Greg McCarty had a superpower.Residents at 3900 N. Lake Shore Drive, the condo building where Mr. McCarty worked for 48 years as a parking attendant, knew it well.He made people feel special.A typical garage interaction unfolded one recent morning when Mr. McCarty saw resident Lauren Sauer and annou nced "Hey, just so you know." He then broke into the Stevie Wonder song "I Just Called to Say I Love You."Sauer, a real estate agent and former professional singer, took the cue."He loved to sing — could be Stevie or anything, really — and he and I would harmonize together in the garage," Sauer said.He had this power to make people feel special," Sauer said."I've never met anyone like him before."Broad, over six feet tall, and possessing an easy smile, Mr. McCarty performed duties far beyond parking and retrieving cars.He helped with groceries, held doors, washed cars, filled tires that needed air, fixed home appliances and identified any car issues and suggested reputable cars mechanics."He never was looking for a tip," said Doug Silverstein, a resident and former hospital administrator. "He’d be embarrassed if you ever tried to give him money."During quiet times in the garage, he sometimes drew flowers with colored pencils and gifted his creations to building residents."I have one on my fridge," Sauer said. "It's funny you don't think of a garage valet as someone who's going to become a key person in your daily life, but he truly was a wonderful guy." Flowers drawn by Greg McCarty.Provided Mr. McCarty died Aug. 18 after suffering a heart attack. He was 74."Everybody in the building seemed to have a relationship with Greg," said Bill Wheelhouse, former state capitol bureau chief for Illinois Public Radio in Springfield. "Mine just started talking sports and basketball, and I wasn't even that big of a basketball fan."Wheelhouse got skybox tickets to a Chicago Bulls game and invited Mr. McCarty."He was really kind of one of my first acquaintances and friends when we moved to Chicago a few years ago," said Wheelhouse, whose wife, in tribute, put flowers on the ledge of a flowerbed outside the building where Mr. McCarty sat during the quiet moments of his shift.Soon more flowers and balloons were left there, too."We're going to have a memorial plaque put at that spot to honor him, with a little ceremony to unveil it in January," said Luther Goins, a theater producer and director who lives in the building."He made all of us feel that life was a little better for meeting a guy like this," said Goins. "And he was a stunning example of someone who was committed to his job."Mr. McCarty, who grew up in a small town in Mississippi and in Chicago, lived in South Shore with his wife, Evadney McCarty."They met when they lived in the same building and she asked him to fix a light bulb because he was tall," said Mr. McCarty's nephew, Fabian Higgins."He was very old school, didn't have a credit card or any debt, took great care of the things in his life, like his Eddie Bauer-edition Ford Explorer, which had more than 300,000 miles on it when it finally died out this summer," Higgins said."And he was very loyal and committed, especially to his wife, he loved her and did a lot for her," Higgins said.As a kid, he was in a singing group that loved to perform songs by The Temptations, his family said.More than a dozen building residents attended Mr. McCarty's funeral, and more than 100 wrote cards to his family."Greg was a gentle giant," said his sister, Sherrie Gamblin. "What you see is what you get with Greg, and I love him like a brother," said Henry L. James, a colleague who has worked as a parking attendant at the building for nearly as long as Mr. McCarty.Mr. McCarty is survived by his wife, Evadney McCarty, and his sisters, Betty Forbes and Sherrie Gamblin.Services have been held. ...read more read less