Nancy Good’s good deeds were spread over three continents, from the community gardens she helped start in Denver to helping resettle displaced people after World War II.
Good was still going strong until she contracted pneumonia 12 days before she died, said Donna Good, her daughter-in- law.
Nancy Good died Aug. 24 at St. Joseph Hospital. She was 89.
Good helped open a settlement house in Germany in 1947, and 50 years later the German government honored her for her work.
She worked with Denver police on sensitivity training programs and with the Commission on Aging.
“Her energy was incomparable,” said her daughter Kathy VanBuskirk of Arvada. “She never stopped and was interested in everything and everybody.”
“She was a change agent all her life,” Donna Good said.
For 40 years, Nancy Good gave an annual Christmas party at her Park Hill home, and sometimes 1,000 people showed up. Mayors and members of Congress were there, along with her neighbors.
Former Mayor Wellington Webb praised her for her Park Hill activism.
Nancy Cunningham was born in Janesville, Wis., on May 29, 1922, and graduated from Smith College. After World War II, she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to help repatriate people. She and her late husband, Robert Good, worked for the American Friends Service Committee, opening a settlement house in Frankfurt.
She had met her future husband at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and they married while he was with the Friends and she was with the relief administration. They married Aug. 21, 1946, in Switzerland and moved to Denver in 1953.
She worked with housing community groups to help establish fair housing practices here and did a similar job in Washington, D.C., when the family moved there.
When he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Zambia, she worked in hunger relief agencies there.
They returned to Denver in 1971 and she worked on the city’s Commission on Community Relations under the late Mayor Bill McNichols. She “dreamed up the idea” for community gardens, said Donna Good, and helped start the first ones.
After a short time in Granville, Ohio, where her husband was president of Denison University, they returned to Denver. She worked on several political campaigns for Democrats, and her husband was head of the graduate school of international studies at the University of Denver.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by another daughter, Karen Good of Paonia; a son, Stephen Good of Denver; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
