U. L. Gooch
former Kansas state senator and Wichita City Council member
Ulysses Lee Gooch (September 13, 1923 – November 24, 2021), often known as Rip Gooch, was an American pilot, aviation entrepreneur, and politician in Kansas. Gooch was a member of the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights, 1971–74; member of the Wichita City Council, 1989–93; and a Kansas state senator (D-Wichita, 29th District – central-northeast Wichita) from 1993 until retiring in January 2004 as the state's oldest serving senator, at 80. Gooch was one of the first inductees to the Black Aviation Hall of Fame.
Early life
Gooch was born in Ripley, Tennessee, the son of rural Tennessee sharecroppers and the grandson of emancipated slaves, Gooch was orphaned at age four and fended for himself growing up in the 1920s and 1930s under the shadow of Jim Crow. Working in fields while watching airplanes fly overhead, he dreamed of escaping to a better life. While in high school, in 1943, during World War II, Gooch joined the Army, and was eventually shipped to the Philippines as a sergeant supervising a construction operation; he was discharged after the war in 1946. He graduated from his hometown's Lauderdale High School while in the military.
Aviation career
Gooch subsequently began taking flight lessons on the GI Bill, earning his private pilot's license in 1947, and continued with advanced flight training at a private flying service. About this time, he met and married Augusta Fields (their marriage would last until her death 48 years later). While studying veterinary medicine at Tennessee State University (then Tennessee A & I University), Gooch continued his flight training, eventually becoming a commercial pilot and flight instructor.
The public source identifies “U. L. Gooch” as former Kansas state senator and Wichita City Council member. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gooch, former and Kansas.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7863523. VIAF identifies the subject as 75759361. The Library of Congress control number is n2007002711. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2021, 1971 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “U. L. Gooch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.