Abe Goff was born in Colfax, Washington, December 21, 1899, the fourth son of Herbert W. and Mary Francis (Dorsey) Goff. The middle name of McGregor, his wife's mother's maiden name, was assumed in April 1945 during his military service. In addition to his three brothers he had one younger sister. He left high school from September 1917 to February 1918 to serve as a private in the Washington State National Guard during World War I. He returned to school and graduated in 1918. While at Colfax High School he was on both the track and football teams.
Working his way through the University of Idaho he held such jobs as day laborer in a lumber mill, construction worker, plumbers helper, dish washer, and was also sexton at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. He also found time to participate in dramatics, where he appeared in many plays including the part of the Indian Chief in "The Light on the Mountain", in football where his exploits earned him one of the first spots in the University of Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame, and in campus politics where he was elected president of the Freshman Class for the third quarter, and in April 1923 he ran for president of the ASUI, but was defeated by Talbot Jennings. He was also active in the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
Goff was a cadet colonel in the university ROTC regiment and was commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the infantry reserve in February 1923. In 1933 he transferred to the Judge Advocate General's Department as a Captain, and when called to active duty had risen to Major.
After graduating from the University of Idaho Law School in 1924 he was admitted to the Idaho Bar and joined the law office of C.J. Orland. His first case, which he lost, was defending a West Virginian accused of making moonshine. In addition to his law practice Goff was football coach at Moscow High School for several years, and also a lay reader at the Episcopal Church in Colfax.
He was appointed Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Latah County in 1924 and elected to the position of Prosecuting Attorney in 1926, serving successive terms through 1934.
On August 24, 1927 Abe Goff married Florence Letitia Richardson, a 1923 graduate of the University of Idaho, who was a physical education teacher at the university. They had two children, Timothy Richardson and Annie McGregor.
In 1940 he was elected state senator after an unsuccessful primary campaign for the nomination as U.S. Senator. As state senator he introduced and secured passage of a bill recognizing the power of the Supreme Court to make rules governing procedure in all courts in Idaho. He also introduced bills amending the community property statutes.
In August 1941 he was recalled to active duty as a Major, later being promoted to Colonel, in the Judge Advocate General's Department. One of the first officers to go overseas, in February 1942 he was sent to Africa and the Middle East as legal advisor to the U.S. Military North African Mission, headquartered with the British army in Cairo. He was with the British during Rommel's advance across Africa in the spring of 1942, and also saw duty in Italian East Africa and Iran. He was military envoy to Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and military escort of Madame Chaing Kai-shek during her visit to Eritrea.
Returning to the United States after sixteen months in Africa, Goff served as assistant chief of the International Law Division in the office of the Judge Advocate General and as Special Council for the War Department in numerous cases in Federal Courts throughout the U.S. involving the constitutionality of wartime powers exercised by army area commanders, and later served as Deputy Director of the U.S. War Crimes Office. He went to London as senior War Department representative to the Allied War Crimes Conference in 1945 and served in Europe and the Pacific area setting up procedures for the prosecution of war criminals. While assigned to General McArthur's staff in Tokyo he organized the International Prosecution Section for the trial of Tojo and other Japanese war criminals, but did not participate in the prosecutions.
He returned to the U.S. and the office of the Under Secretary of War in the spring of 1946 to serve, until relieved from duty in September 1946, as a member of a special clemency board charged with reviewing sentences of convicted military prisoners. He was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Army Commendation Medal, and eight other service or campaign medals.
In 1946, while still on active duty, he was nominated as the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by Compton White, Sr. He won this election, and, as a member of the 80th Congress was elected president of the 80th Club, a group composed of 74 first year House Republicans; other officers were J. Caleb Boggs, vice-president, and Richard Nixon, secretary. Goff was also a member of the Committee on Agriculture and of the Speaker's Steering Committee for the House. In 1948 he was defeated in his bid for re-election by White when the First District voted heavily for Truman.
Following this defeat he, returned to active military duty for six months on a special assignment dealing with the new code for courts-martial, as chairman of a Board of Review in the office of the Army Judge Advocate General.
In the summer of 1949 he returned to Moscow to resume his law practice, this time alone, Orland having died in the interim. It was not until 1953, just shortly before going to Washington, D.C., that he took in a new partner, Cope Gale of St. Maries. Following the death of U.S. Senator Bert Miller in 1950, Goff attempted to gain the nomination for his seat, but lost out to former Senator Henry Dworshak.
Following the Eisenhower victory in 1952, Goff wrote many letters to colleagues asking for assistance in getting a federal appointment. His chance came in December 1953, when, at the request of Postmaster Arthur Summerfield, he went to Washington, D.C. to accept the position of Solicitor of the Post Office, a title which was later changed to General Council. His appointment became effective February 1, 1954.
