Former Lorain County Prosecutor Joseph "Joe" Grunda remembered

Former colleagues in the legal profession remembered Joseph "Joe" Grunda as a hard-working, "old-style" professional attorney —never to be underestimated — who would always lend a hand to his younger colleagues. The former Lorain County prosecutor and attorney died Tuesday at age 86. "He was professional, he wasn't like showy, but never underestimate that he isn't prepared," current Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said Friday. "He was always prepared and a very strong advocate for his clients. From the day I started, he was a very strong advocate." Grunda was born May 11, 1933, and graduated from Lorain High School class of 1950. He attended Bowling Green State University and Fenn College before earning his law degree from the Cleveland-Marshall Law School at Cleveland State University, graduating with a doctor of law degree in 1958. Grunda began his legal career with the Ohio attorney general's office, served as a referee in Lorain County Probate Court, was an assistant Lorain County prosecutor before being elected Lorain County prosecutor in 1968. He served as the county's elected prosecutor for 12 years, creating the county's first diversion program and the Victim Witness Division. Grunda also required all assistant prosecutors to complete Continuing Legal Education, or CLE, now mandated for all Ohio attorneys by the Ohio Supreme Court. He later also worked for the Ohio auditor of state before turning to private practice. Two of his sons, Joseph C. and Jay, also are attorneys. Jay Grunda like his father before him, works in the county prosecutor's office, Will said. During his legal career, Grunda was involved in multiple high-profile cases, including representing Joseph Allen in the early 1990s Head Start case. He was with the firms Cirigliano & Grunda, and later Grunda & Grunda Attorneys at Law with his son Joseph C. Grunda was a former president and member of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorney's Association, former president and member of the Lorain County Bar Association, and member of the Ohio State Bar Association. He also served as vice chairman of the Lorain County Democratic Party. Will said his association with Grunda started when Will was an Elyria police officer in the 1970s. He would testify in cases that were being tried by Grunda and his office, and recalled Grunda being "very helpful" to his younger colleagues. After Grunda left the prosecutor's office and Will graduated law school and joined the prosecutor's office, the two men tried cases against each other in Lorain County courts. "He was very strong in being an advocate for his client, but he was an old-style lawyer. You could be adversaries, but still talk and have a decent relationship and he was like that," Will said. Attorney and Lorain Democratic Party chairman Anthony Giardini said Grunda and Joseph Cirigliano gave him his first job out of law school in the early 1980s when they hired him to work at their firm. "They were pretty interesting lawyers, already very experienced lawyers when I joined them. They were tough, they were taskmasters, but as a new relatively young lawyer it was pretty helpful," Giardini recalled. "They had a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge, knowledge of the court system and the law of course. They were pretty helpful." Even years later after he was no longer the county's prosecutor, Grunda would stop by to chat with Giardini, offer him his thoughts on legal matters. "The one thing I really appreciated was, long after he was out of office and just going back to practicing law, he always took the time to stop in and ask me how things were going, to offer a little advice here or there," Giardini said. He called Grunda "one of the most, if not the most" influential politician in party politics in Lorain County at one time, and one that younger political operators could learn a lot from. "He was very humble in his later years, just genuinely a nice guy to sit and talk to," Giardini said. "He remained an active guy and a solid Democrat and that didn't change." When Will first ran for the top prosecutor's job, Grunda supported him, Will recalled. When Will became president of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorney's Association in 2012, he realized that Grunda had hired that organization's longtime executive director, John Murphy. Will said he and Grunda went down to Columbus for the OPAA's annual weekend seminar and had a reunion of all the past presidents. "I was just thinking this morning: I've come full-circle with this guy," Will said of his late colleague. Grunda, he said, "was a very nice person. He's going to be missed." In his spare time, Grunda raced stock cars in the 1950s, was a member of his son Joe's 1988 Championship Supermodified Grunda Racing Team, was a pilot and a boater who was a member of the Lorain Yacht Club and Vermilion Boat Club. Giardini said he first met Grunda through his love of boating, and spent a lot of time with the family going out on the boat and with his sons Joe and Jay, who both would later go on to legal careers. "He was a powerboater. He loved boating. Joe really, truly loved boating," Giardini said. "They were a great family, a big family, a fun family." He is survived by his wife, Joyce (nee Hupp) Grunda, to whom he was married for 68 years; his sons, Joseph C. (Nancy) Grunda, Jeffrey Grunda, Jay B. Grunda; daughters, Joyce (David) Harrington and Justine (Bill) Burgdorf; six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren; and his sisters, Katherine Prososki of Arizona, Sharol (John) Kniepper of Avon Lake and JoEllen Tummel of Tennessee. Calling hours are from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday (Oct. 7) at Dovin Funeral Home, 2701 Elyria Ave. in Lorain, where funeral services will be held at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday (Oct. 8), with the Rev. Craig Hovanec officiating. Burial will follow in Calvary Cemetery in Lorain. Memorials may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Mercy New Life Hospice in Lorain, or to a charity of the donor's choice. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him at @daveobrienCT on Twitter.