Many Lawrence restaurant owners who knew Chad Goldsberry also knew that he wanted to send his 10-month-old baby boy to Kansas University one day.
That's part of the reason they've banded together to raise funds for Goldsberry's wife, Maria Goldsberry, and son, Chadwick Jr., who lost Goldsberry in a Dec. 19 accident on the Kansas Turnpike.
For information about gift certificates, call Doug Holiday, general manager of Hereford House, at 842-BEEF, or visit Q-104 radio personality Randy Miller's show Web site at www.voicesinyourhead.com.
Or you can make cash contributions at any U.S. Bank to the Chad Goldsberry Sr. memorial fund.
Goldsberry, a 26-year-old truck driver for Kansas City, Mo.-based Gallo Produce, was killed on his way to make Lawrence deliveries after he overcorrected his box truck to keep from driving off the road, crashed through the center concrete barrier, and was struck by an oncoming semi tractor-trailer just three miles east of town.
Gallo officials said they believed Goldsberry, of Independence, Mo., may have fallen asleep at the wheel after being up the night before with his infant son while his wife was at work.
Doug Holiday, general manager of Hereford House, 4931 W. Sixth St., has so far collected $750 auctioning off gift certificates donated by Lawrence and Kansas City restaurants and services. He hopes to sell all the donated certificates for at least face value, which would raise $2,500 for the family.
"I just thought it would be a good thing to do," Holiday said. "He'd been delivering produce for six years. He was such a big fan of KU. He wanted his son go to KU. I never met his wife. I never met his 10-month-old boy, either. But that's what he'd talk about how excited he was for his kid to go to KU."
Anita Goldsberry, Chad Goldsberry's mother, said her son's wife wanted to use the money to realize that dream.
"She wants to save whatever comes through so that if he does want to go to school at KU, that's what he can do," she said, adding that the fund-raising effort was touching.
"It says a lot of Chad that they thought that much of him," she said. "But it also says a lot about how much people really do care. They were Chad's customers, but they were his friends, too."
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