14, her parents asked what they could do in her memory. At her request, the humanities building and fields at Maryvale Preparatory School are named in Erinn\u2019s memory.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Improving lives<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>

As McCarthy mourned the loss, he took a hard look at his next move.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI wanted to do something where I knew that every day, what I did mattered: That people were being helped, lives were being improved, and our community was being made stronger,\u201d he says. Then the top role at Catholic Charities opened up. \u201cI’m a kid from west Baltimore who happens to be a lawyer, so I put my name in the hat.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

It was a logical fit, says former law school classmate and former Maryland First Lady <\/span>Kendel Ehrlich, J.D. \u201987<\/span><\/b>. \u201cHe has the ability to make his point, often using humor and self-deprecation, giving his audience a warm feeling.\u202fI am sure this made him an effective fundraiser,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Another UBalt Law classmate, <\/span>Hon. Kevin Mahoney<\/span><\/b>, J.D.\u201987, a judge on the Harford County Circuit Court, recalls that as an attorney, \u201cBill was always trying to help people accomplish and achieve certain goals. So Catholic Charities was a natural shift for him \u2014 to be in a place where he could be just unequivocally be helping people and the community.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

(Full disclosure: Mahoney may be a tad biased, \u201cI married Bill\u2019s sister,\u201d he notes.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

As McCarthy concludes his tenure at Catholic Charities, he says he\u2019s proud of the organization\u2019s \u201cability to respond to ever-changing needs in community,\u201d from gun-violence reduction to opioid-crisis response to affordable senior housing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

And he says there\u2019s always opportunity to do more \u2014 if people are willing to put in the work over the long haul.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI am boldly optimistic,\u201d he says. When it comes to generational poverty in particular, \u201cthese conditions didn’t occur overnight, and we have to have a longer view to fix them. There aren’t silver bullets. It takes continuous support and commitment, not just a passing interest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Adam Stone <\/em><\/strong>is a writer based in Annapolis.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Adam Stone William McCarthy, J.D. \u201987, retired recently after 16 years as executive director of Catholic Charities of Baltimore, the state\u2019s largest private provider of human services. He inaugurated or expanded a slew of programs there, and the organization grew exponentially under his leadership. McCarthy says UBalt Law started him down the road to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5289,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions\/5289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}