Goff. Thomas

Argus, The (Fremont-Newark, CA) - Friday, August 29, 2003

Tom Goff a writer, business advocate, dies at 49 One-time ANG Newspapers writer recent years tackled controversy and comedy, tragedy and tomfoolery, as an ANG Newspapers reporter and columnist from 1981 to 1997. 

For the last six years, Goff used his skills as a writer and public speaker to become an advocate for business and a campaigner for improved Bay Area transportation. 

And he treated life as an adventure, whether paddling a canoe on the Mississippi River or playing shortstop for 20 years on the Dugout Grays, an Alameda men's softball team. 

Goff was driving from Alameda to his San Leandro home from a Wednesday night game when he apparently suffered a massive heart attack, said his wife, Jill Singleton Goff. 

Goff died in his car. He was 49. 

"Tom was not only a total delight to work with, but the rare individual with whom you are privileged to be a friend as well as professional associate," said Jim Earp, executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs. 

Goff was deputy director of the Emeryville-based alliance, which represents more than 1,700 construction companies and 50,000 union workers from Kern County to the Oregon border. 

He joined the alliance as communications director, rising in rank as he assembled what Earp described as a "first-rate industry magazine" and a Web site -- www.newbaybridge.org -- which focuses on the workers behind the span's reconstruction. 

In his first career, Goff was an award-winning reporter and columnist who brought to life the quirks, pains and achievements of ordinary people. 

He joined Sparks Newspapers, a predecessor of ANG Newspapers, in 1981 as a feature writer with the San Ramon Valley Herald. In 1983, he became a writer for the Hayward Daily Review and eventually moved to the Oakland Tribune. He was a columnist and senior writer for ANG Newspapers for many years.