Texas Border Business –
By William Keltner,
Besides the climate and the proximity to Mexico, one of the things that makes the Rio Grande Valley such a charming place to live, is the chance to meet some of our neighbors who have traveled the world‘s exotic places, and then chose to retire, semi-retire, or just hang out with us down here on the border. Case in point: A gentleman who has done all of that is the subject of this week’s feature story. You’ll enjoy meeting Keith L. Goodwin, CEO and PhD, with many credits to his name, as we’ll explain.
Let’s see where to begin: He is an outgoing man whose first career choice was to be a Lutheran Minister. During his studies at a Lutheran Seminary, he decided he could “Better to serve my fellow man as a layman than as a man of the cloth. That decision opened up a whole world of possibilities,” he said.
He found he loved language. At the Lutheran Seminary, he had picked up Biblical Hebrew and classical Greek. Goodwin already spoke the German language he learned from his adoptive parents, whom he dearly loves. He acquired University degrees in those difficult tongues. Later, he added Spanish and other Romance languages.
“On my way to becoming a Lutheran minister, I made an out of the blue, career-changing decision,” he said laughingly, “I joined the U.S. Navy and immediately, I became a problem for them to place me because of my academic experience and language skills. So, they gave me the rank of Lieutenant and put me in a Naval Intelligence Unit in Jacksonville, Florida. A great experience!”
After his discharge from the Navy, he took advantage of the G. I. Bill and pursued his academic education getting advanced degrees in Marketing at the University of Oklahoma and degrees in Communication and Electronics at the University of Texas/Austin.
With these academic credentials in his pocket, Gelco Company, Valero Oil, Knight-Ridder Newspapers variously hired him as CEO and Electronic Consultant. That put him in the middle of the electronic explosion going on in the cellular marketing business. “I was hired by Horizon, AT&T, and Pac-Bell to work in their expanding markets. With these companies, I designed many systems that are still in operation. When you pick up your cellphone, you are probably using something I had a hand in.”
“After all that,” he said, “I finally decided to start my own consulting company and base myself in the Valley,” he said. The name of his company is MICROCEL TECHNOLOGIES. “We specialize in Fluoropolymer metal treatment at the cellular level,” he explained, adding, “My customers are mainly large corporations and school systems operating fleets of cars, trucks and buses. For example, since 2008, the La Feria Independent School system has been one of our regular customers, along with the McAllen and PSJA school districts. We are able to save them up to 42% on fuel costs and cut emissions 20% with a technology I invented and developed. The product is called NANOTEK.”
Now, on a personal note: Keith L. Goodwin, PhD in also a major overcomer. You see, he was born in 1946 in Topeka, Kansas to a mother who put him up for adoption when he was three months old. She told the Lutheran Adoption Agency that she felt she couldn’t provide a good life for him. In short order, The Lutheran Children’s Home located a German couple wanting a child of their very own with similar background as Keith’s, and he was placed with that loving couple. “They were childless and were praying for a child to love and care for,” he said. “I was that child who was needing the love they could give. So, I grew up, and was nurtured by this compassionate family that gave me positive life-goals and the encouragement to fulfill them–They were a ‘Godsend’.” TBB
