The Cowboy State's Sissy Goodwin: A man with global impact

CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Larry “Sissy” Goodwin, a Vietnam veteran and retired educator from Douglas who gained national attention for being a Wyoming man who dressed in women’s clothing, died March 7 from stage IV brain cancer. He was 73.

His body was interred with military honors at Oregon Trail State Veterans Cemetery in Evansville. His family is planning a celebration of life for July 2 in Casper, his wife, Vickie, said.

Goodwin didn’t seek media attention, “but reporters were fascinated with a man named Sissy living in the Cowboy State,” the Star-Tribune reported in 2017. He was featured on NBC News’ “Dateline” and NPR’s “Storycorps” and written about in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

“But what his family wants you to know is that he was so much more than the man who wore dresses,” Vickie wrote in his obituary. “He was a wonderful husband, a devoted father, and a loving grandfather and great-grandfather.”

He’s also remembered for the help he lent around his native Douglas and for building water systems and schools across the globe, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.

“He was passionate about building a peaceful world,” according to his obituary. “Here people are judged on their character – not by the clothes they wear, not by the color of their skin, not by where they originated, not by who they love.”

Goodwin told his story in news interviews so others wouldn’t feel as isolated as he did.

“He felt so alone, as you know, out there in the world, he felt so alone,” Vickie said. “He wanted other people to know so they wouldn’t feel alone, because he learned there were a lot of people that felt like he did, that there was something wrong with them, that they weren’t good people. And so he wanted those people to understand that there were other people like him.”

He encountered his share of harassment. The windows of the couple’s house were broken, their tires were slashed and people shouted at him from cars. Goodwin had his teeth knocked out when was beaten up in their front yard, Vickie said. He was also beaten up in Salt Lake City, and was arrested there as well as in Casper for the way he dressed, although the city didn’t have an ordinance, Vickie said. His arrest in Casper led to him educating officers, Vickie said.

But he enjoyed support from the community as well.

Goodwin told NPR’s StoryCorps that his students once dressed up for him in hair ribbons and pink shirts.

“The whole class. That told me a lot,” he’d said in the NPR interview.

The Wyoming Legislature recognized Goodwin this year with a resolution by Wyoming Rep. Sara Burlingame signed by both houses. The resolution lists his military service as an aircraft mechanic during the Vietnam War, experience as a rodeo cowboy and bareback bull rider and several other accomplishments, including that he “brought ‘gender independence’ to the Equality State with his trademark ribbon skirts and hair bows, despite being assaulted, arrested and abused...” and “returned this hate with love, generosity, and grace.”

In 2017, Goodwin was thrust into the limelight after U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi’s comments to high schoolers about a man in a tutu caused outrage.

“I know a guy that wears a tutu and goes to the bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it a little bit. That’s the way he winds up with that kind of problem.”

Though an Enzi spokesperson said the comments weren’t directed at Goodwin, the senator later apologized to him. Bars around Wyoming, meanwhile, hosted “Live and Let Tutu” events.

“Only Sissy with the moral authority that he carried could have calmed the waters and insisted on accepting the Senator’s apology,” Burlingame said in an email. “He said that after a lifetime of being assaulted and abused, he had to respond with love. He felt that if he indulged in bitterness it would consume him. So an entire state had a weekend of transcendentally beautiful dancing and drinking and fellowship when we responded with the #LiveAndLetTutu events.”

Burlingame, the executive director of Wyoming Equality, recalled dancing with Goodwin at Front Street Bar in Laramie while every cowboy and roughneck in the bar joined with students and scholars for the length of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”

“Sissy was the best of us,” she said. “He made us better. There will never be his like again.”

Goodwin told the Star-Tribune in 2017 about how he began to embrace his nickname.

“I took it as a way of being up-front with myself and to deflect some of the hate associated with that term,” he’d said. “You can’t hurt me by calling me that.”

Goodwin graduated from the University of Wyoming and worked his way up from coal handling at the Dave Johnston power plant in Glenrock to auxiliary operator, control operator and then trainer, Vickie said. He then became a respected electric power technology instructor at Casper College, from which he retired.

Active in the Wyoming Democratic Party for many years, Goodwin was a state committeeman for Converse County at the time of his death and was a delegate to the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City.

Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Joe Barbuto shared thoughts about Goodwin in an email to the Wyoming Democratic State Central Committee.

“Most of us will never face the same levels of discrimination and hatred that Sissy experienced during his life, and just for being himself — but we all benefit from his example,” Barbuto wrote. “Whatever the obstacle, let’s face it with his same measure of courage and determination. Let’s take that example and use it as a guiding light for Wyoming Democrats in 2020 and beyond — a reminder to be ourselves, be bold and endure.”

Goodwin traveled around the world to help others, visiting Kenya with a University of Wyoming group to help build a water system and later to help build a school, Vickie said. He also did work among Veterans for Peace, Pastors for Peace and Oxfam groups in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico, as well as with a Casper College group at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Veterans for Peace became one of his passions after he learned about the organization while in Washington D.C. At the time, he was working to include on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial his friend Jose Leopoldo Lujan, who died stateside of injuries he sustained in the war, Vickie said. Goodwin served on the Veterans for Peace national board and started a chapter in Wyoming, as well as on the board of Wyoming’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter.

The man of many skills built his own Pitt’s Special airplane in his garage and co-authored a paper with Robert Peterson published in the Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counseling called “Psychological impact of abuse as it relates to transvestism,” Vickie said. He guest spoke on gender diversity for classes at Casper College and Eastern Wyoming College.

Goodwin described himself on his Facebook page as “a Gender Enhanced Male (GEM); that is, I cross-dress.”

“I think of myself as sensitive, hardworking and a good father and husband,” according to his Facebook. “Although I do fall in love easily, my bride of 40 years is the love of my life.

“My friends are intelligent, have deep and sincere beliefs which I may or may not agree with. But the essence of friendship is to learn from one another, share in this great experience we call life, to laugh with, cry with and to love.”

Goodwin, who grew up with a difficult family life, devoted himself to his own family.

“He tried really hard to be the kind of dad that he would have wished he had,” Vickie said.

He made many friends in his hometown and all over the country. He was always willing to listen and lend a helping hand, and he even stopped on roads to help strangers, she said.

“He was he was good with a joke. He was a tease, but he could make people laugh.”

Her husband of 51 years was a flirt, something Vickie wasn’t so sure about early in their marriage.

“Later, I think I just really appreciated it, because he made people feel special...” she said. “Each person was special to him. And he treated them all as though they were someone important.”

Fred Louis met Goodwin on a caravan to El Salvador in 1993, which turned out to be their first of many adventures together. One of his favorite memories occurred while in San Francisco with the Goodwins for a Veterans for Peace national convention. While they were shopping, a man in a suit approached Goodwin and told him to let him see inside his bag. Goodwin led him back to the shop so the clerk could verify that he’d paid for tea he’d bought as a gift for Louis. Then he demanded an apology. The man insisted he was just following orders, and Goodwin grew louder.

“And he finally blurts out, ‘I wear dresses and I’m man enough to admit when I make a mistake,’ and I just died,” Louis said. “It was so perfect.”

Ellen Barfield of Maryland became close friends with Goodwin while they served together on the national board of Veterans for Peace. He worked passionately for the organization. She spoke of his warmth, generosity and his courage.

“He is by far the bravest person I’ve ever known in my life,” she said. “He was just who the hell he was.”