Geraldine Goobie worked as head ER nurse, flew planes, travelled world
Geraldine Goobie saw a lot in her life — she travelled to more than 70 countries.
Goobie, who died this month in Halifax, also returned to work after raising a family, and retired as the head nurse in emergency at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s.
Goobie was born in Avondale, where her father operated a store. She trained as a nurse in Montreal.
She met her future husband, Ren Goobie, when he landed his plane in Avondale on a cross-province run with businessman Geoff Stirling to deliver the Newfoundland Herald, according to her son, Charles, a retired water-bomber pilot.
“(My father) was parading around Avondale in this Zoot suit, which was the item to wear in those days,” said her oldest daughter, Peggy Lou Stirling.
Ren Goobie’s family once were part owners in the Purity Factory and operated a department store on Water Street known as Goobie’s.
Geraldine Goobie went on to get her pilot's licence in the 1940s, but stopped flying after she first became pregnant, said Peggy Lou.
Her vacation travels included an around-the-world-trip in the 1970s, to every continent except Antarctica.
“She wanted to see as many different countries as possible,” said Peggy Lou, adding she lost track of all her mother’s travels, as they were so extensive.
Goobie, however, left a lengthy handwritten list for her family of the places she had visited.
“It was a life well lived,” said her son-in-law, Roger Stirling.
“She took the rent out of it,” said Peggy Lou, using an old Newfoundland saying. “She made the most of it.”
Son Charles recalled he was a teenager of about 17 or 18 when the condition of using the car was that he had to pick his mother up every day at the end of her hospital shift.
“Many days I picked her up, her white nurse’s uniform would be spattered in blood,” he said.
She talked little about what happened in the emergency room, until one of Charles’ colleagues was killed in a helicopter crash and she spoke of seeing the man’s pilot licence while tending to him at the hospital.
“She was a pretty courageous woman, I thought, to deal with all that,” Charles said of her emergency room work.
About two years after her husband died, and after she had retired from nursing, Goobie went to Dartmouth to be near family, living on her own for many years and watching the ships travel in and out of Halifax harbour, before moving to a retirement complex and then assisted care.
She is also survived by her son Gerald, and her children’s families, including several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.