'I believe God allowed me to live through what I did so I would be able to do this'

06:14 PM CST on Saturday, November 15, 2003

By WENDY HUNDLEY / The Dallas Morning News

A look of contentment crosses Alexandra Goode's face as she peers at the dozens of smiling children who fill her photograph albums.

"This is my motivation," said Mrs. Goode, looking at the Russian orphans who have found new homes and new lives through International Guardian Angel Outreach, a program she started six years ago and runs out of her Richardson home.

Although Mrs. Goode has reached a time in life when most people are content to enjoy retirement, she's never been busier.

"I have an incredible amount of energy that a woman 74 is not supposed to have," said Mrs. Goode, who is inspired by her deep religious faith and her own tragic childhood as a World War II orphan and Nazi labor camp survivor.

"I believe God allowed me to live through what I did so I would be able to do this," she said.

The seeds of her work were sown many years ago in a place of unimaginable horror.

Her father was a high-ranking Russian military officer when the Russian Revolution forced him to flee to Yugoslavia.

Mrs. Goode was born in Sarajevo and grew up in a privileged and cultured environment among other Russian émigrés.

Her mother died when she was 3 years old, and she was attending a private boarding school when World War II broke out and German troops invaded Yugoslavia.

"The Germans occupied our school and sent us home," said Mrs. Goode, who quickly discovered that the stately house where she grew up had been reduced to rubble and that her father was missing.

At 10 years old, she was suddenly alone in the world. She was sent to live in an orphanage in Belgrade. There she learned that her father had been killed fighting in Moscow. "That's when a chapter in my life closed," she said.

And another dire chapter opened.

Dachau journey

"They put us in crowded cattle cars and took us to Dachau concentration camp," said Mrs. Goode, who was 14 when she was taken to the infamous camp near Munich, Germany.

"They stripped us, shaved our heads, gave us cold showers and sprayed us with DDT for lice," she said. "Then they pointed to a pile of clothes taken from dead people."

She was at Dachau for three months before being transported to a slave labor camp at Rugen Island in northern Germany.

She and the other prisoners spent their days digging ditches, laying railroad tracks and building bricks out of straw and mud.

"They did medical experiments on us," said Mrs. Goode, who recalled being given injections that caused her skin to break out in painful boils.

"They took our tonsils out without anesthesia," she said. "They just tied us to a chair."

Meals consisted of thin soup, often with insects floating on top, and small pieces of bread.

"Huge rats would come at night and eat on the dead bodies or even people who were sleeping," she said.

"I really wanted to die. One night I crawled up on my bunk bed and asked God to take my life. I couldn't endure it anymore. When I went to sleep, I really thought I would die."

'A changed person'

"But I was a changed person – I knew I was going to survive this," she said. "God had given me confidence in my heart."

She'd been at the camp about two years when she began noticing that fewer soldiers were guarding the prisoners. That was in 1945, and, although she didn't know it at the time, the war was coming to an end.

"One night I suggested we get out of the camp. A guard was standing at the gate with a dog. But we crawled under the gate and neither the guard nor the dog moved. I believed God performed a miracle."

She and 10 other young women escaped the camp, and Mrs. Goode ended up in a displaced persons camp in the British sector of post-war Germany.

In 1949, the 19-year-old woman was able to immigrate to the United States, where she met a dashing young Navy pilot named George Goode.

The couple married in 1951 and moved to the Dallas area eight years later. The Goodes, who have two sons and one daughter, have lived for the last 36 years in their Richardson home.

Six years ago, her life suddenly took an unexpected turn when she was asked to organize a trip to Russia for the Irving Bible Church.

Organization's start

A year later, the boy underwent surgery at Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, and he was adopted by the family that hosted his stay.

That was the start of International Guardian Angels Outreach, a nonprofit organization that has found families for more than 80 children and provides a variety of services to orphans.

The Russian Orphan Exchange brings about 20 children each year to the United States for three weeks where they stay with host families. The majority of children are adopted by these families, Mrs. Goode said.

One of those children is James "Cason" Cagle, who was adopted nine months ago by Duncanville City Manager Kent Cagle and his wife, Vicki.

Mrs. Goode "picked out a baby for us," Mr. Cagle said. "She sent us a picture that said, 'This is the Cagle baby,' and we agreed."

Mr. Cagle said he's impressed with the energy that Mrs. Goode devotes to the program.

"It takes so much out of you to travel halfway around the world, and she makes the trip several times a year," he said. "She has such a heart for the children. She is just wonderful.

"I think she has greater empathy for the children because she understands what they're going through."

Also under the Guardian Angel umbrella is Hope Program. It brings children with medical needs to the United States for treatment.

"We call it Hope Program because there is hope," said Mr. Goode, who serves as chairman of International Guardian Angel Outreach. It works with 10 orphanages in the Penza region, southeast of Moscow.

Hope Program began two years ago when Mrs. Goode visited a Russian orphanage for children who are considered unlikely candidates for adoption because of their medical conditions. Some are crippled. Some have cerebral palsy. Others are missing limbs.

"I saw this little girl in the orphanage who was given up to die," Mrs. Goode recalled. "She had spina bifida, and I fell in love with her."

Last August, the girl had surgery at Presbyterian Hospital in Plano. The doctors and hospital donated their services.

A better life

He and his wife, Catherine, have three children and weren't pursuing adoption when they heard about the Russian Orphan Exchange program.

They decided to become a host family and ended up adopting a boy, who is now 9, as well as Julia.

"In Russia, she would have remained in a government facility and deteriorated," he said. "She was the first child to leave that orphanage ever."

Julia and other children have been given a new life, he said, "because of one woman."

He calls Mrs. Goode a woman with a big heart and a true calling.

"She is providing an opportunity to these children that they would never have," he said.

For more information about International Guardian Angel Outreach, visit www.igao.org.

E-mail whundley@dallasnews.com

or call 469-330-1615.