COVENTRY –– The scene at the Fogarty household yesterday was, in some ways, typical.

Children wandered in and out of the kitchen –– munching on sandwiches and gnawing on the day’s events.

A mother told her kids another old family saw.

And siblings traded the knowing glances that stitch together brother and sister.

But there was a great void in that house on Crestwood Road.

The man at the center of this sprawling family –– the man who fathered three children of his own and adopted eight more –– was gone.

Joseph Fogarty, 46, died in a head-on collision on Arnold Road Wednesday night.

And his wife and kids, left with little money and fewer prospects, were at a loss.

“It’s like a nightmare,” said his daughter, Tara Pappas, 26. “You’re waiting to wake up and see your dad.”

Coventry police, who are investigating the accident, said Fogarty’s pickup truck, traveling south, apparently crossed the double line at about 7:20 p.m. and collided with a tractor-trailer carting 10,500 gallons of home heating oil.

He was pronounced dead at Kent Hospital.

And his family is left to remember a man his son, Josh, 26, called a “working-class hero.”

Fogarty, one of seven children, grew up in a large, splintered family.

His sister Lee Worster said the siblings were split up at a young age –– Joseph, better known as Joe, staying with an aunt in Providence while she went to a grandmother’s house.

“It wasn’t easy,” Worster said, tears welling in her eyes as she sat at her late brother’s kitchen counter yesterday afternoon.

Family members said Joe, who never had anyone at his baseball games as a kid, was determined to be there for his own children.

And there he was.

After a difficult divorce from his first wife, he fought for and won custody of Tara.

Joe and his second wife, Kathleen, whom he married on Valentine’s Day in 1987, had two children of their own, Josh and Kayla.

And then Sam Mathias came into their lives.

Mathias’ father had been hit by a car and killed. He was struggling. And the Fogartys took him in.

Seven more adopted children would follow –– Jonathan, Sara, James, Vincent, Arianna, Tabitha and Krista.

They were Cambodian, Vietnamese, Dominican and white.

“We like to call it the League of Nations,” Kathleen Fogarty said.

Mary-Ann Jordan, a social worker with the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, said the Fogartys took “wonderful care” of their children.

“They were, as far as we’re concerned, one of the best foster families we’ve ever had,” she said. Some of the children were placed in foster care with the Fogartys for a short time before being legally adopted.

The family never had a lot.

But Joe’s wife and children said his capacity for self-sacrifice, his drive to provide, was staggering.

He would work three jobs, sometimes, to keep the family afloat –– driving trucks, working in warehouses, helping to manufacture the lining for underwear in an old factory.

“He’d pull up, hand me the paycheck and go back and work another 12 hours,” Kathleen said.

Sara, 17, remembered her father, out of work with a back injury, tearing up one day last year in his truck –– upset that he could not provide more for his children on Christmas.

But even in hard times, he would pay for the elderly couple waiting behind him at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through window, his family said.

The doughnut shop employees, who gave Krista, 2, a couple of munchkins every morning when Joe pulled up with his youngest in tow, pitched in and got him a $25 gift card recently.

It was his turn for a kind offering from strangers.

Fogarty’s children say their father, who wore long hair and always fretted when his daughters cut their own, was not the expressive type.

But he showed his love in other ways.

Josh said he played Pop Warner and high school football for five or six years and his father showed up for every game.

More recently, as he struggled through a divorce, Josh turned to his father for advice.

“He said, ‘No matter how much it hurts, you have to be happy,’ ” Josh recalled. “ ‘We want you to be happy.’ ”

And Joe would cook for hours on end for his family and friends –– lording over the grill in the backyard or taking over the kitchen stove.

“He cooked every Sunday and you knew he was cooking, so you just showed up,” Tara said. “And he joked, ‘What, did you smell it?’ ”

But Joe’s meatballs and homemade potato chips and curly locks are gone.

His 11 children and 4 grandchildren are stunned.

And his wife, who has worked outside the house only nine months in her life, is not sure what she will do.

“I’m 46 years old and the only thing I’ve ever been is a mom,” she said, breaking down.

The wake is Sunday. The funeral is Monday.

Melissa Babcock, Kathleen’s cousin, has set up a memorial fund for the family.

Checks can be made out to the Joseph Fogarty Memorial Fund and mailed to Citizens Bank, 1220 Main St., West Warwick, RI 02893.

dscharfe@projo.com