Maria Delsocorro Goulding

Maria Goulding was many extraordinary things to the many people who knew and loved her. She was a loving wife, mother, and grandmother, a dedicated and talented educator, a dancer, a loyal friend, and a devoted daughter and sister. She was the embodiment of quiet strength and intellect, and met every challenge she encountered with grace and tenacity.

Maria was born in Miami, Florida in 1949 to Richard and Nora Dodge. She grew up in Whittier, California as the proud and fiercely protective older sister of her only sibling Melinda Dodge (1954 – 2024). She showed a passion and talent for the arts from an early age, memorizing classical music while doing the evening dishes and shining in various musicals throughout high school and junior college. Her love of musical theater and performing, paired with her natural courage and a desire for adventure, led her to join a USO tour that toured across Japan and Southeast Asia, where she discovered new parts of the world and made lifelong friends.

In 1973, she met her future husband Jim Goulding while working at the Los Angeles Times, an institution at which her father and eventual father-in-law both worked for decades. She and Jim were married in October 1975. After years of travel, including living in Hawaii for a year, they created a home in Temple City where they welcomed their daughters Emily in 1982 and Megan in 1985.

While caring for her girls during the day, she also taught English at Mount San Antonio junior college and later Cal State LA at night. She eventually found a home at Bishop Amat High School in La Puente, teaching English Language and Literature to thousands of students over the course of her career. Her students benefited from her keen intellect and passion for the craft of a well-written story, and she took enormous pride in their work, delighting in their success and often sharing stories about them at the dinner table each night.

She had a razor sharp sense of humor and a deep appreciation for beauty in this world, be it powerful prose in literature, the grace and form of dancers in live theater, or a well-set dinner table at the holiday gatherings that she loved to host. She was effortlessly glamorous, warm and vibrant, and was a natural caregiver to everyone in her life.

Maria’s later years in life were marked by, but not defined by multiple health challenges: she survived brain cancer twice as well as multiple strokes, and acclimated to the realities of living with dementia in her final years. She met each of these challenges with her trademark pragmatism, resilience, and fortitude, taking each day as it came and choosing to focus on gratitude for the opportunities afforded to her rather than the limitations of her condition. While her world became increasingly smaller as the years went on, slowly losing her ability to speak as well as her mobility, she continued to find comfort and joy in her home, her friends, and her family.

She was a woman of tremendous strength and courage, teaching everyone in her life what it means to love deeply, care for others, and live fully, regardless of the circumstances that life brings. She was, and continues to be, loved deeply by so many. She is survived by Jim Goulding, her loving husband of almost fifty years, her children Emily and Megan, and her grandchildren Caetano, Sophia, Agustin, and Olivia.

A memorial service will be held at All Saints Church in Pasadena on Friday, May 9th at 10am, with a lunch reception to follow.