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R. Gary Goosens ’74 – From Coal Town to D.C. Administrative Law Judge BY LINDSEY BYARS
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n 1950, the year Robert Gary Goosens was born, the coal industry in McDowell County, West Virginia was booming. People flocked towards the economic opportunities both within the industry, and the community that supported the workers and their families. “My grandfather was a coal miner,” says Gary Goosens ’74, who grew up in the coal towns of Gary and Northfork. His parents, Bob and Lorraine, were both public school teachers, a profession Goosens would eventually gravitate towards, though not for long.
“Growing up in communities in McDowell County typically involved coal mining and Appalachian culture, although later as I lived in larger cities, I realized that it had also involved an element of isolation,” Goosens says. Education and professional endeavors took Gary Goosens across the United States and back throughout his career. Over the years, he has worked as a teacher and later a law professor. He followed a civil service career track that led him from being a city attorney in Clarksburg, West Virginia to eventually becoming an administrative law judge in Alabama. At the center of this journey was a deep desire to learn and follow his interests, and as this proved successful, ambition continued to drive his
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climb up the professional ladder. As a young man, however, the small coal towns served as Robert Gary Goosens’s knowledge of the world. In this microcosm, coal may have been the life force, but for many kids, including Goosens, sports played an equally important part. “Prior to my senior year, I had been more interested in football than school,” Goosens remembers. It was his English teacher that helped him redirect his focus. “Mr. Stark in my senior year was an impetus for me to conceive of higher levels of learning,” Goosens says. “Mr. Stark enabled me to catch up academically and to form realistic professional goals for myself.”
