Norwich — David Burnett still shakes his head when he thinks how in “the bad old days” of 1978, he walked into a new position as the only employee at a fledgling nonprofit agency with a budget of $15,780 and the task of helping some 1,100 people adjust to life outside Norwich Hospital.

Now 74, Burnett will retire sometime soon as executive director of the same agency, now Reliance Health, with a budget of $13.5 million, 270 employees, two downtown Norwich buildings and more than 20 residential programs throughout New London County.

“I’m a kid from Mystic who was confused with what to do with life,” Burnett said Wednesday, “and I wanted to leave the world a better place. I just fell into something that turned into a magical experience.”

Burnett announced plans to retire sometime this year, with a date not yet set, to the Reliance Health Board of Directors Monday night. He said the board has a “well-established succession plan,” and promised it will be a “comfortable transition” for the agency that enjoys a strong reputation throughout the region.

Burnett said Reliance Health has worked hard to prove to the greater Norwich area that a nonprofit agency in the center of downtown could add value and a strong sense of community to the city.

“Our gradual branding efforts said to the community: ‘We are here to promote and support good community health and health starts with mental health,’” Burnett said. “It is the foundation upon which good health is built. People have that upside down. The foundation of good health is mental health. It’s very hard to have good health unless you have that foundation of good mental health."

Agency founder and Burnett’s lifelong mentor John Morosky hired Burnett when The Leisure Center occupied one large rented room in the Shannon Building at the corner of Main Street and Courthouse Square. The Shannon Building now houses the regional office of the state Department of Children and Families, but in 1978 it was a boarding house with individual rental rooms.

Burnett called that time “the bad old days,” when Norwich Hospital started to de-institutionalize its more than 3,100 inpatients — but with barely a plan in place for their next step.

“Norwich Hospital had 3,150 inpatients,” Burnett said. “I arrived at The Leisure Center in 1978, and Norwich Hospital had de-institutionalized to 2,000 people, and the total support system was my budget of $15,780. And many of them were psychotic.”

Burnett said things improved dramatically after Audrey Worrell was named commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health in the mid-1980s. Burnett called Worrell “transformational.” He said budgets and client numbers doubled and tripled and by 1988, Connecticut’s de-institutionalization system was considered the eighth best in the nation.

Today, Burnett said, most people with mental illness live and work in the community, and few require institutionalization. Reliance Health has more than 20 community-based residential programs with levels of support ranging from 24-hour, “within sight” supervision to homes where residents just need to check in once or twice a month to “let us know how they’re doing,” Burnett said.

“I could not have imagined my good fortune, professionally,” Burnett said.

Last September, Reliance Health dedicated its newly purchased and renovated program headquarters building at 2 Cliff St., Norwich, to Morosky, naming it the Morosky Building.

Burnett said he never really thought about retirement until recently, when a co-worker, Reliance Health Chief Financial Officer Linda Smith, started talking about her plan to retire. Burnett’s wife, Nancy, retired 11 years ago from her career at DCF, and she has been urging her husband to join her. He started thinking about it, and the idea took hold.

Burnett said he has no definite plans, except to clear out all the fallen trees from Lowthorpe Meadow in Norwichtown and take the wood home to burn. He wants to spend more time in the San Francisco Bay area with his children and grandchildren.

And Burnett is a six-time national champion bicyclist, who competes in national championships every year across the country. A family function might keep him from racing in the national championship this summer, but next time he does compete, Burnett will be the youngster in his bracket. He will turn 75 in December, and now will race in the 75+ category.

“That makes me a kid again,” he said.

c.bessette@theday.com