Week 9: Olive Goodykoontz: Change Agent

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Many years ago, the Chandler Arizonan ran a regular column called “Know Your Neighbor.” These articles most often featured elected officials, business and community leaders. However, communities like Chandler are filled with fascinating people. Everyone has a story to tell, and if you stop to get to know your neighbors you might be surprised by their story. They may have had a part in changing the world for the better. Former Chandler schoolteacher Olive Goodykoontz was just this kind of person.

Olive was born in Grant County, Indiana, on March 17, 1906, to Von and Myrtle Goodykoontz . She was raised alongside two younger brothers, Harold and Kent, and the family's boarder, Mildred, who took the Goodykoontz name. In 1926, Harold developed respiratory problems and the family decided to move to Arizona because the clear dry air was considered a "cure.” They sold their farm and drove to Arizona, stopping to visit relatives along the way.

The family had no jobs or home waiting for them when they arrived in Arizona so they settled in a temporary camp in Mesa. Von and the two boys sought temporary work at the State Fairgrounds while the family looked for a new farm. Olive applied for teaching work in Chandler but was informed that she needed more training in order to be certified as a teacher in Arizona.

The Goodykoontz family arrived too late in the year for Olive to enroll in Tempe State Teachers College, known today as ASU.  Olive got a job working at the San Marcos Hotel where, according to her journal, she “fixed salads, relishes etc.” earning $60 a month.  She wrote “The help at the hotel is very interesting. Some of them swear quite a bit. I just simply can’t get used to it. Some of the boys are Koreans. Others are Phillipeanos (sic). One waitress is [Jewish]. Today we packed 36 lunches besides our other work.”

In 1927, Olive enrolled and earned her teaching certification. By the time she graduated, Olive's family had settled on a new farm in Chandler. Olive was first offered a teaching job in Goodyear, but ultimately accepted a job teaching in Chandler. She continued to teach in the Chandler school district off and on throughout the rest of her life. She taught various grades at the elementary and high school levels as well as the occasional music class. She also supervised the baseball team's away games, serving as chaperone on their trips.

In the late 1930s she began spending part of her summers as a relief worker with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization. She was assigned to a work camp in the Kentucky and Tennessee backwoods where her group rehabilitated an old schoolhouse. She began as a regular worker but was soon promoted to the camp's co-director.

Immediately after World War II, relief workers were desperately needed in Europe. The AFSC requested that Olive go to Germany to help with the rebuilding efforts there.

Upon her arrival, the situation was overwhelming.  Olive, however, rolled up her sleeves and went to work, and was soon named section leader. She quickly warmed to her work in Europe and to life in Germany among other relief workers, eventually becoming the highest ranking female in the AFSC mission. After AFSC work in Germany ended, she continued to visit the country as often as she could while continuing to assist AFSC’s relief efforts all over the world.  For a rural farm girl who had intended to settle down as soon as possible, she ended up being constantly on the move and involved in world affairs while living quietly as an unmarried schoolteacher in Chandler.

Much of what we know about Olive’s extraordinary life comes from her diaries, in which she recorded her daily activities from 1926 into the 1970s, and which are archived at the Chandler Museum.