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Melanie Goodwin celebrated with benefit concert

Written by Mark Bauer, The Shorthorn assistant news editor

Thursday, 26 March 2009 09:21 PM

University of North Texas student Melanie Goodwin was raped and murdered September 2007. A benefit concert for the Melanie Goodwin Scholarship Fund will be held 7 p.m. Saturday at the Rosebud Theatre. (Courtesy Photo: Peggy Goodwin)

Melanie Goodwin enjoyed driving with the windows down, dancing and singing loudly to the radio. And if the smell of clean laundry was packaged in perfume form, she’d wear it.

She liked making people laugh, and laughing along with them until her stomach hurt. She loved God, her family and playing in the rain.

To put it plainly, Melanie loved life.

But the 19-year-old University of North Texas radio, television and film major was murdered in fall 2007. Ernesto Reyes received an automatic life sentence late last month for raping and strangling Melanie. But, through Facebook groups and memorial funds, her short-lived life continues to impact people.

Saturday, proceeds from a benefit concert in the Rosebud Theatre will go toward a scholarship fund set up in her honor.

Melanie influenced almost everyone she came in contact with, friends and family said. She was actively involved in her church choir, she participated in her high school plays, and to this day fellow students remember her performance in Arlington Bowie High School’s rendition of Seussical the Musical.

“Melanie was very involved in and had a passion for theater,” Melanie’s father Glenn Goodwin said. “She loved life and loved people.”

Glenn Goodwin said his daughter was “daddy’s girl,” and he enjoyed taking the family to her favorite destination spot in the Dominican Republic.

“She was a popular person but grounded in her family, and she was grounded and strong in her faith,” he said.

The family vacation spot was always a place of laughter, Candace Goodwin, Melanie’s older sister by six years, said.

“We were both laughing so hard,” Candace said of the time they were acting like walruses in the surf. “We weren’t using our arms. We were just using our legs.”

She just liked to have a good time. She was just an amazing person,” Candace said. “She glowed. She brightened up the room.”

Concert When & Where

What: A Life Well Loved-Melanie Goodwin Scholarship Concert

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, March 28

Where: University Center Rosebud Theatre

Performers: DeDe Jones, OneWill and special guest Tim Miller.

Cost: $15-$50
Limited seating available

To purchase tickets visit: www.showclix.com

Her Final Hours

Hundreds of Halo 3 fans convened at various gaming stores on Sept. 24, 2007, for the release parties held throughout Dallas-Fort Worth. Melanie was among those hundreds, but she wasn’t there for the games — she worked as a Red Bull sponsor handing out free beverages at local events, along with short-time modeling gigs.

Later that night, she led coworkers in prayer in the middle of a crowded restaurant where she and the other girls from work went to eat.

After the late dinner, Goodwin stopped at a convenience store where she met Reyes, who asked Melanie for a ride. Video footage showed the two leaving the store together.

Later that morning, police responded to a report of a body in a field outside a business building in Carrollton. Video surveillance showed Reyes dragging a motionless body out of Melanie’s red, two-door Saturn. He then attempted to burn the body.

Reyes fled the country, and investigators traced him to Mexico where he was arrested outside a relative’s home Oct. 9, 2007. Reyes was expedited back to the U.S. and processed into the Dallas County Jail on May 21, 2008.

Finding the Good in the Bad

Though it’s hard to imagine anything good coming out of such a violent death, her family is trying to do just that, Melanie’s mother Peggy Goodwin said.

To date, the family raised and gave away thousands of dollars worth of scholarships to local students who knew Melanie, including a student in Chicago who exudes Melanie’s values.

Peggy Goodwin said her daughter would be humbled by everything done in her memory.

“She said in her senior book that she wanted to leave an impact on people, and she has,” Peggy said.

Melanie’s family is helping her make more of an impact by awarding scholarships for as long as they have the funds. Proceeds from the benefit concert will go toward scholarships.

But the concert isn’t a memorial service so much as it is a celebration of Melanie’s life. A life that, friends and family contend, was well loved.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 28 April 2009 06:23 PM )

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