Obituary published October 12, 2001

Dr. William Walter Goodhue Sr.

Kama’aina physician dead at 88

Dr. William Walter Goodhue Sr., native Hawaiian physician and scion of a multi-generational kama’aina medical family with roots in the islands dating since the 1840s, died at his home on Oct. 7, 2001. He was 88.

Goodhue practiced medicine and surgery, with a specialty in industrial surgery, on Kaua’i since 1947. The last of the group of doctors in the Kaua’i plantation system, he was medical director of McBryde Sugar Company, and counted as his colleagues old time Kaua’i doctors Kuhns, Wallis, Cockett, Ishii, Fujii, Wade, Brennecke, and Kim. Dr. Kim was his personal physician.

Goodhue was born at Kalaupapa, Molokai, the third child of William Joseph Arthur and Christina Meyer Goodhue. His maternal great-grandfather, Rudolph Meyer, emigrated from Germany in the 1840s and married Kalama Waha, High Chiefess of Molokai. Rudolph was superintendent of the Hansen’s disease (leprosy) settlement at Kalaupapa in the 1860s, and was co-executor with Charles Reed Bishop, husband of Princess Pauahi, of the estate of Princess Ruth. Goodhue’s paternal uncle, Edward Solon, was renowned for his work on tuberculosis and a multi-published author. His father, William Joseph Arthur, pioneered use of chaulmoogra oil and surgery for treatment of leprosy, and worked with assistants of Father Damian DeVeuster and Mother Marianne Cope. Both Edward and William Joseph practiced briefly on Kaua’i at the turn of the last century.

One of Goodhue’s longtime patients recalled at his retirement in 1978, “He had such a wonderful memory. He remembered his patients by their names and talked at their level so they could understand, mixing bits of their native language in their conversation. He worked hard, made many house calls, helped his patients, and was always there when they needed him.”

Goodhue grew up in Hawai’i and received his training at Punahou. While he was an undergraduate at the University of Hawai’i, where he was a member of the “wonder” football team of 1935, his father moved to Shanghai, China, to do further work on Hansen’s disease. For a time, he attended St. John’s University in Shanghai and after his father’s death finished his premedical studies at the St. Louis University School of Medicine. It was during this time that he met and married the love of his life, Rose Marie Vahousek Goodhue.

After completing an internship at St. John’s Mercy Hospital in St. Louis, he served as industrial physician at Douglas Aircraft in Oklahoma City. During World War II he saw service as a lieutenant, Medical Corps, in the South Pacific and the Philippines with the U.S. Navy then remained active in the U.S. Army Reserves. After the war he took residency training at St. Francis Hospital, Honolulu, and at Cook County General Hospital, Chicago.

In 1947, he came to Kaua’i as Assistant Medical Director of Mahelona Hospital. A year later he became Medical director at McBryde Sugar Company and moved to Port Allen. He was senior partner in the Garden Island Medical Group in Waimea since 1964. He delivered more than 4,000 babies over the years on Kaua’i, and treated grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of his original patients.

Goodhue was active in many civic and professional organizations and in appointed positions from the State and County. He was a member of the Hawaii Board of Medical Examiners, president of the Kaua’i County Medical Society and the Hawai’i Industrial Medical Association, director of the Kaua’i chapter of the American Red Cross and member of the Hawai’i Health Planning Council among many other affiliations at different times during his career. He enjoyed sport fishing on his trawler the “Kuheia” and won numerous trophies in island fishing tournaments in the 1960s. An avid cribbage player, he also won numerous calabash bowl trophies with his teammate Dr. Patrick Cockett.

He and his wife Rose built a home at Spouting Horn and lived there until his retirement in 1978, when they moved to Lihu’e and also frequented their vacation home on Anini Beach. They traveled frequently to visit their only son, Dr. William W., JR. (Skip), now a retired Army colonel and First Deputy Medical Examiner for the City and County of Honolulu, at his many military assignments all over the world.

He was predeceased by his wife, Rose, on Nov. 13, 1999, after 59 years of marriage, and is survived by his son. Visitation was held at his Lihu’e home on Oct. 11. He will be interred alongside his wife at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 14, at the family plot at the Meyer Cemetery at Kalae, Molokai.

“Bill was one of the last of the great medical legends on Kaua’i and in Hawai’i,” one of his colleagues reminisced. “His passing marks the end of an era.”

Arrangements are being handled by Borthwick Mortuary. The family requests aloha attire. Donations may be made to a charity of choice.