Bradford Cushing Gooch

Mr. Bradford Cushing Gooch died peacefully on June 16, 2025, in Rome, Ga following a brief illness. He was born in Worcester, MA to Jane Bradford of Plymouth, MA and Horace Gooch of Amarillo, TX. He leaves his sister, Sally Paynter of NYC; his eldest daughter, Elisabeth Gooch and her daughter, Alice; and his youngest daughter, Caroline Gooch and her two sons, Levi and Silas.

Mr. Gooch spent 36 years as a teacher and coach at Suffield in Connecticut. He taught English and Art History for all those years, and was, for ten years, the music teacher and glee club and small singing group director. He leaves to Suffield a legacy of honors given in his name to the school: The BCG Music Award, The Most Improved Soccer Player Award, The BCG Steinway, restored by the maker through an anonymous donor, the Gooch/Vincenti Merit Scholarship. He was twice the Connecticut Private School Coach of the Year, winning the Boys’ New England Championship in 1983 and taking the Girls’ Varsity to the post-season tournament five times, being twice the runner-up. The Girls’ Soccer Field was named for him by the headmaster in 2012. In 1993, he received the first Richter Award for Excellence in Teaching. He retired from the school and the students he loved so much in 1996.

Mr. Gooch was a Cum Laude undergraduate of Washington and Lee University where he was a freshman All-Southern conference soccer player, but polio ended his athletic career. As a junior, he was awarded the John A Graham Award for Contribution to the Fine Arts. He received his MA in English in 1973 from Clark University in Worcester, MA, and he studied voice, music history and theory at the University of Chicago where he sang in the professional choir of Rockefeller Chapel.

He and Mary moved to Rome, Ga where he joined the Westminster Presbyterian Church Choir and was a sometime soloist until cancer took his voice in 2008. He was a longtime and enthusiastic follower and supporter of the Berry College Women’s Soccer Team and donated their soccer field Press Box and Facilities building in 2016. He was an equally enthusiastic supporter, with the arrival of Dr. Paul Neal, of the Berry Singers, who occasionally performed his arrangements and who sang at Mary’s Memorial Service. He has set up an Endowment in Support of Berry Choral Music.

He desperately missed Mary, his wife of 27 years, who passed away in February of 2019, but he was also proud of his granddaughter, Alice, a Summa Cum Laude Graduate of Dublin University and now in its Medical School. And of his grandson, Silas, a Music Major at Kent State. His last years were made far easier and more comfortable by the friendship and care given by Kelly Tobin, his across-the-street neighbor, friend, and caregiver; he loved her, too.

A graveside service will be held on Friday, June 20, 2025 at 11:00AM, with Dr. Paul Neal officiating, at Sunset Hills Memorial Gardens.

Daniel’s Funeral Home and Cremation Services is in charge of arrangements.