Rachael Goodwin, 87, a former flower show judge, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday, April 3, in Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. Mrs. Goodwin’s fascination with flowers befitted a Kansas girl who grew up in the dust bowl years and matched a personality as sunny as a daisy. “She was the eternal optimist, I guess you could say. She was the type of person who never got mad at you,” said her daughter Suzanne Goff. The former Rachael Duesing sang duets with her twin sister on local radio stations in the 1930s and for most of her life was involved in one church choir or another, her daughter said. She met Stanley E. Goodwin at a clothing store during her junior year at Kansas State University, from which she graduated in 1938 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She married Goodwin the next year and worked for small-town newspapers until her husband joined the Army during World War II and served in the South Pacific. Mrs. Goodwin traveled often with her husband after the war, partly because he remained in the Army for a few years and partly because of a later engineering job that moved the couple from Colorado to Nebraska to the Chicago area. As they went, Mrs. Goodwin became involved in just about every organization whose membership was open to women: university women’s clubs, current events groups and the like, her daughter said. By the mid-1950s and early 1960s, her interest in horticulture had developed into an avocation. By the 1970s, Mrs. Goodwin was judging flower shows around the Midwest. Though she stopped judging on a regular basis about five years ago, she continued to host gatherings of other flower lovers in her home in Luther Village in Arlington Heights, where she and her husband moved in 1990. The couple, at Mrs. Goodwin’s instigation, joined an acting troupe for senior citizens. Mrs. Goodwin tended to an elaborate flower and vegetable garden on the retirement village’s grounds. Mrs. Goodwin is also survived by a son, Richard; and three granddaughters. A funeral service has been held.
