Seth Goodchild

Seth Goodchild, an accomplished attorney, music and sports aficionado and, above all, a devoted husband, father and grandfather, has died. He was 63.

The cause was complications of cancer following a 15-year battle with a disease that, until his passing on Friday at the family’s home in Glen Ridge, N.J., failed spectacularly to deprive Seth of his uncommon spirit and positivity.

Despite severe challenges in recent years, he never failed to summon the strength to celebrate with his wife, Lois Waldman, the marriages of their three children and birth of two grandchildren. He remained a man with a vision, with hope, after trips to Israel inspired him to convert to Judaism in 2023.

This was the same resolve, his family confided, that Seth exhibited while putting himself through college at SUNY Buffalo and Georgetown Law School before launching a career that led to a 20-year run at the prestigious Manhattan firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he was senior counsel.

“Seth was a pro’s pro, a brilliant writer, an expert on corporate law and acquisitions,” said Joseph Allerhand, a colleague and close friend, “Beyond that, everyone loved him--he was a mentor, the bridge between young lawyers and old lawyers, our unofficial head of H.R.”

He was an attentive man of many avocational interests on which he would expound knowledgeably but never flamboyantly. In an era of heated political discourse, his opinions were expressed in respectfully measured tones. Within his family, he was the “quiet leader,” said his son, Sam, only his wisdom loud and clear.

Seth experienced the highs and mostly lows of passionately following hockey’s Rangers and football’s Jets with fatalist humor. He confided to a friend that his favorite hockey columnist was a veteran New York Post writer but he had never actually acted on the impulse to publicly hide the scurrilous tabloid inside the New York Times.

As a New Jersey transplant after growing up in New York, he liked to say that he took his life’s mantra from a Bruce Springsteen song, estimating he had attended more than 200 of the Boss’s shows.

“What I’ve got I’ve earned,” the line went. “What I’m not I’ve learned.”

Seth Goodchild was born in Buffalo on April 10, 1961 to Lester and Jeanne Goodchild. He moved as a child to Manhattan, with his sister Leslie, where he developed a love for many things urban and, in particular, a New York slice. He returned to Buffalo for high school, where he was a long-distance runner, later continuing the pace with his children in a multitude of 5K races.

He met Lois, a fellow Buffalo student, at 19. Seth, who was editor and chief of the student newspaper, originally envisioned a career as a writer, a talent that served him well in law practice, beginning at Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

Seth and Lois, a speech language pathologist, were married on June 1, 1985. As the Glen Ridge house filled with children and the trappings of his professional success, he took to calling it “his fifth love.” This was because for all his varied professional and personal endeavors, it was the four family members, comfortably ensconced on Ridgewood Ave., who represented the proof and pinnacle of a most fruitful life.

Not surprisingly, his favorite holiday, typically spent hosting family, was Thanksgiving.

He is survived by Lois; daughter, Allie Goodchild (Derek Phillips); sons Sam (Jasmine Sola) and Justin (Jessie Goodchild), and grandchildren Ella Phillips and Max Phillips.

He outlived his original prognosis by a decade after being diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2009. He was never one to ask, why me? He preferred a good meal with family and friends, engaging conversation and, perhaps above all, a good laugh.

“Because humor was so important to him,” his daughter Allie said, “no matter how hard things got, we all laughed a lot.”

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to GU Oncology Research at Weill Cornell and/or donating blood to your local blood bank in Seth’s honor.

Link for online donations:
https://s010.med.cornell.edu/wcmc/make-a-donation.html?dept=Genitourinary%20Oncology%20Program