Page 33 - BusinessWest July 24, 2023

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Goodless Electric Charges Ahead in Its Eighth Decade
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
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arly on, Jeff Goodless knew life wasn’t easy in the world of electrical contracting.
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But he also knew his family had built a strong repu- tation in the field since 1945, so it was always on his mind to one day enter the family business.
“I went to Northeastern University for five years,” he said, studying electrical engineering and business management there in the 1970s and taking advantage of NU’s well-known co-op work programs. “Everybody said, ‘why did you go to the co-op school?’ But I wanted to go through the experience of actually working and doing real interviews, knowing I was coming here, just to have that experience.
“I came back here and thought I was going to take a month off, and my father said, ‘you can have a day off,’” he went on. “So I came right to work, right out of college.”
He knew that was a good decision and knows it even more now, almost a half-century later, with Goodless Electric marking 78 years in business, still serving clients in the residential, com- mercial, and industrial sectors, just like his father, Leon Good- less, and uncle, Irving Goodless, did from the start.
Irving launched the business behind his parents’ home in Springfield, and his brother Leon joined in 1957, when the firm took the name Goodless Brothers Electric Co.
They did quite a bit of moving in the first few decades, Jeff said, to Riverdale Road in West Springfield, Worthington Street
President Jeff Goodless