Gutekunst

During Olive Goodykoontz's travels through Germany, she stopped for a day in a small town called Haiterbach.While there, she met a genealogist named Gottlieb Schübel whose wife's maiden name was "Gutekunst."While talking to Schübel, she learns that Haiterbach is the town the Goodykoontz family originated. The branch of the Gutekunst clan that immigrated to the U.S. "Americanized" the spelling of their name to "Goodykoontz" and it is through the Virginia branch that Olive's father Von descended.

Olive was like many post-war relief workers in that she learned the original spelling of her family's name while working in Europe. However, while many of those workers made the decision to change their family names back to the original spelling upon returned to the U.S., Olive kept the "Goodykoontz" spelling.

Schübel offered Olive a copy of her family coat of arms which she had duplicated for her cousin Jessie Goodykoontz who lived in Tucson. He informs her that there were 97 Gutekunsts in Haiterbach before the war began but only 74 post-war. The town's total population was 1,700.