The Wisdom Project at Moment: Inspirational conversations with wise people who have been fortunate to live long lives
This week’s conversation is with Charlotte Goode, 97, of Albany, CA.
When Charlotte Goode turned 95 two years ago, her three sons wanted to help her establish a fund to support charitable causes of her choice. She knew just what she wanted to do. As a guardian ad litem in Florida for 30 years, Charlotte had advocated for children in the state’s courts. In that role, she saw women trapped in the cycle of poverty, often without the basics of food and shelter for their children. Charlotte knew that higher education was a way out of such dire circumstances, and yet she also realized that obtaining a degree required more than a tuition grant; support for key basic needs such as childcare and transportation was vital. She also strongly believed that these women needed mentors who could guide and encourage them.
So she and her family established the Charlotte and Hy Goode Family Fund Supporting Women’s Potential, part of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. With help from niece Bobbi Schmidt, who lives in Hartford, CT, they identified two organizations in the area with strong college-focused programs they could build upon: the Aurora Foundation for Women and Girls and the Charter Oak Cultural Center. With those partners, in January 2023 Charlotte’s vision became a reality.
The Goode Fund’s $1 million, four-year grant commitment to Aurora includes comprehensive support for individual women pursuing college degrees, including intensive mentoring and coaching. The grant currently supports six women at a time, adding new women as individual students graduate. The Charlotte and Hy Goode Family Fund is helping four more women through Charter Oak. The goal is for education to lead them toward economic independence. Besides tuition, childcare and transportation, the fund also helps with food, technology, housing, health services, mentoring and financial coaching.
The Goode Fund is the capstone of Charlotte’s long history of helping others. In Florida, she advocated for more than 400 children. Before that, she helped build what is today called the Cohen Children’s Medical Center at Long Island Jewish Hospital. She started her good works with Hadassah as a young mother in Queens.
Growing up in the Bronx, NY, Charlotte credits her parents, Anna and Max Langer, for inspiring her with their kindness and generosity. Having immigrated as children from Eastern Europe, Anna was a homemaker and Max was a fabric cutter in New York’s Garment District, after an early brief stint in a matzah factory. When the garment company her father was working for went out of business during the Depression, he founded his own company, which made blouses. He and Anna had three daughters and one son.
Charlotte graduated from New York University when she was 19, the same year she married Hy Goode, a junior sportswear manufacturer. She later earned her teaching degree at Queens College. She and Hy had three sons and were married for 74 years before Hy passed in 2019.
This year, KPIX, the Bay Area’s CBS News station, profiled Charlotte as a participant in a study on “SuperAgers.” The SuperAgers Family Study, led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Boston University’s School of Medicine is part of the American Federation for Aging Research’s SuperAgers Initiative. The study looks at the role DNA, lifestyle and other factors play in people who have lived very long lives and who continue to thrive. Moment wanted to know, what makes this SuperAger wise?
What wisdom have you acquired in your lifetime?
When I was 20, I thought I knew it all. At 97, I’m not sure of anything!
Have you enjoyed the ride?
I have enjoyed each phase of my life, except my teenage years. I had no sense of who I was then. I thought everyone was better and smarter than me. None of us know ourselves as teenagers.
Now on the other side, the best time of my life was when the kids were educated and out of the house and my husband and I could travel the world. We had a wonderful time. It’s a great time of life because you know what you can and can’t afford, you accept that neither of you is invincible and you completely accept each other for who you are.
Your life has spanned landlines to smart phones. How has technology changed it?
At first, we didn’t have a phone number. People called the candy store across the street. Someone would come running for you and say, “Mrs. Langer, there’s a telephone call for you.” Then, when we first had a telephone, it was a party line. If you picked up the phone and heard someone talking, you hung up and waited for them to get off and then you got on. When we got a [landline], you had to make long distance calls through the operator, at $4.00 a minute. It’s still hard for me to believe that you can just pick up a phone and dial, say, someone in Egypt.
How did your family survive the Depression?
It was a difficult time. My father had told his father he wanted to go to school and become a lawyer, and his father said, “You will lose your Yiddishkeit if you do that.” My father listened to him and kept his job cutting fabric. He was very religious and he would not work on Shabbat. When the Depression hit, his boss went out of business and my father had to look for work. Everywhere he went, he would have to work Saturday. So he went to his father again and said, “What do I do now?” And my grandfather said to him, “You have four children. As long as you have to support those four children, if you have to work on Shabbos, you work on Shabbos.” My father said, “Well, if I’m going to work on Shabbos, then I will go to work for myself,” and he started his own company.
There was one year when they had a very tough struggle. We had to move into a one-bedroom apartment with four kids. But my mother bought candles and on the window sill, she lined up little charity boxes to give to people. She sometimes could only afford to put a penny into each of the boxes. She would never light the Shabbos candles until she put something in the boxes for charity to somebody else.
Both my parents were very charitable; that was who they were. They were very kind and loving parents.
How did you sustain a loving marriage for 74 years?
We always had each other’s backs and we always could communicate with each other. We were true partners in every aspect of our life together. Hy continually helped me achieve my goals throughout our long and loving marriage.
What role does Judaism play in your life?
I believe there is someone who looks after me, and I will go to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but basically, I do not believe in organized religion because it’s all written by men. Although I am not a synagogue-going person, I do have a very spiritual feeling about it. My father was truly religious, but this was for him, not anybody else.
Was Hy also very religious?
My husband came from a nonreligious family and that bothered me at first. My father sat me down and said, “Listen, you were raised one way. He was raised another way. You can’t fault him for not feeling the way you do. You do what you want to do. He has to do what he wants to do.” My father was very pragmatic. I loved him dearly.
