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Jack and Ann Daly Goodwin
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By Rebecca DeJarlais, Macalester College
For years, Jack and Ann Daly Goodwin have found ways to improve the world around them. From hosting 13 foster children, to volunteering, to teaching, the former journalists have never hesitated to reach into the local community. But on a global level, the Goodwins have found one of their most effective niches in hosting World Press Institute fellows the best opportunity, for them, to advocate WPI's mission.
“It’s the most important thing we can do for world peace, because when people understand each other, the prospect for peace escalates,” Ann said.
The Goodwins' involvement with WPI started in the 1970s. Jack, who helped start a weekly paper for his fellow troops in Germany during World War II, started working at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis just two weeks out of college and retired 41 years later. Ann taught journalism at three high schools and three colleges over the course of her career and also worked as an editorial writer and columnist at the Pioneer Press for eight years, winning the Walker Stone award for excellence in editorial writing.
Their backgrounds in journalism drew them to WPI and its mission to promote and strengthen press freedom worldwide. Many of their most meaningful WPI memories involve international journalists awakening to the value of free press.
One fellow came from a country with a controlled press, and at the beginning of the program he asked John [Hodowanic, then WPI's executive director] how John controls the content of what the fellows send home. "When John said he didn’t, the fellow thought, ‘how naive,’ " Ann said. "At commencement, he said, 'I’ve been here for five months and now I understand.'
“He didn’t know what free press meant, and now he does,” she said. “Free press is messy and difficult and often painful, but no one’s figured out a better way in a democracy.”
The Goodwins trade acts of gratitude with the five fellows they have hosted. They visited the Czech Republic, where one fellow, a national news director, meticulously orchestrated his schedule to maximize time with them in Prague. During another year, they supported a fellow struggling to decide whether to stay in the program after his father died. He eventually received a letter from his father, written just before he died, encouraging him to make the most of the opportunity given to him.
They praise WPI’s comprehensive survey of American culture. “These are people in a position to go back to their countries to dispel a lot of myths about the United States and tell a different story,” Jack said.
The Goodwins have a trove of WPI stories from commencement speeches and hosting their own fellows that includes leaving one year’s group at their Wisconsin cabin so they could go back to work, to Jack trying to train an African fellow to be a cross-country skier. They have celebrated exchanging their Midwest experiences for global perspectives.
“For us as journalists, it’s wonderful if they understand a free press,” Ann said. “But the basic understanding is this nation and its people — thats why this program gives an underpinning and a possibility to the concept of world peace. If you have one wish, everyone wishes for peace. WPI is doing something about everyone's wish.”
