B. was born in Lexington on May 4, 1946, and enjoyed what he considered an idyllic childhood along Whistle Creek with his father, Chester, who taught British history at VMI, his mother, Esten Cooke Goolrick, brother, Robbie, and sister, Lindlay.

B. attended Williams College in Massachusetts before being drafted into the Army in 1968. He served three years in Germany before returning home and graduated from Washington and Lee in 1973. On July 4, 1973, he met Faye Hamby, a recent Hollins graduate. They married in 1974 and celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary on Dec. 28, 2025.

B. began his journalism career as a reporter for The Staunton Leader and then earned his master’s from Columbia University School of Journalism. He and Faye moved to Atlanta in 1977, where he joined The Atlanta Constitution. A reporter there from 1977 to 1981, he quickly developed a reputation as one of the city’s most accomplished and versatile reporters, recognized by his peers as a premier wordsmith with a novelist’s eye for colorful detail. He and a colleague, Paul Lieberman, became known for lengthy, award-winning investigative series on topics such as minimum wage violations and challenges to the Voting Rights Act. One series, “The Underpaid and Under-Protected,” won the 1979 Grand Prize from The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards; another, on the Voting Rights Act, won the 1981 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for newspaper writing.

Recruited to the Atlanta bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1981, Chester continued to write major front-page articles, as well as sparkling feature stories and travel pieces. In 1982, just back from a WSJ assignment in Trinidad, he suffered a near-fatal cerebral aneurysm, one month before the birth of his daughter, Allie. (He was released from the ICU the day she was born, and swore that she, as an infant, waved directly at him through the glass of the nursery.)

After recovering, B. devoted his life to being a great husband, dad, and grand-dad; reading The New Yorker and the New York Times; cheering the Atlanta Braves; and practicing the high art of singing tenor with community choirs and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. Being able to sing worldclass choral repertoire, especially the Brahms Requiem, gave him immense pleasure.

Bebo was Allie’s doting dad and best friend, attending every swim meet and school event and tagging along to every rock concert she’d allow. In 2019, he became the proud grandfather to Mattox, who brought him endless joy and called him the world’s best granddaddy and best story-reader.

B. maintained a deep love for Rockbridge County throughout his life. In 2025, the family moved from Atlanta to the Brownsburg area, where Bebo happily entertained lifelong friends and family often, sharing meals and endless stories on the Goolricks’ front porch.

The family is memorializing B. through donations to Pro-Publica, the Pulitzer-winning nonprofit reporters’ organization dedicated to “investigative journalism in the public interest.” ProPublica exemplifies the beliefs Bebo stood for throughout his life: the essential role of a free press, and the compelling need to preserve the integrity of journalism.

To donate to ProPublica in memory of B., go to https://give. propublica.org. Select “Dedicate my donation,” and type in “Chester Goolrick” at the prompt.

Plans for a memorial service will be announced later. NG