Howard and Marie Goodhew
When a marriage lasts 59 years, you know there’s a powerful commitment at its heart. Howard and Marie Goodhew had a commitment to our community as well as to each other.
Howard’s sense of the importance of service was shape by his years in the military. A staff sergeant with the 10th Army, he fought in one of World War II’s most notorious battles: the Battle of Okinawa, the longest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. After the war, Howard continued to serve his community through politics—both as a three-time Republican candidate for mayor and as Mayor Lloyd Allen’s Superintendent of the South Bend Water Works—and also volunteered on numerous boards, including those of the South Bend Community School Corporation, the South Bend Public Library, Memorial Hospital, and the St. Joseph County Parks Foundation. Marie, a graduate of Oberlin College, was a librarian, a gourmet cook, a talented artist who taught china-painting classes in her home, and a loving mother to the Goodhews’ five children. The couple shared a passion for a number of local causes: senior citizens’ issues, environmental stewardship, the arts, and the importance of recognizing the contributions of America’s veterans.
In 2004, Howard and Marie met with Rose Meissner to discuss their charitable interests. They planned to include a bequest to the Community Foundation in their will to establish the Howard and Marie Goodhew Fund. Together, the Goodhews worked with Rose to craft a fund agreement that would benefit four local organizations—the South Bend Symphony, WNIT Public Television, the Center for History, and the Scholarship Foundation of St. Joseph County, where Marie had served as a board member and president—as well as a fifth, more general area: “protecting vulnerable senior citizens from dishonest and predatory practices and neglect. “
In that fifth portion of their fund agreement, the Goodhews trusted the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County to best use the earnings from the fund to fulfill their charitable intentions based on the challenges that our community’s seniors might face at any particular time.
The Goodhews crowned their long lives of active, involved good citizenship by creating a legacy that insures that the organizations and the issues that they cared about will be supported long into the future.