GORDONVILLE FAMILY STAYS CLOSE TO HOME

In today's society, rural towns are rapidly dying as their young people migrate to the job opportunities and diverse social climate which exists in larger cities. The young person who remains in the rural town where he or she grew up is becoming more and more rare.

However, a few choose to remain close to their roots and this is the case with Cathy Goodman, a Gordonville native who is part of more than a century of family heritage in the village.

Goodman's great-great grandfather, William Winkler, took over the Gordonville Milling Co. in 1876 and the mill remained a family-owned operation until it was sold during the mid-1950s.

Nothing remains of the old mill, which was torn down during the mid-1970s, but many signs of the Winkler family's Gordonville history remain.

Today, Cathy Goodman, her husband Tim and children Malerie and Spencer, live in a home built in 1910 by her great-grandfather, also named William Winkler. Down the hill behind the house is the home of Cathy Goodman's parents, J.D. and Mary Philips. Before William Winkler built his 1910 home, he built the one which the Philips own.

Cathy Goodman is proud of the connection she has with her hometown. She has numerous photographs of her home and the Gordonville Mill, along with many newspaper clippings and even flour sacks from the mill, which attest to her strong tie to Gordonville.

Goodman inherited the two-story home her great grandfather built in 1987, after the death of her grandmother, Edna Winkler. The home, which fronts Highway Z and sets across the street and down from the Gordonville Post Office, is one which has played an enduring role in Cathy Goodman's life.

"It was a childhood dream," Cathy Goodman said of receiving the house. "I spent a lot of time here as a granddaughter so I always thought it would be nice to have the house."

When Edna Winkler was alive, her home was the Sunday evening gathering place for the families of her son and daughter. It was a place where the family would come together for Sunday dinner and where grandchildren would play throughout the house while the dinner was being prepared and dishes were cleared away.

"When my grandmother died, my mother didn't want the house so we bought it from my mother and her brother. My husband said, 'I really wanted a ranch house in town,' and I said, 'I would sure like to have that house," she explained, referring to her grandmother's home.

Tim and Cathy Goodman bought their brick home in November 1987, continuing its nearly 80-year heritage in the family.

There was much to be done to restore the home and over the course of the next eight months, the Goodmans rewired the structure and stripped and refinished all the woodwork and the pine floors which extend throughout the home. Other tasks included the installation of central air conditioning, the restoration of the numerous stained glass windows and the conversion of a screened-in porch into a breakfast nook.

Other than central air conditioning, this breakfast nook was the only real change to the Winkler house. Cathy Goodman was careful to restore the structure to the way it was when she was a little girl.

This included furnishing it with the several furniture items which Goodman inherited from her grandmother, and acquiring others which had been sold in the estate auction which followed Edna Winkler's death.

"One of the pieces I have was a Victrola which was sold to a childhood friend during the estate sale," explained Goodman. "I told her, 'If you ever want to sell it, don't sell it to anyone else. I'd like to have it.'

One Christmas, Tim Goodman bought the phonograph for his wife. The Victrola was stored in the attic when Goodman was a child so she was not sure where it had been kept when it was actively used. However, she felt the best place for it was near an entryway into a formal dining room. After placing the phonograph, Goodman called her mother.

"When I told her that I got the Victrola, my mom asked me where I put it," Cathy Goodman recalled. "When I told her she said, 'That's exactly where your grandma had it.'"

Some of the most interesting items in the home are found in a hallway at the base of the stairway leading upstairs. Here one finds the five framed pages of the handwritten contract William Winkler signed with W.W. Taylor and Sons of Cape Girardeau for the construction of the home.

The contract called for cypress frame work inside and for outside walls constructed of Jackson kiln run brick, no doubt referring to brick manufactured at the Kasten and Schmuke Press Brick Co. in Jackson (now Kasten Masonry Products).

According to the contract, dated January 1, 1910, the cost of the home was $3,705 with "Payments to be made as work progresses."

Today, the home is much as it was in 1910, with four bedrooms, a playroom and a full bath upstairs and seven rooms, a bathroom and a breakfast nook downstairs. The breakfast nook is the only part of the house which is not original.

Tim and Cathy Goodman hope to be able to pass their home on to their children, much as it was passed to them, but fear the economics of today's society will force the children to move elsewhere when that time comes.

"We'd like to keep the home in the family but with the way kids move today, I wonder if we'll be able to do that," said Cathy Goodman.