Keith Edward McCarthy died on Saturday June 13, 2020 at Yale New Haven Hospital after a brief illness. Only 62, he went way too soon. He leaves his sons Dillon (26), Gavin (24) and his daughter Kylie (21), as well as the mother of his children, Hilary Reid, to whom he was married for 26 years. He also leaves his sisters Kimberly Corzine of Colorado, Susan Reilly of Washington and his brother Craig McCarthy of Arizona. He is pre-deceased by his parents, Basil and Joan McCarthy and his brothers Christopher and Kevin McCarthy. He leaves behind a large group of friends and professional colleagues to remember him fondly and lament his loss. Keith was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, spent his early years in Colorado Springs and graduated from Colorado State University with a BS in Chemistry. He went on to earn his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara and his post-doctoral studies at Yale University. His professional career began at Syntex Research in Palo Alto, California then he came east in 1992 where he achieved great success in the pharmaceutical industry at Pfizer and Purdue Pharma. But Keith was about so much more than his professional credentials. He was dedicated to his children and instilled in them his humility, honesty, generosity, commitment to learning, love of sports and dedication to hard work. To his friends, he was a man to rely on in a crisis or to celebrate a great victory. A dedicated coach and teacher, Keith loved nothing more than helping a young person with their baseball swing, basketball shot or a chemistry problem. He was deeply committed to community service and served for six years on the Lyme Youth Service Bureau and four years on the Little League Board. He believed there was nothing more essential than science and he devoted his career to using science to improve the lives of others. But Keith was not a complete science nerd. He was fully human, in every way, and had the capacity to laugh at himself and appreciate his follies. Like all of us, Keith had his struggles, but in the end, his was a story of triumph as he found a way to make peace with himself and those he loved the most. In one of their last conversations, he told Dillon that this was the happiest he had felt in years. If you would like to remember Keith with a gift, please consider a donation to High Watch Recovery Center (Kent, CT), Aware Recovery Care (North Haven, CT) or your local AA chapter.
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