You are the 2nd Goodman heard from in this multi-faceted discussion. As with the words of your Aunt Vicki, you have showed the 4 C’s; candor, class, conscience, and character. Thanks for your thoughtful post. As I said in a prior post, nothing I see, hear or read will dim, in my mind and heart, the legacy of the Goodman Family. As I write, they are singing “What A Beautiful Day” on my other computer. My brother got to know your mom and dad very, very well, and stayed as a guest in the home several times. He has said to me many times through the years what absolute class Christians your parents were. He respected and valued your dad more than most any other man he ever got to know.

Your honesty to us all was fresh and refreshing. Please ignore the many hurtful comments, and know that thousands like myself will always value the memories and the music of the HGF.

I daresay that most of us, and by us I mean humankind that extends far beyond those of us who cast our lot with traveling bands of singers and musicians, are part of a family that is at best a motley crew. A random sampling of our dna pools reveals a mixture of salt of the earth grannies, uncles who drink too much, worthless brothers-in-law, hucksters, hard workers, Sunday School teachers, doctors and dock workers, you name it, we’ve got it. Do I agree with everything my family was or is or does or represents? Certainly not, and I’m not just referring to public life. We all know that on any given day we are convinced that certain of our family members MUST have been switched at the hospital, they cannot possibly be the flesh of our flesh. Do I love my family? Absolutely! I pray for them, encourage them and from time to time mutter under my breath that I must be the only sane person I know.

In the nearly 48 years I’ve been around, I’ve also come to know that little change is wrought in people’s character by our rebuke, whether gentle or harsh, well meaning or mean-spirited. That is work best done by someone with a much higher authority than you or me. Still, there seems to be a dark side to all of us that revels in casting about hoping to dredge up some flaw in someone else in order to push back our own creeping dread that we ourselves are flawed beyond redemption. I’m sure some of the comments made here are well meaning and come from a pure heart, some are merely thinly veiled professional jealousy. I confess, I’ve read some of these threads and nodded along smugly. God forgive me…

In the last year or so of my life, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time asking God to fix what is broken in me. Be careful what you wish for; it’s tedious work. On a good day it causes me to look at the world around me differently, with a little more compassion. Lest you think I’m waxing self righteous, remember I did say a LITTLE more compassion. My advice to us all? Pick your prophet, Bradford or Urban, and try to remember their words “but for the grace of God, there go I.”

It was my father and four friends and these sincere Christian men were human and wanted better for themselves and their families. It didn’t work out in the end just like it doesn’t work out for 99% of those who have the dream, but it was part of the reason they sang.

Avery, as usual, hit the nail on the head just my father used to hit a railroad spike.

But have a little mercy on these folks and others who picked Gospel Music as a career. The neo-Platonic, Sacred/Secular division in the evangelical church (Heaven help me, I’m talking like Doug!) made it virtually impossible for them to pursue any other artistic track. Some might have gone into Country music, but that was secular music…thought to be wicked and worldly by church folk.

For decades the Church retreated from the secular arts. For instance, if you were a Christian who played electric guitar in the early 1960’s you had a big problem — you couldn’t play your guitar in the vast majority of churches, but you couldn’t pursue a “secular” career either without getting hateful notes from busybody, old church women that usually started with “In Christian love….

Something to remember: the great hymn writer Fanny Crosby wrote as many secular songs as hymns. And no one gave it a second thought at the time….