Aubrey Louis Goodman, Jr.

Aubrey Louis Goodman, Jr. November 2, 1934 – September 28, 2007 Aubrey Louis Goodman, Jr., 72, an author, passed away September 28, 2007. Funeral services will be 1 p.m. Sunday at Rodef Sholom Cemetery with Rabbi Mordecai Rotem officiating. There will be no formal visitation with the family, but a register book will be available at Wilkirson Hatch Bailey. Aubrey was born on November 2, 1934. He attended Waco public schools before attending Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He was graduated cum laude in 1952. After graduating from Yale University in 1955, Aubrey went to Paris, France, to complete his novel, The Golden Youth of Lee Prince, published by Simon & Schuster. Aubrey was predeceased by his father, Dr. Aubrey L. Goodman, Sr., and his mother, Frances Reed Goodman. Aubrey Goodman, Jr., is survived by his sister, Terry Reed Goodman; his brother, Dr. James B. Goodman; cousins, Audre Jean Rapoport, and William B. Goodman of Berkeley California; and nephew-in-law, Nathan Andersen of Austin; and family friends, Sara Fentress Warren, Nancy Murrell Neuhoff of Dallas, and Helen Bible. Special thanks and recognition are in order for Dr. Gary K. Barbin and Dr. Robert Corwin, who provided medical care of the highest caliber. Additionally, special thanks and recognition are in order for the loving and professional care given by all the staff on the first floor of St. Catherine. Last year in 2006, Henry Spotswood Fenimore Cooper, in the 50th Yale Reunion Book, wrote as follows: Aubrey’s short stories, poems, and plays about Holden Caulfield types in college and afterward lit up our literary life at Yale like nothing else. He wrote a dazzling musical based on The Great Gatsby which played at the Dramat over our graduation weekend. Four years earlier, at Andover, Aubrey had written a similarly rollicking senior class musical, “Sons of Betsy.” Three years later, in 1959, he was our first classmate to publish a novel, The Golden Youth of Lee Prince. With its gilded cover, the book is about our generation in the first years after college. Aubrey was a student of his classmates. Had Fitzgerald collaborated with Salinger, they might have come up with something like it. Lee, a golden boy, was a sophisticated ex-preppy with a sardonic, laidback view of life, such as many of us may have aspired to being; he was “The Graduate” fifteen years ahead of his time. After several years in New York, where his apartment on East 80th Street was a hub for itinerant Gatsby, Caulfield, and Lee Prince wannabes, many from the Class of 1956, Aubrey decamped for Hollywood, where he spent most of the next decade, into the early Seventies. He wrote for television and the movies, including a screenplay for a film about Lee Prince, from which the following scene is taken. Any resemblance to anyone in our Class is purely coincidental. Now back in his native Waco, Texas, he has also written a poem for us at our 50th reunion, which follows the screenplay. Together, they present the young Aubrey and the old – but there is a happy similarity between the two. Honorary pallbearers are Andover Academy Class of 1952 and Yale University Class of 1956. The family invites you to leave a message or memory in our “Memorial Guestbook” at www.wilkirsonhatchbailey.com.