Carolyn McCarthy
Carolyn McCarthy
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York’s 4th district
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 1997
Preceded by
Dan Frisa
Born
January 5, 1944 (1944-01-05)
Brooklyn, New York City,
New York
Political party Democratic
Spouse
widowed
Residence
Mineola, New York
Alma mater
Glen Cove Nursing School
Occupation
nurse
Religion
Roman Catholic
Carolyn McCarthy (born January 5, 1944) is
an American politician and has been a Demo-
cratic member of the United States House of
Representatives, representing New York’s
4th congressional district, since 1997. The
district is located in central Long Island in
west-central Nassau County and includes
Mineola, the Five Towns, East Rockaway,
Rockville Centre, Oceanside, Garden City,
Hempstead,
Uniondale,
East Meadow,
Roosevelt, Franklin Square, Valley Stream,
and Elmont.[1] She is best known as a vigor-
ous advocate of gun control.
Early life, career, and
family
McCarthy was born Carolyn Cook in Brook-
lyn, raised in Mineola, her father was a boil-
ermaker and her mother worked at Wool-
worth’s.[2] 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 her boyfriend injured from a car
accident, McCarthy decide to work as a Li-
censed Practical Nurse.[3] She 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,
severely injured, on a Long Island Rail Road
commuter train at the Merillon Avenue sta-
tion, when a mass murderer, Colin Ferguson,
opened fire on random unarmed passen-
gers.[4] Ferguson killed six and wounded 19
others.[5] McCarthy responded to the crime
by launching a campaign for additional gun
control measures that eventually propelled
her to Congress in 1996 on the Democratic
ticket.
In the biographical 1998 television movie
The Long Island Incident, which portrayed
these events, she was pl