Roanoke’s newest Woodman Hometown Hero grew up in East Alton, Illinois, and worked as a manager of pipe and tobacco shops which ultimately lead him to move to VA Beach. In July of 1974 he took a position with Spencer’s gifts in Roanoke, a job that he unfortunately lost six months later. He remained unemployed over the next year and thus began his education about the less fortunate.
Our Hero lived on Day Avenue and struggled to make ends meet but he eventually landed a job with C&P Telephone Company (later AT&T) and began to attend classes at VA Tech. During this time he spent some time working in Miami, but returned to Roanoke where he completed his Associate Degree in General Studies.
When he returned he began to attend Unitarian Universalist Church where he has been a member for 40 years and where he began to come to RAM House as part of a group of volunteers from his church who serve on Saturdays.
This began a life of service to RAM House, as well as several other organizations. One morning he saw some children in Rocky Mount waiting for the bus and noticed that they needed hats and gloves, so he began to donate those through Child Advocacy in Franklin County. From there his service grew as he began to help with the weekend food backpacks for children through Family Preservation. He also began to donate hats and gloves to RAM House and to TAP HeadStart.
Since his retirement, our hero has become a bargain hunter extraordinaire and is recognized at the Dollar Tree as the guy who buys all their hats and gloves. He begins to buy them when they are on sale in the spring to save for the following winter. In addition he brings supplies of all types to RAM House on a weekly basis. When he gets the newsletter he looks at the list of needs and off he goes to see where he can find those needs at the best price. He says that now whenever he enters a store, he automatically scans the shelves to see what is a good bargain that RAM might be able to use.
Our Hero also donates for events for children at his church and donates at Christmas to the mitten tree and PHS students in need. As a CWA retiree, his group donates cash to RAM twice a year and other things during the year, such as paper products.
Our hero loves the internet because he can look up anything he wants to know about and he also likes to read non-fiction, since he is a content reader. One of his favorite books is “I Feel Guilty When I Say No” by Manuel Smith.
His name describes him. The Modern Woodman Hometown Hero for 2015 is John Goodhart.