09/21/2026
Tate does in fact lead our Booster Club but also assists our school community in many other capacities as well! Another fantastic winner!
2026 Citizen of the Year: Tate Goodwin
Ask Tate Goodwin why he spends so much of his time helping others, and he doesn’t point to an award, recognition or even a particular community project.
For Tate, the answer starts with his faith.
“I would start with my relationship with Jesus,” Tate said. “We’re supposed to serve others and be the hands and feet of Jesus.”
It is a philosophy he summarizes simply: “It’s easy when you just think about other people first and yourself second.”
For those who know Tate, that philosophy has been visible throughout his life… as a local businessman, funeral director, volunteer, Booster Club member, church member, husband and father, and as someone who has repeatedly stepped forward when Union City needed help.
Tate’s Union City story began when he came to the community as a sixth grader. He had attended school in Girard and Bronson before finishing his education in Union City, and the community has been home ever since.
His last name also comes with an interesting connection to Union City history. The community was founded in 1833 by Justice Goodwin. Tate has traced members of his own Goodwin family to the Girard area in the late 1800s, including a Goodwin sawmill where his grandfather worked, but has never been able to establish a definitive family connection to Union City’s founder.
That uncertainty hasn’t stopped him from having a little fun with the connection. During one of Union City’s historical cemetery tours, Tate portrayed Justice Goodwin himself.
Today, Tate is perhaps best known locally as a funeral director with Lighthouse Funeral & Cremation. His profession has given him an unusually personal connection with generations of Union City families.
When someone calls the funeral home following a death, Tate often already knows much of the family’s story. He may have cared for a parent, sibling, uncle or grandparent years earlier. Sometimes, before a family even arrives, he has an idea of the church they may choose, the traditions they may follow or what was important to previous generations of their family.
That familiarity is part of what Tate values about serving his hometown.
His goal as a funeral director is not to pretend he can remove someone’s grief. Instead, he hopes to make one of the most difficult weeks of a person’s life just a little easier.
“I can’t heal all their sadness,” Tate said. “But I can get to the end of the week and they can say, ‘He made that really easy on me, and I feel better, and I know and I trust that things are taken care of correctly.’”
That commitment to serving people was especially evident following the devastating March 6 tornado that struck Union City.
In the immediate aftermath, Tate and the Lighthouse staff became part of the community response. The funeral home served as a collection point for donations and belongings recovered from the debris, and Tate was able to respond immediately because he had previously invested in emergency preparations, including standby power for the funeral home.
But for Tate, responding was never really a question.
“This is my town,” he recalled telling those working at the scene. “I’m not going to go sit at home while you’re digging people out of the rubble.”
Lighthouse assisted families affected by the tragedy, helped cover funeral related expenses and distributed donated funds. Tate also saw countless other residents step forward without being asked… digging through debris, recovering belongings, donating money and simply helping their neighbors.
For Tate, it reinforced something he already believed strongly: great things rarely happen because of one person.
“There’s a million people that did wonderful things,” he said of the tornado response.
That same belief is reflected in another of Tate’s major community commitments: the Union City Athletic Booster Club.
When the school sought to resurrect the organization, Tate attended an initial organizational meeting. The problem was that virtually everyone else who attended was a school employee and therefore could not serve in the necessary leadership roles.
Tate hadn’t gone to the meeting intending to take charge.
He simply happened to be the person who showed up.
From there, a new Booster Club was formed, and one of its most visible projects became improvements to the athletic complex and press box.
When fundraising began, Tate wanted potential donors to know he wasn’t asking them to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. He pledged the first $1,000.
Others followed.
What began with a goal of roughly $15,000 to $20,000 eventually generated nearly $30,000 for the project.
Tate is particularly proud of the plaque recognizing major contributors, not because of the names displayed today, but because of what those names might mean decades from now.
He imagines a future generation walking past it and seeing the name of a grandfather, grandmother, parent or family business and realizing that someone in their family once stepped forward when their community needed something.
Perhaps, Tate believes, that will inspire them to do the same.
That idea of one generation inspiring another is important to him.
Tate points to longtime Union City residents and volunteers who set examples for his generation. He worries, as many community organizations do, about finding the next generation of people willing to volunteer, organize projects and take responsibility when something needs to be done.
But he also recognizes that history sometimes makes community accomplishments look easier than they really were.
Behind most successful projects, Tate believes, there was usually one person, or a small handful of people, willing to get things moving, followed by a community willing to help.
He has become one of those people.
Tate is also deeply involved in his church, where he has served in a variety of leadership and teaching roles for more than two decades. His faith remains at the center of his approach to his family, his profession and his community service.
He and his wife, Sarah, have three children: Reed, Lydia and Ian. Tate is quick to emphasize that none of what he does happens alone. He credits his family, his Lighthouse staff and the many people who work alongside him on community projects.
In fact, when Tate learned he had been selected as a Citizen of the Year, one of his first thoughts was that he wanted those people standing beside him when he accepted the award.
“You can’t do all these things that are noteworthy without having other people helping you,” he said.
Now in his 40’s, Tate represents a generation that is now beginning to inherit responsibility from many of the community leaders who came before it.
Whether his Goodwin family tree ever proves to connect directly to Justice Goodwin may remain an unanswered piece of Union City history.
But nearly two centuries after a Goodwin helped establish this community, another Goodwin is helping make sure its tradition of service continues.
For Tate, that service comes back to the simple philosophy he learned through his faith and from those who set the example before him:
Think about others first, and yourself second.
Tate joins our two other 2026 citizens of the year… Marcia Carman and Amber Case. All three will receive their award at the Farm to Fork celebration on September 26th downtown Union City. See our page for our write ups on the other two.
