Frederick H. Goddard ’55

Frederick H. Goddard ’55 died on April 2, 2016, in Palm Beach, Florida.

(The following appeared at Itemlive.comApril 6, 2016):

Frederick H. Goddard, a longtime Marblehead resident and former associate editor of the Item, died Tuesday in Palm Beach, Florida, after a long illness. He was 83.

Born in New Bedford, Goddard resided in Winchester before moving to Marblehead, where he spent most of his life. He graduated from Marblehead High School in 1951 and was in the Class of 1955 at Bowdoin College.

He was a winter resident of Palm Beach and had a home in Honfleur, France.

Goddard worked at the Item for more than 40 years where he oversaw the award-winning, deadline coverage of the abduction of a Marblehead boy. He was one of a handful of employees who put out the newspaper during the blizzard of 1978, walking most of the way to work from his home in Marblehead.

Active in Marblehead, Goddard was a founding member of the Marblehead Festival of Arts. In that role, he invited Pete Seeger to perform at the festival in the early 1960s after bumping into the famed folk singer while on vacation in Maine.

Goddard served on the Marblehead-Grasse Sister City Committee; was on a streetscape committee that worked with longtime Selectman Chairman Tom McNulty to bury the power lines in a downtown historic district; designed the longitude/latitude compass at the State Street landing; and served as town “fence viewer.”

Goddard, also travel editor at The Item, made more than 60 trips to Europe and other destinations, including annual visits to Bellagio, Italy, and Honfleur, a fishing village at the mouth of the Seine River. He built an apartment on the grounds of a historic inn in France, and, in a rare honor for an American, was elected president of La Bouee 28, a social club comprised largely of fishermen from Honfleur. He still held the title at the time of his death.

He was the son of the late Isabel and Carl Goddard, a prominent North Shore sculptor. He leaves a brother, Carl Dennison Goddard of Beverly, several nephews and cousins, and a dear friend, June Goldman of Marblehead.

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