Derrick McFarland died trying to help someone.

A Montgomery County deputy lay unconscious on a bathroom floor Sunday morning at Montgomery County Regional Hospital, struck down by a jail inmate bent on escape. As McFarland ran to the deputy's aid, the inmate shot the hospital security guard with the deputy's gun, then shot his way through a locked glass door, setting off a 37-hour manhunt that ended with William Charles Morva's capture Monday afternoon.

Rushing to the rescue was typical behavior for Derrick McFarland.

"We met in the fifth grade when I asked him to protect me from a guy who was being a bully," Jason Goldman said. "And he agreed. We've been best friends ever since."

McFarland was best man at Goldman's wedding. Goldman was McFarland's best man at the September 2002 ceremony on the banks of the Little River where McFarland married his wife, Cindy.

Her favorite picture of her husband was taken at their wedding reception. Wearing a shin-long coat, light playing off his shaved head, Derrick McFarland is about to throw her garter to the bachelors in the hall.

"He has such a devious look," Cindy McFarland said.

Derrick McFarland's widow sat on her couch Tuesday afternoon, drawn curtains shutting out the sun as the phone rang and she looked through boxes of photograph albums.

"That's Daddy," 3-year-old Kaneisha said, pointing at a one of the albums. "Well, he's dead."

Kaneisha, in her pigtails and Winnie the Pooh shirt, clearly had no idea of the meaning of her words. Her mother's not sure she really understands it herself.

"He was my life," she said. "It's still unbearable for me to think of my life without him. He was the heart of our family."

The future Cindy McFarland met her husband at the Burger King in Marion in 1998. She was the manager. McFarland was a maintenance worker.

He always had a knack with machinery, even when he was a kid tinkering with toys.

"He'd start fiddling with them and all of a sudden my toys were in pieces on the floor," Goldman said.

But McFarland always put them back together, better than new. When he was a little older, McFarland put a motorcycle together from scratch. He built the computer in the McFarlands' living room.

With Cindy McFarland, he built a family.

She had a son, Jonny, from a previous marriage. Together they had Kaneisha. Derrick McFarland never made a distinction between the children, his wife said.

"He never had no reservations about Jonathan and taking care of him," Cindy McFarland said.

Derrick McFarland was always ready to help Jonny, 11, with schoolwork and other challenges a fifth-grader might face. He spent a lot of time with the children, Cindy McFarland said. He loved playing with them, she said.

"He never grew up. He loved being a kid," she said. "He was all about his children. He loved them very much."

He loved being in the kitchen, too. He did most of the cooking because he was the better cook, Cindy McFarland said. Blackberry cobbler and chocolate chip cookies were his specialties.

Now friends from work are bringing in food. Cindy McFarland has hardly noticed, but she's seen her mother and the children eating it, she said.

Kaneisha chattered and played with Trixie, a perky little papillon, and J.J., a sad-eyed beagle and basset mix, Tuesday afternoon.

Jonny lay sprawled on the couch in his Superman shirt and baggy shorts, pushing buttons that made Venom, a character in his Spider-Man video game, attack people and toss cars around a comic book city until his mother asked him to walk the dogs.

Cindy McFarland remembered the last time she talked with her husband. He called her at work, just about the time she usually clocks in. He didn't know she'd gone in early. She's been working extra hours to save money for school supplies for Jonny and for tickets to a Blue Man Group show. They're performing in Charlotte, N.C., on Derrick McFarland's birthday. She wanted to surprise him with tickets.

But Saturday night Derrick was excited about a trio of motorcycles he'd found, Cindy McFarland recalled. Actually, they were three partial motorcycles. He planned to use them to build himself a bike. He wanted to know if she wanted to go with him to see the bikes after they got off work. A nurse called him away, so he had to break off the conversation.

"I was going to talk to him later, but I never did," Cindy McFarland said.

But they did have time to say goodbye.

"Conversations always ended with an 'I love you.' There was always that there."