William G. Goodness

William G. Goodness passed peacefully from this beautiful life Saturday September 28, 2024. He fantasized about meeting his maker at the business end of gun held by a crazed, jealous husband. He told this joke often when contemplating his inevitable end. But fate had other plans. Contrary to his wishes, William passed peacefully in his favorite chair, taking his last breaths, surrounded by laughter and love.

Born April 25, 1926, William (Bill) Goodness lived for a robust 98 years. He was born in the roaring 1920s, listened to the birth of jazz music, danced to the Glen Miller orchestra during the big band era, saw the development of the first automobiles, loved his favorite programs on the radio and eventually watched our nation suffer through the Great Depression. As a child, he watched the first Steamboat Willie cartoons in the movie houses. As a young man, he heard the news of Amelia Earhart flying across the Atlantic, listened to Roosevelt declare war against Japan and enlisted in the US Navy after his brother was injured in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

He served in the US Navy as a gunner’s mate in the Naval Armed Guard during WWII in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and Caribbean. After the war, he sailed the Pacific around China and Japan. He ventured to the farthest corners of our corner-less world and was in awe of our beautiful planet and its peoples. The naïve young man who entered the war never returned. In his place was a new man, intent on seeing more of the wonders of this world.

After the war, Bill attended UW Madison to study accounting, earning his Master of Accounts degree in Business Administration in 1952. His mind wasn’t always in the books though. He managed time to sneak away to visit the love of his life, Kathleen Kollock in Bancroft, Wisconsin, and to work on the family farm on weekends, to show his future father-in-law that he was as good with a pitchfork as he was with numbers. He married Kathleen on June 16, 1951, and they created an amazing life together for 57 years until Kathleen passed in 2009.

Through their love, Bill and Kathleen raised ten children, showing by example, what it means to live a life dedicated to duty, responsibility and sacrifice, bound together by faith and love. Bill was immensely proud of his family and was happiest when surrounded by the almost deafening noise of the family he had fathered and nurtured. This happiness was perhaps only surpassed by the sound of peace and quiet he enjoyed after they had all gone home.

Bill loved to travel and explore the world. Whether in a car, travel trailer, naval vessel or on a cruise ship, Bill traveled to more than 70 countries and loved sharing the adventures of his travels.

In WWII, Bill crossed the freezing Atlantic on a Navy destroyer in 100-foot seas, witnessed Antwerp, Belgium after the Battle of the Bulge, negotiated with a tribal chief in Guyana for bananas, charmed the ladies in Shanghai and went swimming on deserted beaches in northern Africa.

Bill hunted elk and caribou in Wyoming, fished for salmon and halibut in Alaska, climbed the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, crossed the equator in the vast Pacific Ocean, whispered prayers into the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, danced the tango in Buenos Aires, rode in a classic 1950’s car in Cuba, had dinner at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, watched the ballet in St. Petersburg Russia, hiked the pyramids in Mexico, stood in awe with tears in his eyes under the Sistine Chapel in Rome, sailed across lake Titicaca in Peru, watched an opera at the Sydney Opera House, traveled on a Veteran’s Honor Flight to Washington DC., spent his winters in Costa Rica and even got a tattoo in Bora Bora at the age of 86.

If you’ve read this far, he’d want you to know that traveling was one of his great joys. His email signature read simply “Travel while you can. Caskets don’t have wheels.”

Bill was born in 1926, a time when most rode a horse and buggy. His last car ride was with his grandson in a self-driving Tesla. He talked about it for weeks in total awe. He saw the invention of television, witnessed man propelled by rockets into space and landing on the moon, and watched the world transformed by the internet and the prospects of artificial intelligence. He had as many social media accounts as a teenager and was known to text family members in other rooms of the house to bring him a snack or ask what was for dinner.

His was a life well lived.

Despite his age, Bill was never old a single day of his life.

Bill was a storyteller. Indeed, he was a master joke teller. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he could recite from memory, tens of thousands of jokes and stories without ever missing a punchline. If you engaged in conversation with Bill for more than five minutes, you would inevitably hear the telltale cue that a joke was coming. “That reminds me of a story,” he would say. Those six simple words were your ticket to a minimum of two or three jokes that would leave you laughing long after the joke was over.

It has been said that a gentleman is a man who makes others feel truly welcome in his presence. If this is true, then Bill was the among the most generous of gentlemen, because no one ever felt unwelcome around him.

Bill was a gift to his family and friends. His simple humility and loving kindness touched so many, and his jokes and stories filled our lives with laughter.

William Goodness left us at the age of 98, but he is not gone. As Terry Pratchett writes in the Reaper Man. “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up, winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested.”

We die once when our heart stops and we take our last breath. But we live on in those who remember us.

Those who love with their eyes, see that death takes our loved ones from us forever and we are sad. But we who love with our hearts know that those we love, remain with us until our last breaths.

Dad…here you will always be. Unchanged. Forever remembered. Forever laughing. Forever loved.

Some men die and leave great riches.

Other men die and leave great legacies.

Our dad died and left us with great stories.

Stories of a life well-lived; stories that remind us of how good life can be when we choose the right person to live life beside us; stories that teach us how to live simply, with a smile on our face and in the pursuit of other people’s happiness.

Bill lived the life of many men. There was scant little left in his bucket before he kicked it.

We should all be so lucky.

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The family of Bill Goodness extends their gratitude to friends far and wide who have shared their sympathies and offered their condolences. Bill’s remains will be laid to rest at St. Martin’s Cemetery in Bancroft, Wisconsin during a private family service.

An informal Celebration of Life will be held to remember Bill Goodness on November 30, 2024 from 2pm till 8pm at the White House of Wisconsin Rapids at 820 First Street North, in Wisconsin Rapids, WI.

Friends and family are invited to join us as we celebrate and remember this remarkable man. Join us for an afternoon and evening of laughs, stories and shared admiration for Bill Goodness, who touched our lives in countless ways.