In 1932, McSwiney joined the Mead Corp., becoming a lab technician in a local Mead paper mill. He was named CEO in 1968 and under his leadership, Mead grew into a Fortune 100 company.
Mead, formerly a Dayton-based paper manufacturing company, was instrumental in the growth of downtown Dayton in the 1960s and 1970s.
Under McSwiney’s leadership, Mead entered the information technology sector by acquiring a small company called Data Corporation for $6 million, and renamed it Mead Data Central.
The company later became the LexisNexis Group, which Mead sold to Reed Elsevier in 1994 for $1.5 billion. LexisNexis employs about 2,600 people in Miami Twp.
Visitation will be from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Friday at Edo Miller Funeral Home in Brunswick, Ga. A graveside service will be held at Christ Church Cemetery on Saturday, June 25, at 11 a.m.
Paul Leonard, mayor of Dayton for five years in the 1980s, remembered meeting with McSwiney and Mead’s then-vice president, government affairs, Ron Budzik, in 1981 in McSwiney’s office on the top floor of what was then the Mead tower downtown.
Leonard had served in the Ohio House and was facing Dayton City Commissioner Pat Roach in a race for mayor. McSwiney was responsible for “signaling” to the Dayton business community whom they should support, and Leonard had to convince McSwiney to back him.
It was not an easy meeting, Leonard recalled. James H. McGee had served as mayor throughout the 1970s, and Dayton had lost some 35,000 manufacturing jobs in that decade, he said. Relations between city hall and the business community were strained, Leonard recalled.
“He grilled me,” Leonard said of McSwiney. “I mean, he was tough … When I left there, I was worn out.”
Leonard called McSwiney “the kingpin.”
“He was the ultimate Republican,” he said. “I was the ultimate Democrat. But the good news was, we were both interested in a viable Dayton.”
Leonard said that, as mayor, if he ever wanted to get something done with the Dayton business community, all he had to do was cross Ludlow Street from city hall to the Mead tower to speak with the CEO.
“Those were the glory days for the relationship between city hall … and the business community,” he said.
Leonard went on to serve as Ohio lieutenant governor with Gov. Dick Celeste in January 1987. Today, he serves as an adjunct faculty member in Wright State University’s political science department.
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