Brenda Goldsmith

Sixty Years In, She’s Still Discovering A Whole New Philadelphia

Brenda Goldsmith is working through a list. Every Saturday, as part of the Phambassador program’s 52 Weeks of Firsts, she honors a Philadelphia original: the first zoo, the first holiday parade balloon, the first ice cream float.

“I had no idea how many firsts took place here in Philadelphia,” she says. “Philadelphia was the first of so many things.”

Brenda is 65, a lifelong Philadelphian, and a woman who has spent decades showing up for this city. She came here at four from Buffalo when her parents divorced and her mother came home, and she’s been here ever since. She’s lived in North Philly, Germantown, then the Cedarbrook section of Mount Airy, where she’s been for decades.

She’d describe herself, first and foremost, as a “church lady.” She’s a member of Enon Tabernacle Baptist, and active in the 15,000-member congregation. But she’s also, depending on the day, a former hospital administrator, a retired parade producer, a Welcome America regular since 2002, a recruiter, a mentor, a neighbor who knows all the local kids by name, and the person a stranger on a Center City corner once told she should run for mayor.

“Someone said to me once, when we were in Center City, ‘You need to be the mayor, because you just know everyone.’ I’m like, well, it doesn’t take much. In the time we’re living in, a smile means a lot. People are going through so much. Just ‘How are you? How’s your day?’ — it can go a long way.”

Opening The Volunteer Door

Brenda’s civic life started in the 1980s, at the city’s Super Senior Sunday event run by Mark Beyerle and Loretta Franklin. She showed up, had fun, and kept showing up to other events, including street festivals and whatever else was happening. Then she spotted the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

She started as a volunteer, dressing up as a clown one year, a captain the next, a pilgrim after that.

Then, in August of 1996, she called the parade office to ask if they had any positions open. They did. She came in, interviewed for the volunteer coordinator role, and got it.

That was the beginning of a long stretch in what she calls the entertainment business. First she moved up to associate producer, then producer, which meant she was booking talent and groups for segments of the parade. She focused on young people: dance troupes and youth performers who needed the exposure and the stage.

“I never thought I’d end up in entertainment,” she says. “I thought I’d stay in the medical field. But it just happened through volunteering.”

She’d spent years working admin at Jefferson, Episcopal Hospital, and Germantown Hospital — receptionist in the neurology department at Jefferson, assistant to the director of cardiology at Episcopal, executive assistant to the chief of internal medicine at Germantown. But the parade was something else entirely, and showed her a whole new part of herself. She had the organizational instincts, a mentor who taught her the rest, and a personality that could book a room.

The Recruiter

When the Phambassador program started building out its volunteer base, they didn’t just need ambassadors. They needed people who could go out and recruit more of them. Brenda was one of about 20 “super phams” tapped for the job.

She set up a table at Enon Tabernacle’s to recruit for both phambassadors and the Ogontz Night Market, and pushed information through the Black Clergy affiliation. She worked the room everywhere she happened to be.

And she was deliberate about where she looked. She focused on zip codes 19121 and 19150, covering North Philly and the area around Enon, in the Mount Airy/West Oak Lane corridor.

“A lot of times people don’t know about things going on right here in the city,” she says. “I wanted to make sure those neighborhoods were included.”

It’s the same drive that’s made her a Welcome America evangelist for more than two decades. And during those two free weeks every summer, when it doesn’t cost anything, she tells anyone with kids they must go to the Franklin Institute and the African American Museum.

“I’ve always been such an advocate for young people,” she says. “It’s important for them to understand that this is their city, too, and that everything isn’t always about money.”

The Last Day at Wanamaker’s

Ask Brenda about her favorite ambassador experience and she jumps immediately to the Wanamaker’s light show — the final season before the organ, the Dickens Village, and the show itself went on hiatus. She worked about ten days of it, on a rotating schedule, helping visitors navigate the space and watching children come in to see Santa and the lights.

“Just to hear the organ, see the children come in, and their faces as they watched the light show was really a wonderful thing,” she says.

It was also a bonding experience for all the volunteers.

“We had become a family,” she says. “The last day, we were all sad knowing it would be two years before we’d be back at Wanamaker’s.”

The City She Made Home

Ask Brenda about why Philadelphia is a great place to live and she can talk forever.

South Philly, she says, has a closeness she loves — especially during the Mummers on New Year’s. Germantown is where the Germans originally settled. West Philly is where Will Smith is from. The Southeast Asian food market at FDR Park sends her over budget every time.

“That food is so good — I set a budget and then that just goes right out the window,” she laughs.

She’s raised no children of her own, but she has godchildren she’s mentored and loved, and she knows every kid on her block — most of whom feel comfortable asking her for help whenever they need it.

“I have family telling me to come back to Buffalo,” she says. “I say no. You can never compare with everything we do in Philadelphia. All these celebrations — the auto show, the flower show, Asian Pacific heritage month, Black History Month. We’re a mixture of all different nationalities. Whatever your taste, whatever you want to eat — it’s here.”

And now, as a Phambassador, every Saturday there’s something new on the list. The first hospital. The first medical college. Steamboats.

“By volunteering and getting to know people, I got all these opportunities that came behind it,” she says. “It’s been a blessing.”