Roger Goad, 68, of Ringgold, Georgia, passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, on April 9, 2018.
Roger was a beloved husband, father, brother and uncle. Mr. Goad was a general contractor and owner of Goad, LLC. Goad had a hand in building or renovating everything from The Chattanooga Choo Choo to United States Embassies around the world. His work took him to Korea, Germany, Cuba, Belgium, Russia, Italy, and Bulgaria- just to name a few.
He had a love of life like no other and was one of the best storytellers to ever live. For that reason, surviving family members Deborah Goad (wife), Stacey Goad (daughter), and dozens of nieces and nephews hope you will join us in a Celebration of Life on May 12, at the Ringgold Depot from 3pm-7 p.m. The Depot is at 155 Depot Street, Ringgold, Ga. 30736, 706 935-3061.
Bring your best story about Roger. For once, instead of Roger telling the stories, we’ll be telling stories about him. From 5-7 p.m., we will be telling stories of (five minutes or less) about the hilarious, the ambitious, the maddening, the loving, and the unforgettable Roger Goad.
This event is very similar to Carapace, an event Roger loved in Atlanta. We hope you’ll join us and tell a big one for Rog! These stories will be recorded to treasure forever. Roger told his life story best. Thanks to the talent of Randy Osborne (co-founder of Carapace), Roger’s story made its way into the East Atlanta Patch in 2012.
Faces of Carapace: Roger Goad, far from Hobo Jungle
Storyteller Roger Goad talks about Hobo Jungle, fatherhood and love.
When his alcoholic father died of tuberculosis, 10-year-old Roger Goad, the seventh of seven kids, found himself in even more abject poverty than before. “He beat my mother, and he beat us kids, but she loved him desperately,” Goad says, faltering. “Within a year (of his death), she had a complete breakdown.”
The family’s descent had begun before Roger was born. His parents sold their farm and moved into the city: Louisville, Ky., where his father started drinking and “we never had anything again,” says Goad.
“I hated living in housing projects – poor, slummy neighborhoods,” he says. “I ran with gangs of boys. When you live in places like that, you have no choice, in order to survive.”
His “street punk” past – there was “trouble with the law” – is all but impossible to recognize in the happily settled general contractor in Ringgold, Ga., married for 40 years. Regulars at Carapace still talk about Goad’s riveting story about his wife Deborah’s brush with death in 1976 (see link at bottom). Goad delivered the last tale last August with an expertise honed from boyhood, as he made his way amid bigger, louder siblings.
“You had to speak up if you wanted to be heard,” Goad says. “You had to jump in there and do it.”
“Most of my heroes are women”
After his father’s death and his mother’s mental collapse, young Roger found himself “just walking the streets,” For a while he stayed with an aunt and uncle on their farm, milking cows and picking tobacco. “We worked really hard, all day long, but we would laugh and talk,” he says. “To me, it was wonderful, I never wanted to leave.”
His older sisters had scattered, except for the twins, then teenagers. “They were out running around, doing their thing.” He says. “When you’re 14, 15 years old in that world, you’re basically an adult.” His brother had joined the military before graduating high school.
“It was a very difficult life for all of us, especially my mother,” Goad says. “Very few men say the heroes of their lives are women. I have several heroes in my life, and most of them are women. It’s difficult for me to say sometimes, because men are not expecting you to say that, but I say it very proudly.”
Another sister had married and lived in California; when Roger and his mother ended up there, he says, “Our lives completely changed.” With awe, he recalls opening a drawer to find “socks, underwear, everything folded nice and neat. I hadn’t seen that in a long, long time. I’m 62 years old now, and I still have that feeling.” His brother-in-law taught him to water ski on Lake Tahoe.
Goad’s job as a contractor has taken him all over the world, renovating American embassies in remote places, following orders to travel as needed, chasing the money that once had been so rare.
“My wife told me I could have 20 billion dollars in my hip pocket, and I’d still be the poor little boy from the projects,” he says, Deborah also threatened to have his often-used phrase, “I’ve gotta go,” framed and hung on their wall. “But I wasn’t going out of her life. I was going to make her life better. That was my intent.” He pauses. “It wasn’t always the case, but that was my intent. We’ve had many rounds, many ups and downs, but we’ve stuck it out.”
The topic of children arose early on. Absolutely not, Roger said. To a child of poverty, children mean one thing: more porverty.
They had been married nine years before they took their first vacation, spending a full month on their round-trip by car to Quebec, Canada. “It was something I’d never done in my life,” he says. “A vacation was something somebody else did.” When they got back, Deborah was pregnant. Of course, she was afraid to tell Roger. But he was “tickled” at the news, and calls his previous stance “crazy.”
“A very fortunate person”
Their only child is Stacey, also a storyteller at Carapace events. “By the time she was 14 years old, she had been to 14 different countries,” Goad says. At every opportunity, he flew his family to wherever in the world he had been assigned. Stacey has traveled plenty on her own, too. “She taught English in Nepal when she was 19 or 20 years old, lived in a little hut, all that kind of stuff,” Goad says. “She knows what porverty and difficulty is, firsthand, through seeing it.” But not, Goad made certain, through experiencing it the way he did, shuffling through the Louisville streets, hanging out with vagrants and listening to their stories in what was known as Hobo Jungle.
“I told Stacey when she was in sixth or seventh grade, and we started talking about college, that I wanted her to have the street sense I got through living my life, and I wanted her to have the education to do something about it,” he says. “I said, ‘I want you to be able to sit on a bucket with the hoboes and be a big hit, or go to dinner with ambassadors and be a big hit,” just as her father has done, against huge odds.
Goad chokes a little when he looks back. “I think of all the people who came to my rescue, who loved me and took care of me,” he says. “I’m just a very fortunate person.”
Follow the link to read his story and hear one of Roger’s true-life stories.
https://patch.com/georgia/eastatlanta/bp--faces-of-carapace-roger-goad-far-from-hobo-jungle