Carolyn McCarthy
| Carolyn McCarthy | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 4th district |
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In office January 3, 1997 – January 3, 2015 |
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| Preceded by | Dan Frisa |
| Succeeded by | Kathleen Rice |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Carolyn Cook January 5, 1944 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Political party |
Republican (Before 1996) Democratic (1996–present) |
| Spouse(s) | Dennis (Deceased 1993) |
| Alma mater | Glen Cove Nursing School |
Carolyn McCarthy (born January 5, 1944) is an American nurse and politician who served as the U.S. Representative for New York's 4th congressional district from 1997 to 2015. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
On January 8, 2014, she announced that she would not run for re-election that November, citing her poor health; she retired in January 2015 and was replaced by fellow Democrat Kathleen Rice.
McCarthy was born Carolyn Cook in Brooklyn, raised in Mineola. Her father was a boilermaker and her mother worked at Woolworth. In her youth, she was an athlete and wanted to become a physical education teacher but found reading challenging and later was diagnosed with dyslexia. After caring for a boyfriend who was injured in a car accident, McCarthy decided to work as a Licensed Practical Nurse. Later she married and lived with her family in Mineola, a suburban area about twenty miles outside New York City on Long Island.
On December 7, 1993, her husband, Dennis, was killed, and her son, Kevin, was severely injured on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train at the Merillon Avenue station in the village of Garden City, when 35-year-old Colin Ferguson opened fire on passengers. Ferguson killed six and wounded 19 others. McCarthy responded to the crime by launching a campaign for more stringent gun control that eventually propelled her to Congress in 1996 on the Democratic ticket. She defeated freshman Republican Dan Frisa by a large margin. In the biographical 1998 television movie The Long Island Incident, which portrayed these events, she was played by actress Laurie Metcalf.
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