Sheila Barbara Goodman

Sheila Goodman lived an eventful life in England, Australia, the USA and Wales. Born Sheila Barbara Overton in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire on 21st April 1932, younger daughter of Frank Overton (1899-1970), the local Police officer, and Sarah Letitia Cliff (1903-1970). Sheila’s mother Letty’s much loved sisters, Sheila’s Aunts Anne (1896-1982) and Sybil (1901-2001) lived not far away in neighbouring bungalows in Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire. Anne and Sybil kept their minds active throughout long lives with Scrabble, croquet and handmade craft works for charities. Sheila was the younger sister of Patricia Fenton of Tudor Meads, North Kelsey, Lincolnshire (1930-2005), who was an accomplished cook and kept a menagerie of rescued animals. Sheila would have experienced government regulated blackouts during World War II while living in Huntingdonshire 1939-45. There is a story that Sheila and Pat were playing in a farm shed and forgot to turn the light out. A passing German bomber plane that saw the light dropped its load nearby, fortunately with no casualties, but the embarassment of the 2 girls needing to confess their mistake to their father Frank, the local air raid warden! Sheila took a BA degree in English at Southampton University, where she met her husband Peter. Sheila Overton married Dr Peter James Goodman in St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, in July 1957 when she was 25 years old. Sheila trained as a Secretary using Pitman shorthand at St Godric’s College, Hampstead, London, developing skills in writing that she used throughout her life. While staying in digs in Hampstead, Sheila managed to fuse all the lights in her lodgings by using a portable electric water for her cup of coffee, which led to a hasty eviction! Sheila was interviewed for a job with Hammer Horror Films, but ended up working for the top selling newspaper the Daily Sketch, meeting such celebrities of the time as Sir Matt Busby, George Melly and Katherine Whitehorn. Peter’s work as a research scientist took him and Sheila to Australia, where their first daughter, Victoria Patricia Goodman was born in Mareeba, Queensland on 8th March 1958. Vikki, now Gardner, also studied at Southampton University and still lives nearby in Hampshire. Returning to England In the 1960s, Sheila and Peter set up home close to Rothamstead Plant Station, in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, where their son Piers Norman Godfrey Goodman was born on 12th December 1961. The family moved to Wales in 1965, in a new bungalow on a mountaintop at Pen-y-Graig, Aberystwyth, when Peter took a job at the Welsh Plant Breeding Station in Bow Street, Cardiganshire. The Goodman’s younger daughter, Eleri Ruth, was born on 19/09/1968. Sheila worked as personal assistant to the Director of Drama, a newly established department of University College Wales until her retirement. Sheila kept her journalism up with reviews of concerts for the Western Mail. Peter and Sheila set up the Crystal Vaudeville Company.