He resigned his Post Office position when President Eisenhower named him to fill Owen Clarke's unexpired Interstate Commerce Commission term. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate on January 30, 1958 and he took his oath of office on February 12. On December 29, 1959, he was reappointed for a full seven-year term. In April 1963 he replaced Donald McPherson as Vice Chairman of the Commission, and in 1964 his colleagues elected him Chairman. Although he had the unanimous endorsement of industry and the practitioners, President Johnson chose not to reappointment him when his term expired in December 1966. Goff remained on the commission until July 1967 when his replacement, Grant Syphers, was confirmed. In Goff's words: "Apparently I am too staunch a Republican and advocate of the independence of the Commission to be reappointed by this highly partisan administration."
Since he was within two years of mandatory retirement when he left the Interstate Commerce Commission, Goff decided to return to Moscow, Idaho, where he spent the remaining 17 years of his life. After several months of ill health, Abe Goff died on Friday, November 23, 1984. He was survived by his wife and daughter, his son having died previously.
He was a member of and held national offices in the Idaho State Bar Association, American Bar Association, American Society of International Law, American Judicature Society, Federal Bar Association, and Judge Advocates Association. He was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Military Appeals, Supreme Court of the Philippines, and the Supreme Court of Idaho. He was also a member of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Reserve Officers Association, The Military Order of the Carabao, Beta Theta Pi fraternity, Masons, and Elks. He was a longtime member of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Moscow and served as its treasurer for many years while an attorney in town.
The records of Abe McGregor Goff span the years 1905 to 1985, with the bulk of the material covering the years 1928 to 1971.
Included in the records are personal papers including photographs and scrapbooks of family members, and material concerning his career as politician, lawyer, military officer, post office solicitor, and member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
As will be noticed in the following inventory the career records are sketchy. More extensive records for the Post Office and Interstate Commerce Commission as well as personal papers will be found in an earlier Goff collection, MG 148. Both inventories should be consulted by researchers since the collections complement each other
Since the papers in this record group were received at several different times over a six year period there was no order to the material, therefore the material was sorted by activity and a series arrangement imposed during processing. Each series was arranged alphabetically. Most material was in labeled folders when received; the original folder headings were retained and in most cases the original order within the folders was also retained.
The majority of the papers were considered personal and were placed in series one. Included are biographies and clippings about Goff; correspondence, including over 100 letters he wrote to Florence between 1939 and 1967; engagement calendars of both Abe and Florence; certificates and plaques; invitations and memorabilia from presidential inaugurations from 1953 to 1967; income tax returns and supporting documentation from 1966 to 1983; and speeches given on patriotic occasions or to high school and college audiences. There is also a large collection of photographs which include old family photographs, pictures of Abe, Florence and their children, Abe's military photographs and official photographs from the Post Office Department and Interstate Commerce Commission. Finally there are scrapbooks and memorabilia belonging to Florence, Annie, and Tim. Most of the material in Florence's scrapbook was loose, and only a few pages were used. Therefore the scrapbook was disassembled and only Goff related material retained from the loose clippings.
Material related to Goff's political career is in series two. Included are a certificate of election to the Idaho state senate; and campaign brochures and expense records, a legislative scrapbook, testimony given before congressional committees, copies of speeches delivered in Congress, his voting record and office filed on bills concerning the Post Office and veterans affairs, all relating to his two years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Other material concerns his unsuccessful bid for a second term in the House in 1948 and the Senate primary race in 1950.
Series three contains material relating to Goff's Moscow law practice. Items in this series include correspondence, a portion of the "M:" case files, financial and other reports of the prosecuting Attorney's Association for which Goff was treasurer, quarterly and yearly social security, withholding reports and workman's compensation information, and a file of uncompleted work.
Goff served in both World War I and II and then continued in the Reserves. His records of this aspect of his life are contained in series four. Among these materials are Army Records, especially those dealing with his service in Eritrea, an oversize frame containing his medals, folders on military justice, and a military reserve certificate.
The few folders concerning Goff's Post Office career are in series five and include clippings and correspondence.
The final series contains material relating to Goff's career in the Interstate Commerce Commission. Included among these records are clippings, notes on cases or topics before the commission, correspondence and inter-office memos, speeches, testimony before congress while chairman of the commission, and correspondence and clippings concerning his non re-appointment to the commission in 1967.
Most of the material in the collection was in legal size folders; these were changed to letter size. Discarded from the collection were bank statements and paid checks, blank report forms, blank stock certificates, duplicate campaign material, duplicate near print material, greeting cards, unused post cards, programs for events Goff may have attended, news paper clippings not relating to Goff or his family, and a reel to reel tape recording of an unidentified music recital. Yearbooks from Moscow High School were added to the Special Collections yearbook collection and government documents were sent to the Government Documents Department of the library. This reduced the records by 15cubic feet.
The records of Abe Goff were donated to the University of Idaho Library by his daughter Annie Goff between February 1990 and June 1993. An additional donation was received from the Latah County Historical Society in February 1996.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.