Robert Garvin McCarthy

Devoted to Family and Food

Robert McCarthy made a superb turkey and the best mashed potatoes. He called his in-laws every day, "but he calls everybody every day," his mother-in-law, Gloria Rosenfeld said, laughing. He traded his immaculate Saab convertible for a 1995 Civic when his wife, Annie, became pregnant, and he "got" people all the time with his silly phone voices. He kept Mrs. Rosenfeld going for at least 20 minutes one Sunday — at 8 a.m., no less — trying to sell her some telephone services.

When he and his wife had been together for five years, he sent six dozen roses to the salon where she worked: a dozen for each year and a dozen for her co-workers. One friend, Jon Fullick, summed him up on a Web page in his honor: "You lived out loud and I love you for it."

Mr. McCarthy's sister, Mary Jean O'Leary, remembers him as a little one: "He was always laughing," she said. "His little personality was there all along."

The McCarthys' son, Shane, was 2 weeks old when Mr. McCarthy, 33, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, who lived in Stony Point, N.Y., died. "He looks just like him; he doesn't look anything like me," Mrs. McCarthy said, describing her blond, green-eyed son. "Looking into my son's eyes is like having my husband stare back at me."