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Ruth N. Goodman was a gentle woman who found her niche in life volunteering at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. From 1959 to the early 1990s anyone checking into the hospital on a Wednesday or Saturday would encounter Goodman in her "pink lady" uniform greeting patients at the admitting desk.
In 1977 Goodman was hailed in a Virginian-Pilot article as the hospital's longest-tenured volunteer. Although she had accumulated 6,562 hours of volunteer service she didn't stop there. She continued to volunteer at the hospital until poor health forced her to retire in her 80s.

Goodman never forgot her interest in healthcare and made provisions in her will for the Victor and Ruth N. Goodman Memorial Fund, a field of interest fund at The Norfolk Foundation. Goodman chose medicine and medical education as the fund's dominant interests. Grants from the Goodman fund are currently helping researchers at the Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters study antibiotic-resistant microorganisms.

Goodman came to Norfolk as the bride of Victor Goodman, who was born in Portsmouth in 1908. His father Louis owned a drugstore on High Street where Victor and his three younger siblings worked after school. After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School, Victor joined the Navy. He and his brother Bill later became traveling salesmen representing manufacturers of stereos, toasters and other small appliances.

Victor and Ruth were each visiting relatives in Florida when they first met around 1940. She was a Paterson, N.J. native who worked in New York City as a bookkeeper for her uncle's fur business. The Goodmans married in 1942. The Goodmans settled in a West Ghent duplex in Norfolk they later purchased. At first Ruth Goodman joined her husband on his work through the southeastern United States, but the car trips became tedious.

"Ruth got tired of traveling and felt she should do something worthwhile," says Ruth Goodman Orbach, her sister-in-law who lives in Florida.

"I wanted to do for myself," Ruth Goodman told a Virginian Pilot reporter in 1977. A friend suggested she volunteer at the hospital, and Goodman found her calling in life. Soon she was known as "the sergeant" because she
insisted that everything be done correctly as she took basic information from patients and escorted them to their rooms. Until Victor Goodman died in 1980 he would pick up his wife each Saturday after she finished her second hospital shift of the week.

On weekends the Goodmans enjoyed dancing at the Unity Club. They also attended services at Ohef Sholom Temple where she was a member of Hadassah. In her later years, Ruth Goodman lived in a Norfolk retirement home. One of her regular visitors was Edith Grandy, her bank trust officer. "She was my oasis of calm," Grandy says of Goodman, who died in 1995. "She was one of the nicest people I have ever known, and she lived for the hospital."

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