Goode tells family's story to McKeesport audience

Thirty visitors to McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center heard from the son and nephew of two famous Pittsburgh broadcasters on Saturday.

“It is a story about family and faith, about prayer and patience,” said Robert Goode, whose father Malvin R. “Mal” Goode (1908-1995) was the first African American correspondent for a major TV network. He was a backup reporter for ABC at the United Nations, but had a lot of airtime during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

One viewer reportedly used a racial slur to complain about Goode's presence on network TV. Another viewer wrote ABC that, “I'm so glad he was there.”

Goode began his career at the Pittsburgh Courier and worked at KQV-1410 and old WHOD-860.

Mal Goode's sister Mary Elizabeth Goode Dudley, a.k.a. Mary Dee (1912-1964), established herself on WHOD in 1948. Its owners gave her a condition for getting airtime.

“If you can get three advertisers to pay for your program,” Mary Dee was told, “you can get 15 minutes.”

Her nephew said she got a florist to sponsor her, and her brothers James, Pittsburgh's first black Realtor, and William, who had a 24-hour pharmacy in the Hill District during its boom years from the 1930s until the demolition of much of the neighborhood to clear the way for the construction of the Civic Arena.

Mary Dee eventually was on the air two hours a day.

“She had white advertisers as well as black advertisers,” her nephew said. “She went out to do hops, dances for young kids. She was always poised and polished.”

Mary Dee broadcast in Pittsburgh through 1956, working with her brother for several years. She went on to Baltimore and Philadelphia.

William and Mary Hunter Goode had four sons and two daughters.

Robert Goode was one of seven children of Mal and Mary Lavelle Goode. His sister Roberta was in the audience at the Heritage Center.

William Goode brought his family from Virginia so they could get an education.

All six graduated from old Homestead High School.

Five went to college, including Mary Dee's sister Ruth Goode White, who ran a day care agency in McKeesport under a contract with the state Department of Public Welfare.

Marilyn Baldwin, who was in the audience on Saturday, said she was a sorority sister of both Dudley and White.

A sixth child, Allen, went into the Army. Their father worked in Andrew Carnegie's Homestead steel mill, and once met Carnegie.

“Andrew Carnegie said, ‘Billy, I wish you were a white man so I could promote you from second helper to first helper,” Robert Goode recalled. A “helper” had a special role in a blast furnace operation, especially if he had William Goode's talent.

“My grandfather had the skill of looking into the heat and say it was time to tap the furnace,” Robert Goode said, referring to the process of tapping molten steel.

If drawn too soon or too late the steel would be ruined.

The Goodes lived on W. Twelfth Avenue and attended Clark Memorial Baptist Church. Goode said his grandfather prayed a lot and instilled his values in his children and grandchildren.

“They were highly respected in the community,” Robert Goode said of his grandparents. “They wouldn't let their chidren look down on anyone else, for any reason.”

Despite the discrimination, William Goode told his kids, “You are no better than anyone else, and no one else is any better than you.”

Mal Goode worked his way through the University of Pittsburgh as a night janitor at the Homestead steel mills. He worked in the juvenile justice system as work director at the Centre Avenue YMCA.

“He helped teenage boys,” Mal Goode's son said. “I've met dozens who told me how he would keep them straight.”

Mal Goode managed projects for the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, then joined the Courier in 1948 as a reporter. He did work in advertising and circulation at a time when the paper had numerous national editions shipped by rail to other cities.

Robert Goode said his father was rejected for jobs by all three Pittsburgh VHF TV stations of the time, but was a friend of Pirates announcer Bob Prince, who used him as a substitute on a late-night KDKA-2 sports show.

Mal Goode was a friend of Jackie Robinson, whom Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey used to break the color barrier in major league baseball.

Robinson helped Goode crack it at ABC. Mal's son said Robinson urged James Hagerty, an ABC executive and former press secretary for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “to get some blacks on.”

Mal Goode was one of 30 who auditioned. Early one day in 1962 ABC called. In response, “he jumped out of bed and said his prayers like his dad would want him to,” Robert Goode said.

Patrick Cloonan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-664-9161 ext. 1967, or pcloonan@tribweb.com.