Glenna Goodacre

Ms. Goodacre did paint for a while, but went on to become a nationally known sculptor. Her works include the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, the Irish famine memorial in Philadelphia and the Sacagawea dollar coin. She also made a larger-than-life statue of President Ronald Reagan, which was unveiled at the Reagan Presidential Library in California 1998. She was 80 when she died on Monday April 13 2020 at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. Her son-in-law, the musician Harry Connick Jr., who is married to her daughter, Jill, announced the death on Instagram. Her husband, C. L. Mike Schmidt, said she died of natural causes, but added that her health had been declining since she suffered a brain injury in 2007. Perhaps her most famous piece is the bronze sculpture dedicated to the 11,500 women who served in Vietnam as nurses, intelligence analysts, air traffic controllers and other roles. Since it was unveiled on Veterans Day in 1993, it has become a gathering place for some of the 265,000 women who served in the military during the Vietnam era, and their loved ones. She was born Glendell Maxey on Aug. 28, 1939, in Lubbock, Texas. Her father, Homer Glen Maxey, and her mother, Melba Mae (Tatom) Maxey, were builders and developers in Lubbock. Ms. Maxey studied art and zoology at Colorado College, in Colorado Springs, planning to become a medical illustrator. She graduated in 1961, the same year she married William Goodacre, a Canadian hockey star at the college. Ms. Goodacre, who later spent a semester at the Art Students League in New York, began her career as a painter in Lubbock, which would name a street after her. She began casting small pieces in bronze and moved to Boulder, Colo., near a foundry in Loveland. She divorced Mr. Goodacre in 1983 and moved to Santa Fe. There she married Mr. Schmidt, a lawyer, in 1995. They built a cabin on the Pecos River and had a house in Santa Fe, where Ms. Goodacre built or remodeled several of her studios. Ms. Goodacre never fully recovered from her brain injury. She stopped working but painstakingly finished a couple of pieces she had started before her injury, including a sculpture of three ballerinas inspired by her three Connick granddaughters. In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by her son, Tim Goodacre, and five grandchildren.