Man keeps MC insulated

Ray Goodall Sr. is a Madison County native who enjoys the local wildlife and staying busy. His home office, which he shares with his wife, Lois Goodall, is full of family pictures and plans for new projects.

“I’m getting too busy right now,” Goodall joked of his schedule. “You volunteer and work with the church trying to increase the membership (and) you can do something everyday that doesn’t have to do with running a business.”

Goodall spent 20 years working as a quality manger for IGT Automotive and, for much of that time, traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe for work.

Deciding he wanted to spend more time in Madison County, he started a new profession with a “green” insulation company and in 2002 opened his own insulation business. Goodall said he hopes to one-day pass it on to his 21-year-old granddaughter, Kendra Goodall.

He started getting into the insulation business because it allowed him to spend more time in Madison County, where he had built a house with his wife and raised two children, Ray Jr. and Denise Goodall. He has many early connections in the county, including growing up and having relatives in Madison that stretch back to, at least, the early 1900s.

Though a Madison County resident through high school, he attended George Washington Carver Regional High School in Culpeper County, which was an all-black high school that served four counties – Madison, Orange, Culpeper and Rappahannock. Area schools were not completely integrated until around 1965, after Goodall graduated in 1963.

“Even though you grew up in this county, you know people from all around, know all the families,” Goodall said. “It had its advantages, we had probably some of the best sports programs and the education was good – a lot of people went a long way getting their education there.”

Goodall’s education helped him earn the title of engineer with IGT and helped him set up his own business with his son, Ray Goodall Jr., who had recently left the U.S. Air Force.

“(My son) got on as a paid fireman (in Manassas) and but they work kind of strange shifts you know – they work like 24 hours a day three days a week and then four days off so he wanted something to do on his days off,” Goodall said. “So I said, ‘let’s get a truck.’ But I was still with the insulation company, so I set it up to insulate and that’s what we did, that’s how I happened to get into and it started picking up and that was during the building boom and we were pretty busy.”

Despite the lull in building from the economy, Goodall says that his business continues. He currently has several insulation trucks and employes a crew of three in addition to himself and his son.

“I mean we’re staying fairly busy now, but probably doing a third of the work we were doing, when things were booming,” Goodall said. “Right now we’re pretty busy because we’re doing a lot of upgrades and with this (federal) stimulus energy credit approved for 2009 and 2010 – the state of Virginia had a (similar program, and) that was a good pull-through for us.”

However, work is not the only interest filling Goodall’s time. He traveled with the automotive company throughout the U.S. and to company headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. He continues to travel with his wife and extended family.

“It would be nice to go back (to Europe), we still have friends over there,” Goodall said. “We go somewhere just about every year, a couple of years ago we went back and went to London, Paris and just toured around there – this past we September took a (family) vacation in Hawaii.”

When not traveling, the Brightwood-based businessman works with his community. He is a member of the Madison Chamber of Commerce, the Madison County Planning Commission and volunteers with Madison County Habitat for Humanity. He is also a former chairman of the George James Community Center in Radiant.

“The state Masonic lodge gave (us) the building, we wanted to make it a useful tool in the community so we made it a community center,” Goodall said. “In three years we’ve been able to refurbish the whole thing – the Lions club meets there (for January, February and March), we have senior functions and we’re trying to start an educational tutoring program. It’s grown – what we’re seeing is that a lot of people are retiring and maybe they were from this area 40 years ago, they’re coming back and they might have home property here and they live here and they’re looking for something to do and we’re up to about 45 members.”

He said his next project may be retirement, but he appeared skeptical that he would have the time for it.