Pierre F. Goodrich (1894–1973) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

businessman and conservative

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

.Morgan N. Knull
Goodrich, Pierre
, '' First Principles'', 09/23/11Evan Sparks

'' Philanthropy (magazine), Philanthropy'', Summer 2010Robert T. Grimm (ed.), ''Notable American Philanthropists: Biographies of Giving and Volunteering'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, pp. 125–28

Biography

Pierre Frist Goodrich was born on September 10, 1894, in Winchester, Indiana. His father was James P. Goodrich, a successful businessman and the Republican Governor of Indiana from 1917 to 1921. He attended Wabash College and

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. He worked as a lawyer in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

, Indiana. He later took over his father's concerns, including the Indiana Telephone Company, Peoples Loan and Trust, and the Ayrshire Collieries Corporation. He served on the Boards of Trustees of the Great Books Foundation, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the

China Institute China Institute in America is a nonprofit educational and cultural institution in New York City. It teaches an American audience about Chinese culture and history through talks, business initiatives, language immersion programs and gallery exhib ...

, the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Institute for Humane Studies. He was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He served on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Wabash College, from 1940 to 1969. As trustee, he advocated the Great Books curriculum popularized by Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins, which the school adopted in 1946. He also built the Goodrich Seminar Room in Wabash’s main library, dedicated to liberty. However, he subsequently grew weary of the school's move towards an embrace of

counterculture of the 1960s The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...

. In the 1950s, he established two foundations to promote liberty, the Winchester Foundation and Thirty Five Twenty. In 1960, he founded the Liberty Fund, a free-market think tank headquartered in Indianapolis. He wrote ''Liberty Fund Basic Memorandum'', a 129-page booklet with instructions on how to run the think tank. In 1973, LibertyPress published Goodrich's essay "Education in a Free Society," co-authored with Benjamin A. Rogge.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodrich, Pierre F. 1894 births 1973 deaths Businesspeople from Indianapolis Wabash College alumni Harvard Law School alumni 20th-century American lawyers People from Winchester, Indiana Member of the Mont Pelerin Society 20th-century American businesspeople