Carlos Cortes

He Made Them Laugh

There were times when the planning meetings would seem to drag on a bit too long. Those were the times when Carlos Cortes would seize his opportunity. Without saying a word, he would untie his tie and reconfigure it in the shape of a big, droopy bow tie. As people began to look up from their paperwork, they would see him and crack a smile or stifle a laugh.

"He was always trying to diffuse a difficult situation," said Laurie Lauterbach, his wife of 30 years.

But sometimes, those difficult situations could not be resolved with a laugh or a smile. "Anytime there was an emergency in our family, Carlos was the person to call," Ms. Lauterbach said, recalling the time he drove to the Bronx in the middle of the night to take an elderly cousin to the hospital, and another time, broke the news to his hospitalized father-in-law that he would have to be moved to New York for surgery.

A civil engineer with Washington Group International, Mr. Cortes, 57, met Ms. Lauterbach in 1967. She was a junior at Ithaca College studying abroad for a semester, and the two taught English at the same school in Bogota. They were married in 1971 and had a son, Louis F. Cortes, in 1983. Mr. Cortes, a car devotee, shared his enthusiasm with his son, Louis recalled, by taking him to the New York Auto Show for 10 years straight.