When Terry Goodman met a traveling puppeteer as a fourth-grader at Duncombe Elementary School in the late 1950s, he caught the show business fever that carried him from Fort Dodge to performing on the country’s biggest entertainment stages.

Getting to assist in shows by Lewis Parsons, a legendary puppeteer, and then starting his own puppet shows at an early age put Goodman on a career path to Broadway and to movie and television work in Los Angeles, being cast in national theater tours, and teaching his craft to college students in Iowa, Alaska and Utah.

“It was tremendous training for me as an actor,” Goodman said. “I did all the parts, all the voices, built the stage, and came up with the script and put music behind it. So when I got into theater, I had a pretty good idea of what I would like to do.

“I was very fortunate to have a talent that I was able to use that not many people have. I don’t know where I got it from, probably my dad — he was always a showman, trying to make somebody laugh. He wasn’t afraid to talk to anybody. I got that showmanship from him and what little brains I have, I got from my mother.”

He met Parsons when the puppeteer performed in Fort Dodge as part of his annual tours to grade schools from his native Michigan to the Mexican border, totting a trailer behind his car that held the puppets and a stage.

“He would come to Fort Dodge every fall and with 15 cents and a note from our parents, we could go to the assembly,” Goodman said. “It was my brother’s idea to go meet him and see if we could help him. During one of his shows, he would pick kids to come out of the audience and work the puppets behind stage on sticks, while he would play the piano. He picked me.

“I was kind of bit by it. I started my own show in the fourth grade, using a card table with a sheet over it. I built a bigger stage and when Mr. Parsons came to dinner at our house, for Halloween, he saw my puppet stage and bought me lighting. He also built me a giant Jack in the Beanstalk made of wood.”

Goodman’s neighborhood shows moved to a bigger stage — Uncle Dick’s Fun House on KVFD-TV — and he started doing puppet shows two or three times a week, first in Fort Dodge and then in surrounding communities. “I was pretty successful with it. But in the ninth grade, a girl told me, ‘Why don’t you go home and play with your dolls?’ I told my mom, that’s it, no more bookings.”

Goodman, 66, has lived for the past nine years in Park City, Utah — a resort town that is home to Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. He lived for 18 years in Venice Beach, California, and 16 years in New York City — and three in Ames, where he taught acting at Iowa State. In his 43-year career, he has performed in 163 professional plays and musicals, 62 television shows, 41 national TV commercials, featured or starred in 12 motion pictures, and directed 22 plays and musicals.

Over the years, he has returned home to appear in three productions of the Comedia Musica Players of Fort Dodge — in “Camelot,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Oliver.”

Goodman continues to perform, in local commercials and in movie roles. “It keeps me active, there’s a big acting community here,” he said. “I work 15 shows a year.”

Ames was where his son Jack, 13, was born. Terry delights in coaching him in flag football, baseball and basketball. “I coach all of his teams, that’s in the Goodman blood. We have a lot of fun. I see a lot of my dad and my brother in me when I coach. I’m a little more no nonsense about it, a little harder like they were in the ’50s and ’60s. The kids seem to respond well to it, the parents not as well.”

Goodman said Jack has no interest in following in his father’s career footsteps: “I discourage it whenever possible — it is such a difficult, difficult business. It is a one in million shot of making a living in this business. I’ve been extremely lucky I made a living at it. I’ve done OK. I never was a household name. I had good years financially but also had some really bad years.”

Sports played a large role in Goodman’s life growing up. His father Wayne A. “Connie” Goodman coached basketball for 27 years and is a member of the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame. His mother Helen was a longtime elementary school teacher. His brother Tom, who played at Iowa State, entered the Hall of Fame as a player and coach, and Tom’s sons Jay and Tommy John are also in the Hall of Fame. Tom coached FDSH to the 1988 state championship with Jay as one of its stars. Connie Goodman died in 1993 and Helen Goodman died a week short of her 101st birthday in 2012.

While getting his masters at Utah State, Goodman said he sent tapes to Aggie basketball coaches of his nephew Jay, who wasn’t getting a scholarship under Johnny Orr at Iowa State after his freshman year despite playing well. They liked what they saw and Jay starred there as the starting point guard. “They were the greatest two years of my life, I was like a parent, more nervous than he was. He was like a son to me.”

Goodman competed in football, basketball, track and baseball at FDSH. Track was his favorite sport and after his senior year, he placed third in the state in the 880 and helped FDSH to a second-place finish in the state tournament.

In junior high, he joined Gail Nicewanger’s drama class in the summer and began to understand drama as a skill. Then Larry Mitchell came to Fort Dodge as FDSH choral director in his sophomore year and Goodman began taking part in school musicals and he was hooked. “I had an OK voice. I loved musicals and it was something I thought I could do well.”

After graduating in 1969, Goodman got a theater scholarship to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. His sophomore year, he walked on to the track team and broke three records while there. He majored in theater and won the part of Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “I won some acting awards and thought I could do this professionally — and as soon as I graduated from Arkansas State, I was going to New York.”

Goodman — known professionally at Terence Goodman — did summer stock theater in Cortland, New York, and then joined four others in moving into New York City to rent an apartment and look for acting jobs. He earned his Actor’s Equity Card and was cast in “Jesus Christ Superstar” on Broadway and went on its first national tour. He also performed in the first Broadway revival of “Damn Yankees” with Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston.

His biggest movie role came when he answered an open casting call in 1975 for “Ode to Billy Joe,” inspired by the hit song by Bobbie Gentry. Goodman’s agent told him the producers were looking for “Southern types” and that since he went to college in Arkansas, he should take a shot. He tried out for the lead role, but it went to Robby Benson. Goodman landed the role of James Hartley — playing the brother of Bobbie Lee Hartley (Glynnis O’Connor). The movie came out in 1976.

“That was the springboard, I was bitten by the movie bug,” said Goodman, who was 25 at the time.

Goodman moved to Venice Beach and made a good living guest starring on such shows as “Laverne and Shirley” and “Three’s Company” and soap operas “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless,” until a writers’ strike in 1988. Goodman then went back to theater at The Old Lyric Repertory Theater in Logan, affiliated with Utah State. At the end of the season he was offered the opportunity to finish his master’s degree in exchange for teaching acting and film studies.

There, Goodman met a woman who became his wife, Catherine Jackson. After they both graduated, they moved back to LA where he did television shows and small movies. Then it was on to New York in 1994 where he performed in “The Music Man” in Philadelphia and summer stock in upstate. He was on the first Broadway national tour of “Titanic” and after 18 months, returned to New York. He was in New York on 9/11 and watched in horror from the roof of his apartment building as the second plane went into the side of the World Trade Center.

Goodman and his wife moved to Iowa State in 2002 when he was hired as an assistant theater professor. They were there for three years before moving to Park City with their son Jack. Now divorced and a single parent, Goodman decided to put his professional career on hold and raise his son in Park City. He said he has no plans on leaving Park City until Jack goes off to college.

“I feel very fortunate — I’ve always said, being an actor is sure better than working. I saw a lot of the world, and every major city in the country. I’ve been lucky, it’s been my only job. I never got star status, but I’ve been a lot of characters and leading men and entertained a lot of people. That’s what it was about for me. Making people laugh and cry and make people maybe think about a subject in a different way. To leave the theater even slightly changed is what it’s about for me.”

Goodman remembers growing up in Fort Dodge in the family home on Eighth Avenue North — “a little kid laying at his bedroom window, thinking I’d love to be a movie star one day. Every dream I dreamed for myself, I got — and more. I had a good run.”