Fairfield chamber names Diane Goudy, Werner Elmker Citizens of the Year

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce held its Annual Awards Banquet on Thursday, April 24, during which the names of this year’s Citizens of the Year were revealed: Diane Goudy and Werner Elmker.

DIANE GOUDY

Both of this year’s recipients happened to be recording the proceedings when their names were called, and they were equally pleased and surprised to be honored in front of hundreds of people at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center. Lori Fry, one of last year’s Citizens of the Year, was at the podium to present an award to this year’s winner. Goudy and Fry are good friends, so Goudy was recording Fry while she was giving her speech, revealing details about this year’s recipient without mentioning their name.

“I remember Lori saying something about how ‘this person just does service and it’s never about her’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s such a sweet person,’” said Goudy, adding that she didn’t realize it was her until Fry touched on a couple of unusual specifics.

Those specifics included doing the sing-alongs at the care centers in town, and being part of the FHS Wall of Honor committee. Another giveaway was the mention of Stephen Ministers, a program of Goudy’s Word of Life Church whereby lay ministers meet with people who are grieving, feel lonely or just need someone to talk to.

Goudy is a native of Crofton, Nebraska and from a family of six. Her mother and father were givers, she said, and they instilled those values in her.

“My mom would be the one who would bring the casserole to the person in need,” she said. “My dad thought we should have the town hardware store because our garage had plumbing and electric equipment, and people would just come in and help themselves.”

Goudy moved to Fairfield in 1978 after falling in love with a man from Eldon, her husband Joe. She had a brief stint working for Iowa Malleable Iron, and then landed the job of her dreams. In the middle of the school year, Fairfield schools posted an opening for a business teacher at the high school.

“I was like, ‘Yeah right. Who has a position open in January?’” Goudy said about the opportunity. “But it was real. I applied for it, got it, and it was great.”

Goudy worked as a business teacher at FHS for 40 years, retiring in 2018 and having touched the lives of an estimated 6,000 students. For 17 years, she was the advisor to the school’s chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA).

Goudy said one of the organizations she’s proud to have been a part of was Business and Professional Women, which she was active in for 20 years. She was also on the Fairfield Public Library’s board of directors during its pivotal transition into its new building in 1996. Since her retirement seven years ago, Goudy has remained active with a consulting service she started called Goudy Career Service.

Diane and Joe have three children, Monica, Megan and Mitch, and seven grandchildren. She said she’s very happy to have found her way to Fairfield.

“I didn’t know Fairfield existed until I was 19,” she said. “If you want to be involved, there are so many different avenues, and I’ve been blessed to meet a lot of good people.”

WERNER ELMKER

Every year, Elmker is responsible for recording the Annual Awards Banquet and taking photos of the award-winners, so just before his name was called, he was preoccupied with getting a group of people into position for their photo shoot. Even though his attention was divided, Elmker started getting suspicious as last year’s recipient Pete Tollenaere began describing this year’s Citizen of the Year. Tollenaere spoke about how this person plays piano concerts at the Sondheim, something few other people do.

“I wondered, ‘What’s going on here?’” Elmker said. “And then he talked about photos, videos and drone, and I thought, ‘This is getting a bit close to home.’”

Elmker has become a household name in Fairfield thanks to his frequent photography and videos of events, which he posts on Facebook. He also has a monthly YouTube series called Planet Fairfield, which are videos he has compiled each month for the past eight years.

“A major portion of Planet Fairfield now is drone footage,” Elmker said. “One reason I’m doing Planet Fairfield is to assemble an archive of video footage of Fairfield, so when people ask me, ‘do you have footage of this or that?’ I just send them the video.”

Elmker said he’s giving of his photos, too, and when somebody asks for a photo, he sends them a link to all 4,000 photos he’s posted from 2003 to the present.

“I tell them they can use them free of charge because I want to make Fairfield famous,” he said. “I don’t see any point in restricting them. I quickly realized there’s no reason to be stingy when it comes to artistic expression, and it comes back to me many fold.”

One of Elmker’s recent passions is Golden Magnolia Sanctuary, located in the former First Presbyterian Church. He said that when he learned Golden Magnolia would be opening a soup kitchen, he wanted to do everything he could to help, because of his concern for people with food insecurity.

“I decided to move my piano there, with the idea of giving concerts,” he said. “Then I got more involved in scheduling concerts, and they even invited me to be part of the board. Now I’m spending a significant part of my time there helping out.”

Elmker has played an integral role in the sound bath concerts held at Golden Magnolia, including supplying the vocals. Elmker, a native of Denmark, was trained in the ancient Indian vocal style called Dhrupad, a slow and meditative form of music accompanied by tambura. He’s training others in this vocal style, too.

Another project Elmker has embarked on is turning his photographs into puzzles. His photo of the front of Everybody’s Whole Foods was turned into a wood puzzle, which he donated to the library so the whole public could assemble it. He then had a puzzle commissioned from his drone photograph overlooking Trojan Stadium during a Homecoming football game beneath a beautiful sunset. That puzzle was purchased by the library and is now also accessible to the public.

“I love Fairfield, and I’ve been here half my life,” Elmker said. “I want to do as much as I can to support Fairfield and promote it.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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