Carolyn McCarthy, Who Turned a Gunman's Massacre Into a Crusade, Dies at 81 [View all]
Source: New York Times
June 26, 2025 Updated 5:18 p.m. ET
Carolyn McCarthy, a former nine-term congresswoman from Long Island who became a champion of gun regulation after her family was shattered by a deranged shooter on a commuter train — transforming herself from a nurse and homemaker into a national symbol of unflinching, if largely frustrated, advocacy — died on Thursday at her home in Fort Myers, Fla. She was 81.
Cecelia J. Prewett, a former communications director for Ms. McCarthy in Washington, confirmed the death but did not give the cause. Ms. McCarthy was found to have lung cancer in 2013.
On the night of Dec. 7, 1993, a Christmas tree lying in her driveway was Ms. McCarthy’s first sign that something had gone wrong. She returned late to her house in Mineola, 20 miles east of Manhattan on Long Island, after attending a Christmas concert with a friend. There, to her puzzlement and slight annoyance, lay the tree. Her husband, Dennis, and their son, Kevin, were supposed to have taken it inside and put it up.
Then she saw one of her brothers. In that era before smartphones, he was the one who broke the news that was hours old but unknown to her: Dennis, 52, her husband of nearly 27 years, was dead. Kevin, 26, had been shot in the head and left to fight for his life.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/nyregion/carolyn-mccarthy-dead.html
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Too many being lost. R.I.P.
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