PALM HARBOR — Usually, Sidney Goetz was mild-mannered and reserved. He didn't crack jokes or make stilted conversation about the weather.
It was different when he stepped behind a podium to lecture. When he sat down to write an essay for the newspaper.
He showed himself.
On the Green Party: Capitalizing on growing environmental and ecological concerns, the Green Party uses its catchy name and makes much of its activities in those areas but fails to emphasize the balance of its agenda.
On school choice: The concept of parental choice of schools is nothing but a Trojan horse to mask the fact that its leading protagonists seek to eviscerate and desiccate our public school system and compel taxpayer support for private sectarian schools.
On praying before sporting events: We look upon God as a father figure. If God favored one team over another, he would hardly be acting like the father we expect. Would a decent father favor some of his children over others?
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His mind reeled with knowledge from the start.
Mr. Goetz graduated high school by age 14 and law school by 20. Soon after, he was practicing law in New York and working for the government.
He always asked questions.
"Agnostic was not a word he used," said his wife, Miriam. "He was a humanist. He always was in doubt about a lot of things, religion being one of them."
He served on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association. He identified as a liberal Jewish Republican, with caveats.
"My Jewishness is more a matter of being a member or a descendant of the people," he told the St. Petersburg Times in 1996. "But religionwise, it's as unreal as any other religion."
He admired Thomas Jefferson and presided over the South Pinellas Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He received an award from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Passion aside, confrontation wasn't his style.
Once, when lecturing on a cruise, someone insulted and yelled at him.
"That was not the kind of thing that Sid was used to contending with," said his wife. "I don't think he really knew how to react."
He found home in the Unitarian Universalist community, where he lectured even after going blind from macular degeneration. He appreciated different opinions. The freedom to speak.
He died Monday in Palm Harbor after a brief bout with cancer. He was 94.
Staring into death, his views remained unchanged.
Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8857.
>>Biography
Sidney Goetz
Born: June 19, 1914.
Died: June 23, 2008.
Survivors: wife, Miriam; stepdaughters, Janis Reyher and her husband, Chuck, Judith Leavy and her husband, Michael; adopted daughter, Dori Anne Goetz.
Services: 3 p.m. Saturday at Universal Unitarian Fellowship, 5721 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. Services by David C. Gross Funeral Homes.
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