Because of Gavan

“Watch me win.”

Gavan Don Goodman, 21, earned his wings on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, and was gently carried by angels into the glory of Heaven to be with God for eternity.

"Watch me win." Gavan wrote those three words on the inspiration board in his room just eight days before passing, and they describe how he lived. He had an incredible passion for life, and he was driven. He dreamed big, planned carefully, and worked relentlessly. Obstacles only made him more determined. With his family and friends, he was kind, polite, loving, and nurturing, and he inspired and motivated the people around him. He did not talk just to talk. He listened quietly, then said only what needed to be said, and he said it with thought and purpose. And then there was his humor. It was dry, sly, and sarcastic, delivered with a straight face. You could be halfway through your next sentence before you realized he had just zinged you.

Gavan was born in 2005 in Portland, Oregon, to Brett Daniel Goodman and Elizabeth Dawn Haworth Moses. He grew up in Beaverton, Oregon; moved to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, when he was 10; spent time in Novato, California; and made South Carolina his home in 2020.

Gavan loved the water. He was an avid swimmer, swam with the Kona Dolphin Swim Team in Hawaii, and competed in multiple open-water ocean swims. He loved swimming alongside turtles and dolphins during ocean practices and races. In 2022, he worked as a lifeguard for the City of North Myrtle Beach, where he was credited with saving two lives. He began practicing Aikido at age four in Oregon and continued in Kailua-Kona, where he earned a purple belt.

He loved to build and to fix. He built and worked on computers and enjoyed all kinds of technology. He owned thousands of Legos and still loved putting kits together as a young adult. He also had an uncanny ability to break a finished build down into its pieces and rebuild it with incredible speed. He loved cars and loved working on them. He loved digital photography, mostly of nature and cars. He loved seeing the country, and drove across the United States nearly a dozen times after moving to the Myrtle Beach area.

Gavan was a skilled rifle and sidearm marksman and a model of safe firearm handling. One of his favorite pastimes was shooting at the outdoor range at his family's home in Conway, then tearing down, cleaning, and reassembling each firearm with skill, care, and precision.

He loved animals. In Hawaii, he volunteered as a Junior Program leader at the Kailua-Kona Humane Society. As a toddler, he adored Claire, a golden retriever. In his final years, his dog was Makana, an Australian shepherd and wire-haired terrier mix. The two shared a bark-speak language that Makana used with no one else. His favorite cat was Clark, who hugged Gavan the way a toddler hugs an adult, with a paw on each shoulder.

Gavan loved being with his family, especially at meals. He stayed fit, but he could put away food like no one else. People often said he must be filling his big toe. He almost never needed a take-home container, and if the others at the table agreed, he would gladly finish their leftovers too. His parents thought he would grow out of it. He never did.

At Novato High School, Gavan served in the Air Force JROTC. He graduated from South Carolina Connections Academy on the honor roll in 2023, earning his diploma a semester ahead of his class. He was a member of the North Myrtle Beach Police Explorers.

Gavan started working at 16 in his family's power washing company. He went on to hold a range of jobs and, for a time, was a licensed insurance broker. At 20, he began working at Olive Garden on Highway 501 in Myrtle Beach and, in early 2026, at Wyndham Travel and Leisure in North Myrtle Beach. In January 2026, he started his own company, Goodman Garage Door Services, in Myrtle Beach, and he was learning to day trade. His plan was to reach financial freedom while he was young, then give his time to the things he cared about most. One was serving his community as a police officer. Another was traveling the world.

On the dry-erase board in his room—his inspiration board—Gavan kept the words he lived by. At the top was the question he asked himself every day: "Will the actions I take today move me closer or further from my goal?" Two of the lines he circled read, "God wouldn't have put this in your head if He didn't think you could achieve it," and "Money is the tool, not the goal. The goal is freedom. Remember that." Others read, "Love isn't expressed by how you feel, but by the actions you take," and "I might fail, but I will never lose." He last updated the board on September 22, 2026, eight days before he passed.

Gavan's closest friends remember a young man who was always working. Ask him to go out, and the answer was usually "I have work tomorrow." He wanted to travel everywhere. One friend who met him in the Police Explorers thought at first that he was the goofiest guy around, then saw how driven he was. When Gavan wanted something, nothing stood in his way. In the Explorers, he and two friends became "The Trio." They could read each other's minds, and they shared a lot of laughs at their favorite fast-food spots. His friends remember most how he cheered for them. He loved hearing about other people's goals and how they planned to reach them, and he was one of the first people they told when something good happened. As one friend put it, he made you feel like your dreams were his dreams. He loved their cats almost as his own, and he was thrilled the day a wary cat named Bo finally let him pet him. With a camera in his hand, they said, he was simply living in the moment.

His girlfriend remembers that Gav loved unconditionally and fiercely, and put his whole heart and soul into everyone and everything he did. When life got hard, it only sparked his drive to put in the work and make things right. Giving up was never an option. He tried again and again, always believing that the people and things he loved were worth fighting for. In her words, to know Gav was to love him, and even more than that, to know what it felt like to be truly loved. His love made people feel seen, valued, protected, and important. He gave pieces of himself freely to the people around him, and so he left pieces of himself everywhere he went. His love shaped the people fortunate enough to receive it, and through them, that love will continue to reach far beyond not only this lifetime but this universe.

He loved his family, his closest friends, and his cats and dogs most of all.

How he got his name

While his parents were looking at baby names, a hawk was circling the tall trees in the forest across from their house. They chose the name Gavan, which they understood to be the traditional spelling and to mean "white hawk."

Gavan is a form of Gavin, the Scottish version of Gawain, the knight who was King Arthur's nephew in the old tales of the Round Table. Gawain's name is traced to the Welsh word gwalch, which means "hawk." Scholars read the full name as "white hawk" or "hawk of the plain."