Jerry Goodwin: 'Pushing for Selma'

Published Sunday, August 3, 2008

They have lived through the Great Depression, spent hours at the local USO entertaining the troops and writing V-Mails to a special someone during World War II. They were Red Cross volunteers during the Korean Conflict; they agonized over the Vietnam War; rejoiced when Russia’s wall went down; and deplore the so-called anti-terrorism campaign being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, praying daily for the safety of their loved ones involved.

They are women of the so-called “older generation.” They are women in their “golden years” and enjoying them. They are women who have remained active, involved in their communities and the seceding generations of their families. And they are women whose caring contributions to the welfare of Selma have made a positive difference.

Jerry Hubbard Goodwin was born 87 years ago in Chilton County, “just call me an ex-peach,” she is fond of saying. After graduating from Jemison High she moved to Oklahoma City, where she lived with a cousin, Judge Paul Murrah, the youngest Federal Judge in Oklahoma, and worked in his office after college classes. Returning to Alabama and Fort McClellan for employment with the National Youth Administration, she met the man who was to be her husband.

“I came home and one day I saw a handsome man in a blue suede jacket, an All-American man. He ‘wowed’ me! He had come from Pennsylvania to McClellan as a civilian and he was my boss.”

They met in September 1940, married April 24, 1941 at the Methodist Church in Anniston and two months later he joined the Army Air Corps for training as a glider pilot. And Jerry Goodwin returned to her parents in Clanton and the 1943 birth of her daughter Patty (Sexton). Her other daughter, Kay (Alsobrook), was born in 1944.

Jerry Goodwin recalls those WWII days: “I was a war bride, worried about Earl, especially when I read about the part Earl and gliders were taking in the war. (He flew the largest number of missions in the squadron.) So I nursed two babies, very active babies and wrote V-Mails daily.”

A highly decorated Earl Goodwin came home from the war in 1945 and with his childhood friend Bill Sweeney began looking for a place to start a concrete block business. The American economy was picking up and Selma Chamber of Commerce President Hunt Frasier sold the two on Selma, one of the first places they looked.

“They chose 1910 Selma Avenue and the Selma Concrete Blocks Company was born.”

After several moves due to the post-wartime housing shortage, the young Goodwin family found a place to settle until finally building a house on Agee.

Jerry Goodwin was soon involved in the community. An active member of the American Legion Auxiliary she chaired the Poppy Sales, did charity work for the children of Selma including the Gift Tree each Christmas, served as Blood Drive chairman and was an officer with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary.

“We were members of Church Street United Methodist Church that was always doing something for the community and I was helping. That was where I had coffee with ‘Shug’ Jordan one day, when he was here to visit friends and family and I was cooking hotdogs and hamburgers at the church for the children’s meeting,” she recalls.

“Just ask me about our school involvement,” she says, with another of her infectious laughs. “I was a PTO officer at Byrd School, then Edgewood, then Selma Junior High and then high school. Looking back 40 years I swear I was secretary and president at least twice of every PTO. And it was always my job to beg merchants to contribute to special school activities.”

In 1953 Bush Hog was founded and she began to travel around the United States with her husband, where “I was pushing Selma and car pooling for Earl.”

Her first experience in politics came in the campaign of Bernard Reynolds for Dallas County Probate Judge when she cut a tape for him at the request of Amasa and Kathryn Windham. “My first personal political campaign came at Jemison when I ran for ninth grade president on the Republican ticket. My boyfriend beat me. That was my only Republican experience,” she says, laughing at the memory, “except for “I Like Ike!”

“As a Democrat I have been involved in a number of political campaigns in addition to Earl’s. These include Jim Allen, governor; Chris Heinz, mayor; Joe Smitherman, mayor, and George Wallace, governor. It’s Yellow Dog all the way.”

Her life was has not been all politics. Earl Goodwin was president of Civitans International, so she joined the Auxiliary, traveled with him and supported his business career. He was also vice president of the Selma Cloverleafs Baseball Team after Maurice Bloch brought them to Selma and Jerry Goodwin made fast friendships with some of the players who still keep in touch with her. Always a baseball fan, she says “some of my best years have been seeing my grandsons play sports.”

Earl Goodwin was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1976 and Jerry became, she says, “a real political wife. I met wonderful people: Crum Foshee, Lurleen Wallace, Jerry Beasley, and Bobby Timmons, secretary to Alabama Sheriffs Association, who sends every Christmas an addition to the wonderful collection of cookbooks he started for me.”

The cookbooks are shelved in the comfortable house on the hill, the Goodwin home for a number of years and since the death of the senator in October 2003, that of Jerry and her companions Carolyn Moton, Beverly Spears and Angie Garrett, sisters, and Rosa Milhouse. “They make it possible for me to have an independent and pleasant lifestyle.”

Mounted on one wall of the living room are an enormous Sailfish and two record bass, trophies from one of her favorite hobbies. And everywhere there are photographs of her two daughters, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Two years ago her two older granddaughters, took her to Macy’s Christmas Parade and a four-day stay in New York. “It was wonderful!”

Jerry also enjoys her Bluebird family nesting outside and the humming birds at the four feeders.

“At the end,” she says, with the sweet smile so characteristic of her friendly persona, “it’s been a good life. I’ve been blessed and I am grateful that I can still enjoy my friends, family and community. And most of all, the bright spot in my daily life, Chipper, my four-year-old Pomeranian and my best friend.”