Roger Carmody

Roger Carmody, 66, of Newaygo, died Saturday, June 13, 2026, at home, of a heart attack, with the summer he loved best just getting started. Born on the Fourth of July in 1959, he spent sixty-six years cheerfully insisting that the parade, the fireworks, and the whole national holiday were, when you got down to it, for him — and thirty-four of those years making tools and dies in Grand Rapids with a precision that would have surprised anyone who only knew him on the river.

He was born July 4, 1959, in Newaygo, the third of Raymond and Lorene Carmody's four boys, and he made his entrance, as he told it, to marching bands and cannon fire. He graduated from Newaygo High School in 1977, served four years in the Marine Corps, and came home to the Muskegon River, which as far as he was concerned had been holding his spot.

For thirty-four years he was a tool-and-die maker at a shop in Grand Rapids, the sort of work where being off by the width of a hair means starting over, and Roger was almost never off by the width of a hair. He drove an hour each way and never once complained about the commute, because the commute ended at the river. His coworkers knew him as the steady one, the man who could hold a tolerance and a grudge with equal patience, and who kept a canoe paddle in his locker for reasons he considered self-evident.

Weekends and most summer evenings, Roger ran canoes on the Muskegon — shuttling paddlers, dragging the occasional flipped tuber out of the current, knowing the river's every gravel bar, sweeper, and good fishing hole by heart. He taught two generations of local kids to read moving water and to respect it. If you grew up near Newaygo and learned to paddle, there is a fair chance a sunburned man named Roger stood in the shallows telling you to keep your weight low and quit fighting the river.

He is remembered for his laugh, which carried across water; for his birthday, which he never once let anyone forget; and for a life lived at two speeds — exacting at the workbench, easy on the river — and somehow honest at both. The fireworks this year will feel, to everyone who loved him, unmistakably like they are still for him.

He is survived by his wife of forty years, Cindy; his daughter, Megan (Tyler) Grasman of Newaygo, and his son, Nathan Carmody of Muskegon; four grandchildren he was teaching to paddle; his brothers, Gary Carmody of Newaygo and Dale (Pam) Carmody of Big Rapids; and a stretch of the Muskegon River that will not be the same without his shuttle van in the lot.

He was preceded in death by his parents and by his brother, Kenneth Carmody, in 2018.

Flowers are welcome and can be sent to either chapel — Maple Bend Floral ((231) 555-0121) times deliveries to the visitation. More on flowers and remembrances.