Goodwin's Motor Group

transcribed by Brandon Carter
Coastal Journal Staff

I've lived in Brunswick all my life, it's a great place to live, always has been.  It used to be an old mill town with a bunch of a tenements and a substantial French-speaking population.  Now it's got a vibrant downtown, and you hardly ever hear anyone speaking French!  Except maybe the summ aer time . . . . 

I count myself lucky.  All my family's here, including nine grandchildren that keep me busy.  I have a son who is a lawyer and a son and a daughter working in the Goodwin Motor Group, a business I inherited from my father in 1960.  He started the business in 1932 as a small Chevrolet dealership, and he turned everything over to me after I graduated from Bowdoin, which was fine by me.  It was a relief to be running my father’s business instead of getting stuck in Vietnam.  I narrowly missed being drafted, serving six months of reserve duty from November of 1961 to 1962 instead.  Worst six months of my life.    

I graduated from Bowdoin with a degree in Economics in 1960, and there were some other now prominent figures there at the time:  I knew Bill Cohen, he was class of '62, George Mitchell was before either of us, class of '54.  I enjoyed my time at Bowdoin, but I have to say, I didn't learn much by way of skills useful to me in this business.  The one thing I did learn that's been useful was double-entry manual accounting (laughs).  If you can keep your own books, you'll save yourself some trouble!

 I enjoy giving back to this community.  I love kids and I love sports, so running the Babe Ruth League right here in Brunswick is something I've gotten a lot of fulfillment out of.  I like knowing that if you've ever played little league baseball in this town, chances are I had something to do with it!

Service to this community is a tradition in this family and we’d like to keep it that way.  My father built the Tontine Mall building way back in 1927, before he owned Goodwin's.  It was in a different location then, but the building itself is still there.  Other than my father, the person I've looked to the most as an example of a community leader is Dick Morrill from Downeast Energy.  Excellent business man, generous, great community leader.  They've been around since 1908.  Good business and a strong sense of family and community go hand in hand.  If you treat your business and your community like it’s your own family,  you’ll be successful, and you’ll be successful knowing you did it the right way.

We just had our 75th anniversary in August, and pretty soon I'll be looking to hand over the business to my children Kathy and Robert, the two who are already in the company.  As for myself, I stay pretty active.  I still play basketball regularly.  Matter of fact, I play in the Maine Senior Olympics in Louisville, Kentucky whenever I can.  It's an elimination tournament; we did pretty well last year, we were 3-1.  And of course, my grandchildren keep me active.

Like I said, I'm a lucky guy.  When people ask me why I’ve always chosen to live here, the answer's simple:  Brunswick's tough to beat!