Monday, September 11, 2006

Robert Garvin McCarthy

On the fifth anniversary of tragic day I’m devoting this space to the remembrance of Robert Garvin McCarthy.

I was given this name when I signed up at 2,996: A Tribute to the Victims of 9/11. Each and every victim, from The Twin Towers, to The Pentagon and the lonely field in Pennsylvania is listed. The workers going about their day and those trapped onboard the four jets. Each person has at least one blogger volunteer to write about them on the fifth anniversary of their untimely death.

Robert was just 33 and a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was at work on a perfectly ordinary day. Sixteen days previously his wife Annie had just given birth to their son Shane, their first and sadly only child. They had been married for a little over two years when Robert’s life was so suddenly cut short. Their seventh anniversary would have been this past August 21st.

I wondered what he would have come up with to top what he done after dating Annie 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.

When Annie interviewed a year after 9/11 she said the following about her then one year old son:

"It's just so sad. It's always sad when I look at Shane. I look at him and I'm sad because he looks just like Rob, but that also makes me grateful to have him every day."

"He's a happy baby, a friendly baby, a crazy baby," she said. "He's a little daredevil, and he looks just like Rob with green eyes and light hair."

Shane will never get to play catch with his dad or share in his father’s jokes. He is not the only child who was robbed of a parent five years ago.

Robert’s sister, Mary Jean O'Leary, remembered on one memorial web page how he was always laughing when he was little. She suffered a double blow that day, not only did she lose her brother but her own husband as well.

It is said on the memorial pages I could find of him that he loved life and as one friend, Jon Fullick, wrote "You lived out loud and I love you for it."

I wished he had been able to live out loud for a while longer.

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