Three days after Daniel Goin died in his sleep at his home on Amos Street last month, the people who run the Dwyer & Vanderbilt Funeral Home had a problem. The turnout for the wake was immense. The parking lot was full. Broadway was choked.

Nobody did an official head count, but the overflow crowd just kept growing, mourners arriving in waves to honor the 58 years of life of a devoted hockey father, a playful soul and one of the best customers Bellas restaurant will ever have. Two eggs Sunnyside up, crisp bacon and wheat toast – that was Dan Goin’s stock order, as unwavering as his love of the New York Rangers.

“I had no idea how many people’s lives he touched,” said Elisabeth Merrill, Goin’s wife and the mother of their four children: Veronica, 22; Patrick, 20; Dana, 17 and Keira, 15.

The outpouring continues for Goin, who lived in Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow for 30 years. Lives begin and lives end in every community, every day. It is the natural order of things. Still, it is not often you see an outpouring of this depth and breadth, all of it for a man who died suddenly and lived unpretentiously, in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, one of his heroes.

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there,” Roosevelt once wrote.

Goin, an avid reader of American history (Dutch, a memoir of Ronald Reagan, was the last book he read), had his own sayings to live by. “What’s the worst that can happen?” was one of them. “Take the high road” was another. He and Elisabeth moved here from Florida in 1980 with a plant, two dressers and a cat named Max. Money was so tight they weren’t sure they could make it. Things are tight again, Dan having lost his job over a year ago. He somehow stayed playful, and upbeat. His favorite TV show was “Family Guy” and Elisabeth often feigned annoyance at him for being the eternal teenager; Dan was six-feet and 150 pounds, no matter what he ate.

One night during a recent snowfall, Dan called daughter Dana over to the window. Amos Street was quiet, and blanketed it in white.

“It feels like we’re in our own little snow globe,” Dan said.

All the kids have vivid memories of their father chasing them around the house, demanding a hug and kiss as a toll if they wanted to pass by. When she was five, Veronica wrote a note that said, “Dear Dad, I love you like crasy (sic) even though you drive me crasy I still love you.”

Keira, a gifted hockey player, recalls long car trips filled with strategic talks and her father’s goofy singing.

“You were the most playful adult I have ever known,” Dana wrote to Dan in a letter she read at the wake.

Kevin Cunningham is the coach of Keira’s team, the New Jersey Selects.

“ Dan was, without a doubt, the best that anyone could ever ask for in a hockey parent; supportive, caring, patient and understanding,” Cunningham said. “He loved all the girls so much.”

Before Goin was even gone for a day, the kindnesses from neighbors and friends began. People Elisabeth hardly knew dropped off food and supplies. People brought dinners, shopped, cleaned the house. Bob Balog, who went to Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx with Dan, read a moving tribute at the wake, then drove Patrick back to Plattsburgh State, where he’s enrolled in college, a few days later.

Other friends arranged for a trust fund to help the family meet expenses (see accompanying box). Everybody, it seemed, did something.

“The outpouring has been has been amazingly helpful,” Elisabeth said. “It’s been a godsend, really.”

For years, Dan’s computer screensaver said, “Convert adversity into opportunity through perseverance.” That was still on the screen on January 15, the morning his heart gave out. Elisabeth and the kids are struggling to persevere through pain that never seems to let up. People say that time will help heal it; Dan would want them to look at it that way.

Through all their years together, the Goin/Merrill family has had a secret tradition. At the kitchen table, they will whisper to one another, “Yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever, I love you.” They are trying to hold onto that. They are fortified by the things friends have done, and by the memory of people cramming into a funeral home to pay respects to a skinny, silly, big-hearted man who lived in the moment and was sure that tomorrow would be better.

In the darkest days of their lives, it is a light and comforting thought. Or as Patrick told his father at the wake, “Pops, you should see how many people are here for you.”