For Roland Walker, it was a good life.

Walker came to Boston from Philadelphia to attend Boston State College. After college, he married and, with his wife, Gwendolyn, had three children: Angelica, Tyesha and, as Walker still refers to him, "little Roland."

Walker had a good job, working in Boston hospital operating rooms as an anesthesia technician. His wife and children were happy and healthy.

And then the life that took decades to build crumbled in a single year.

In 1995, Gwendolyn Walker died of cancer. As the family struggled with their loss, the three children went to visit relatives in North Carolina. Fire broke out at the house and took the lives of Tyesha, who was 9, and little Roland. He was 7.

"The only thing I wanted to do following my loss was just to die," Walker said, in an interview last fall. "The loss was almost unbearable. . . . I really fell apart."

In the months and years that followed, Walker struggled with grief and psychological problems compounded by alcohol. He eventually surfaced in a transitional program--and into the sphere of Macy DeLong '71.

"Macy was there, helping me pretty much all the way," Walker said.

In the process, he came to realize that it's okay to be sorrowful, but then there is a time to move on with life, he said. He made a conscious decision to focus on his surviving child, whom he calls Angel. DeLong did, too.

"Macy said, 'She'll come stay with me,'" Walker said.

Acknowledging that his daughter was not easy to get along with, Walker said DeLong gained her confidence and respect. Four years after losing three family members to tragedies and the fourth to his despair, Angel "aspires to be like Macy," Walker said. "Be something. Go to school. I believe she makes an excellent role model."

Last fall, Angel Walker was working part time for the Cambridge Furniture Bank. Roland Walker, 44, was working as a paid project manager, coordinating delivery of furniture and moving jobs. His day was spent answering phones, talking to warehouse workers and truck drivers via cell phone and radio. His fellow workers included Jack, who is 60 and has spent the last 10 years in shelters, and Kimberly, who left her husband and made her way to Solutions at Work. A former housemate of DeLong's, Kimberly works with the agency as an office manager but hopes to go back to work as a medical assistant.

Between the ringing of the phones, Walker said DeLong dispenses "a little sympathy and a lot of empathy. I say, she's not Mother Teresa, but she comes a lot before Princess Diana. She falls somewhere between them."