- Date Of Birth: January 17, 1924
- Date Of Death: December 30, 2020
- State: Massachusetts
Marcella “Marcy” Baird ACSW of Plymouth, MA, until recently of Dublin, OH, died December 30, 2020 from COVID-19 three weeks before her 97th birthday. Marcy was born on 1/17/1924 in Jamaica, New York, to John Blumenzweig (a master watchmaker from Warsaw, Poland) and Guty (Besser) Blumenzweig (from Zürich, Switzerland). She was married to John C. Baird and was heartbroken at his early death by cancer in 1985 at age 67. Marcy was also predeceased by younger sister Lillian Ginsberg (Alfred S. Ginsberg) of Bronx, NY. She is survived by her sons David A. Baird (Carol Huettner) of Lawrence, KS and Peter N. Baird (Vanessa Verkade) of Kingston, MA; grandson Adrian V. Baird (Tyler Baird, née Marston, and her son Gregory Gatti) of Plymouth, MA; and by grandson Damian A. Baird of Kingston, MA. Marcy recalled Charles Lindbergh flying over the ocean liner in 1927 when she and her sister were on the way to spend a year living with their maternal grandmother in Zürich Switzerland at age 3. She returned to NY at age 4 and for years after, she served as translator for her parents. Marcy was stricken with scarlet fever at age 6 and in quarantine for 6 weeks. It inflamed the joints in her right leg, which she dragged behind her until the first antibiotics became available while in college. Marcy graduated from Jamaica High School in 1940 at age 16 and from Queens College in 1944 with BA in Sociology and Anthropology. A favorite professor was Margret Mead. In 1951 she obtained a Masters of Arts in Social Work from University of Chicago, a program in which she met her husband, John C. Baird. They married in Marcy and John placed high priority on work to address social issues, professionally and personally. Marcy supported John’s quest for advanced education and professional practice in social science and community mental health and did her part to make that possible. After leaving Chicago, they lived in: 1950 – Marquette, MI; 1954- Fort Wayne, IN; 1956- Dayton, OH; 1959 – Lexington, MA; 1960 – Townsend, MA; 1963 – Burlington, VT; 1966 – Cleveland Heights, OH; 1969 – Topeka, KS; 1975 – Columbus, OH. In 1999, 14 years after John’s death, Marcy moved to Friendship Village of Dublin, OH until her move to Allerton House in Duxbury on July 29, 2020. Her final move was on October 31, 2020 to Newfield House in Plymouth MA. Professionally, Marcy practiced social work in many settings: settlement houses; state mental facilities including Wassaic State School, Wassaic, New York; adoptions (Chicago Home for the Friendless); medical hospitals (Mary Fletcher Hospital in Burlington VT and Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland OH); community mental health care agencies and as a social worker for a school district (Chittenden County VT). From 1969, her last positions included: Director of Admissions for The Menninger Foundation in Topeka, KS, then a preeminent psychiatric hospital; Director of Social Work for The Harding Hospital – a private mental hospital in Columbus, OH; and finally, as a Family and Marriage Therapist with private practice in Columbus, OH. Marcy served as President of the Kansas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), held the ACSW certification and helped to develop the first National Social Work licensing standards. She was recognized by the American Board of Clinical Social Work (ABCSW) as a “Board Certified Diplomate” (BCD) with certificate #5, one of the earliest to obtain their highest recognition for advanced competency. Marcy was also an educator. She served as President of a kindergarten, a high school substitute, taught undergraduate courses at Washburn U. in Topeka and graduate courses at KU and OSU. Marcy was always civically involved. She served as an Air Raid Warden in NY City from 1940 to 1945 and worked for the Red Cross. In the early 1960s, she was one of 4 women who founded the VT branch of Planned Parenthood. Until she was 90 and stopped driving, Marcy volunteered as a radio reader for the blind and interviewed local politicians each year.
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