Jean Goodman Stumpf

Jean Goodman Stumpf, age 92, passed away Thursday, November 6, 2014. A memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, November 14, 2014 at West End United Methodist Church. Visitation will be held at the church following the service.

Jean was a direct descendant of the first English settlers of Nantucket. She was born August 13, 1922 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was predeceased by her parents, Howard and Anna Goodman, her brother Thomas P. Goodman, her sister Margaret Goodman Backes and her husband of 55 years Samuel E. Stumpf. Jean grew up in a house overlooking the campus of the University of Chicago, which her great grandfather Edward Goodman helped to found in 1890 and on whose Board of Trustees he, Jean’s grandfather Herbert Goodman and her father Howard all served. Her grandfather and his brother-in-law, the inventor Elmer Sperry, founded the Goodman Manufacturing Company, which introduced a number of important innovations in the mining industry. Her father was Chairman of the Board of the company. Her family was also active in Protestant affairs; her great grandfather published The Standard, a leading Protestant publication in the nineteenth century, and her grandmother was President of the Women’s American Foreign Baptist Mission Society.

Jean attended the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago and then Wellesley College, where she majored in sociology and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. In 1943 she married Sam Stumpf, who was then a Chaplain in the United States Navy. After the War, Jean and Sam lived in Chicago while Sam completed his PhD at the University of Chicago. In 1948 Jean and Sam moved to Nashville where Sam joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University.

Jean was active in numerous civic and charitable organizations including the Nashville Symphony, Cheekwood, the Florence Crittenton Home, the Vanderbilt Women’s Club, Blair School of Music, the Nashville YWCA and Family & Children’s Service. In 1966 she received her Master of Science in Social Work degree from the University of Tennessee. She was a charter member of the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood of Nashville and later served as the full-time director of the Planned Parenthood Health Center. She was also a founding member of the board of Park Center. Most recently she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Aging from 1995 through 2006, serving as its president for two years. Under Jean’s leadership, COA survived a severe financial crisis to become the independent, fiscally sound organization it is today. She also led the effort to create a number of widely used COA publications including Preparing for and Surviving the Death of the Spouse and Caring Daughters, Aging Parents.

Jean is survived by her three sons Paul (Anne), Baltimore, MD, Mark (Elizabeth Bruce), Washington, D.C. and Sam, Jr. (Jane), Nashville, TN; grandchildren Nicholas (Natacha Stojanovic), Anna (Hamilton Leithauser), Lawrence, Gillian, Kathryn Eleanor, Jean and Paul; and great grandchildren Georgiana, Frederika and Mila.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be sent to the Jean G. Stumpf Fund for the Aging at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, P.O. Box 440225, Nashville, TN 37244, or the charity of your choice.