Cantrell Funeral Home

That was Cecil Graham Jr. . .Cecil Graham Jr., founder of Graham's Printing in Detroit, won a $10,000 grant to improve his firm in 2014.(Photo: ALI LAPETINA)Known for shunning retirement and working long hours for decades at his commercial building on Gratiot, on Detroit’s east side, Cecil Graham Jr. not only made a living as the owner and founder of Graham's Printing Co., in many ways, he made a life of it. It was a life that inspired others and instilled in his family the value of hard work.Mr. Graham, who often told friends he was proud to live and work in Detroit, died in his sleep of natural causes on Jan. 23. He was 84.Mr. Graham was profiled in the Free Press in 2014 for being one of 30 small businesses in Detroit to win a $10,000 NEIdeas Challenge grant.Posing at the time of the award for a photo of himself operating a printing press, Mr. Graham said he would use the money to upgrade his aging building and to install security lighting as well as a surveillance camera to ensure customer safety. NEIdeas grants are funded by the New Economy Initiative, a Detroit-based consortium of a dozen philanthropic foundations.The family business Mr. Graham founded in 1965 will carry on, said his son Harold Graham, 57, also of Detroit.“We print business cards, invitations, wedding programs, flyers, church envelopes and bulletins – a little bit of everything,” including jobs for labor unions, Harold Graham said. With his father gone, the company now has four employees including himself, Harold Graham said.Mr. Graham grew up in Pratt City, Ala., then came North as a young man “to escape racism in the South,” said his other son Torrance Graham, 50. His father first held hourly jobs with Chrysler Corp. and a construction company, “but in his spare time he started printing return address labels out of his house, and that grew into the printing company,” Torrance Graham said.Mr. Graham married twice; his second wife died in 2012, said Michelle McKelvie, who answers the company phone at  Graham's Printing where she has for more than three decades, she said.“He trea...