Michael Douglas Goostree

Michael Douglas Goostree was born September 3rd, 1948 to parents Douglas Porter Goostree and Retha Goostree in Nashville, Tennessee. He moved to Atlanta when he was four and came to Kansas City when he was ten. He attended Shawnee Mission West high school and The University of Kansas where he majored in Political Science. He met his wife, Marti, at KU and they were married on May 18, 1971. He started work in the life insurance industry at New York Life after college and worked successfully for various companies before starting his own firm, Goostree Financial Group, and focusing on financial planning in the 1990s.

Michael loved his work and his clients. It’s a testament to his wisdom and steady character that many of the clients he started with 50 years ago still work with his son at Goostree Financial Group today. For the last 20 years of his career, Michael worked with his son, Toby, who eventually took the lead in the business.

Michael also loved his family. He and his wife, Marti, travelled the world together, going to China—incidentally, at the time of the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989—and Australia and Europe as well as their beloved Hawaii many times and, more recently, Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Michael was always relaxed during travel. In fact, his son, Toby, remembers how he was so relaxed during vacations that he often arrived to the airport “just in time,” boarding the plane right as the doors were being shut. At the time of his passing, Michael and Marti had been happily married for 54 years.

Michael was a member and teacher at a number of churches over the years, and he and Marti have attended Emmanuel Baptist Church in Overland Park for the last several. Michael was a strong Christian who embodied the instruction in Deuteronomy 6:7 to consistently be thinking about God ‘when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and rise up’. Michael was not a preachy person but, rather, lived his faith, and his sense of calm—even in the face of his struggle to recover from heart surgery—is a testament to the peace God gave him.

Michael was preceded in death by his parents and his older brother, Dick, and is succeeded by his wife, Marti, his son, Toby, his daughter-in-law, Amy, and his grandson, Jack. He lived a very happy life and liked to quote David in the Psalms: “the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” He was a very funny person and had his own father’s gift for comic timing. He will be greatly missed.

In lieu of flowers, you can send donations to Saving Sight, 10560 N. Ambassador Dr., Suite 210, Kansas City, MO 64153.