I was the youngest of four kids from Ginny Shore and Bob Goodman.Many great memories came from our lives together.
We all struggled through our parent’s divorce. What happened to our family is the reason that having a Life’s Calendar is a must for you to decide how your life turns out.
Our family of six lived in turmoil for a very long time. Avoiding the hell of divorce, with all of the emotional & confusing times that our family needed to endure was a mess, the loss of structure that came to our educations at school, as well as our six lives being torn apart into different residences at times had terrible consequences.
It took a huge effort to shorten this example of divorce on a family. This was incomplete, but in the interest of time, my use of the word hell should not be ignored.
My primary education with the support of my family made me see the value in life. I graduated from Barrington High School in 1985.
I joined the United States Army Reserve for a five year term after high school to find my way into adulthood. I graduated training at Ft. McClellan, Alabama as a military police officer.
President Reagan mobilized my MP unit overseas to Honduras for some time to help during the Iran / Contra affair.
After my training, I found myself following my older brother Scott’s passion to working hard and earning a living in different parts of the green industries.
We both interrupted our college educations by earning our way through college. We extend our goals in to include horticulture and landscape Architecture.
Scott and I worked together as Landscape Architects / contractors. Our individual family needs had us go in different ways after a decade.
I opened M. Goodman Landscapes and lead our team working as Landscape Architects and Contractors throughout Chicagoland. We installed pieces of people’s paradise for their homes. My primary goal at MGL was to create unique projects and install the very best that could be built for our client’s families.
During my training in the Army, I had a scare when one morning I couldn’t stand up from my bunk, after a few weeks in the Army hospital; I was able to get through to graduation as an MP.
The reason for my inability to walk and my dizziness couldn’t be explained by this Army hospital, so I returned to Chicagoland to a qualified hospital and doctor that gave me the news that I had Multiple Sclerosis commonly known as MS.
I was able to walk after therapy and medication brought me into my first marriage and father of four boys. They are now young men.
I was able to walk throughout most of my career and attended several professional business training classes. I chose a very interesting class about Giant tree moving. My career didn’t typically have anything to do with giant tree moving, but seeing a landscape crew successfully move an 80’ tall tree that weighed 80,000 pounds was intriguing for me.
M Goodman Landscapes was retained to move a 65’ tall Honey Locust for the Chicago Botanic Garden. I was forced to retire disabled shortly after this gigantic success.
I met my lovely wife Denise Goodman and we are living a great life in a temperature moderate place in southern California.