How did you meet Hy?
In high school, my friend Joan and I were in study hall one day, and she said the boy she was dating had a very nice friend and I should meet him. I was 14. Our first date was a disaster. We went ice skating on a frozen lake. I wasn’t a good ice skater. Hy was always a wonderful athlete, and he was a very good ice skater. By the time the skate ended, I didn’t want to ever see him again.
Nobody had any money, so a group of girls and boys would meet on Saturday afternoons at Poe Park in front of the cottage that Edgar Allan Poe had lived in. One day we all met there and then went to a flag-raising at a boy’s house. During World War II, they used to have flag raisings at private homes, and they would put a banner across the street that showed how many young men were in the service.
Hy was there and we talked and then started going out, but just as friends. We wrote letters when he went off to war. When he came home, I was dating other boys, and because he was my friend, I would tell him about my boyfriends.
What changed?
I was in college, and I had this very dear friend. She was more than just a dear friend. We met on the first day of college and became like twin sisters. She would say, “You’re going to marry Hy.” And I would say, “Babs, that’s never going to happen.” Then Babs was killed in an automobile accident. I was absolutely devastated. I was inconsolable. The night she passed, Hy was so kind to me and so caring. That’s when I fell in love with him. Marrying him was the most fortunate thing I’ve done in my life. I told my kids that the best gift I ever gave them was their father.
What other moments changed your life?
After I had my third son, I was listening to a radio program one day. A man was talking about the stock market. He got me thinking. Then another man, writing in the New York Post, kept touting some particular stocks. I had saved up $250. I bought five shares of Avon stock with it.
Between my husband’s manufacturing business, and some real estate investments and then my stock market stuff, we became financially secure.
As a court advocate in Florida, what did you do for the kids?
When a kid came into the court system, I was brought in. Very often I would advocate for the mother too, because many times a mother would have to go to social services. If she had no transportation to get there, I would drive her. If I saw that they needed some food in the house, I would bring them some food. Instead of meeting a child in the house she lived in, because the walls had ears, I would take her over to a mall and pick up a little something for her. When I first met a child, I had things in the trunk of my car like little cars, beads and crayons. The kids knew they could go to my car and pick out a ball or a small gift for themselves. They would get to know that I was on their side and that I was really interested in what they did. As time went on, I took training so I could become a surrogate mother. If a kid had real issues in school, I could represent the child there.
What did you tell the kids?
I never sugarcoated what they were going through. I could only help them go forward. I’d tell the teenagers that those years had been my hardest. You’re never satisfied with what you are. You think that everybody else is so much more together and has more [confidence] than you do.
I would tell the girls that the boys have raging hormones. They don’t know what to do with that and they’re going to all give you a line. If you decide that this is what you want to do, that’s fine, but don’t do it simply because you’ve been given a line. You have worth. Make sure that it’s right for you. And if you are ready to have sex, make sure that it’s protected sex.
I also told them, “It’s going to be hard for you sometimes, because you want to be loved. You feel that you haven’t been loved in many ways.” I was very honest.
And did they hear you?
Yes, once they trusted me.
How does someone establish trust?
By not being judgmental. By speaking to others in their language.
What inspired you to get involved?
Growing up, I saw my parents always helping others. And my husband was so supportive of me. I have always loved children. I think they’re being shortchanged now. They’re not quite getting the education that my children got. COVID has really been destructive for all these kids in one way or another. When I speak to kids now, they’re still struggling to get back to [real-time] social situations. They’re still on their phones and they don’t know how to get off of them. I think that social media and all these phones have created havoc for these children.
What do you think of America in this strange election season?
A: It’s not the golden age of the United States. I think the education system has become almost deplorable. College graduates who are left with debt for their schooling…it’s going to take them 20 years to get out of it. That’s horrible. I think what [vice presidential candidate Tim] Walz did as governor of Minnesota, giving every child a free meal, was important.
What really matters in life?
When Hy and I were young, we took my father’s car and had a fender bumper. When we got home, I said to my father, “Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I had an accident with the car.” Hy said, “I’m sorry. Whatever needs repair, I’ll take care of it.” And my father turned to him and said, “Hy, the car is a thing. As long as the two of you are okay. We have money to fix it. It’s a thing. It’s not important.” That stuck with me.
Years later, I’ve had no problem getting rid of things. When we moved here from Florida and I had to leave things behind, I could say, I thoroughly enjoyed all these things. Now, let them go to other people to enjoy.
What is the most important thing you’ve learned in your 97 years?
I believe being a mensch and always doing for others what you wish for your loved ones and yourself on a daily basis is most important.
What advice do you have for young people today?
Between cell phones, social media and COVID, I think many youngsters are missing out on interacting with their peers. They’re missing group friendships and learning to grow in understanding of themselves. Don’t miss out on conversations with each other! Nurture casual and growing friendships, appreciate them!
You’ve said that investing in Avon with $250 of your own money was an act that helped lead to a secure future for you and your family? Do you think all young people would do well to invest similarly?
Yes. I have insisted that every woman in the Hartford Aurora program must be given financial seminars. I believe it is never too early to start thinking of your extended future.
Charlotte Goode with her sons Ken, Steve and Barry (Credit: Bobbi Schmidt).
What has family meant to you?
It’s been the hub of my life. I have been truly blessed with three remarkable sons, loving in-laws and the most caring extended families on both maternal and paternal sides.
What strikes you as you look back on your life?
I could not have dreamt when I was young that I would have had the rich, full life that I’ve had.
What goes into creating a full and fulfilling life?
Loving others and being loved.
Top image: Charlotte and Hy Goode (Credit: Bobbi Schmidt).