Photo courtesy of Nick Livermore
‘The light of the room’
By Jennifer Champagne
Managing Editor
Before she became the subject of a missing person investigation, Starla Goings was something far more important to the people who knew and loved her.
She was a mother to Steffanie and Nick. A daughter. A sister. A best friend. A quilter. A gardener. A woman whose laughter filled rooms, whose generosity seemed endless and whose greatest joy came from making someone else smile.
Goings, 65, was last seen Aug. 15, 2025, after attending the U.P. State Fair and was reported missing the following day. Nearly a year later, the investigation into her disappearance remains active. As what would have been her 66th birthday on July 30 approaches, along with the first anniversary of her disappearance, family and friends hope the community will remember not only the ongoing search for answers, but also the life, kindness and generosity that defined Starla Goings.
For her son, Nick Livermore, the first memory that comes to mind isn’t tied to a holiday or milestone. It’s a road trip.
The family had traveled countless times between Columbus, Ohio, and Munising, usually making the drive straight through. But one trip was different. It was just Nick and his mom.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Anywhere you want to stop — even if it’s every five minutes — we’ll do it,’” Livermore said. “She was just a free spirit and loved to have fun. She was very funny, bubbly, just really a joy to be around.”
They stopped at Cabela’s near Ann Arbor, grabbed sandwiches at Tony’s Restaurant and wandered through gift shops before continuing north. It wasn’t about the destinations. It was about spending the day together.
“She’ll treat anybody like they’re her best friends,” he said. “If you didn’t know my mom and you walked up to her, she would act like you’ve been buddies forever. She’s always the light of the room.”
Although Goings spent much of her adult life elsewhere, her story began in Columbus, Ohio, where she attended Como Elementary School and McGuffey Middle School before graduating with the North High School Class of 1978.
Goings’ sister, Ronda Lehman, said their father was strict, while their mother became the steady influence who taught her daughters to keep moving forward, even when life was difficult. Those early lessons in resilience, compassion and perseverance would help shape the woman Goings became.
Eight years older than Goings, Lehman remembers a little girl who was always laughing, always getting into something and always looking for someone who needed help.
“She didn’t have a mean bone in her body,” Lehman said. “A little kindness goes a long, long way.”
The sisters shared a dry sense of humor that lasted a lifetime. They teased one another and their mother constantly and, even after moving to different states, exchanged Christmas gifts celebrating the memories they shared growing up.
Later in life, Lehman watched those same qualities shape Starla as a mother.
Starla met her future husband, Steve Goings, when they were teenagers. The couple married on May 12, 1979, when she was 18. Although they initially planned not to have children, those plans changed over time. They welcomed daughter Steffanie when Starla was 34 and, later, son Nick — two children who quickly became the center of her world.
Lehman remembers Steffanie as artistic and thoughtful. Nick, born prematurely weighing little more than a pound, inspired an especially fierce protectiveness in his mother from the moment he entered the world.
She still smiles remembering her sister pulling a little hat onto young Nick before taking him fishing at a neighborhood pond.
“She made sure that if they needed something, they had it,” Lehman said.
“Anytime something went wrong, she was always there,” Livermore said. “If I ever had problems or troubles, I’d always pick up the phone and call Mom. It’s always been the first person I’d run to. She was always there to comfort and support you no matter what.”
Livermore said the family relocated to Munising during his eighth-grade year, after his parents retired. Goings embraced the community much the way she embraced everyone she met.
She quilted. She watched television. Then, Livermore said, she realized she needed to get out into the community and took a part-time job because sitting still simply wasn’t who she was.
That outgoing personality helped shape another of the most important friendships in her life.
Kimberly Kelly met Goings through church in Ohio nearly 25 years ago. Kelly still laughs about their first meeting.
Goings had made Oreo “mouse” cookies for nearly everyone at church before realizing she had accidentally skipped Kelly.
“That’s how we got to know each other,” Kelly recalled.
The friendship only grew stronger.
They walked together before work and met for coffee nearly every weekday. Later, after Goings moved to Munising, they opened a shared savings account, each depositing money every payday so they would always have money to visit one another.
“We wouldn’t really do anything,” Kelly said. “All we wanted to do was be in each other’s presence.”
Sometimes they quilted. Sometimes they shopped. Sometimes they simply sat together.
“She was just so easy to love,” Kelly said.
Goings built the same kind of friendships in Munising. Liz Loehr first knew her through the community before the two later worked together at Superior Walk-In Clinic.
Their shared love of quilting soon turned into a daily ritual. Every morning began with “show and tell.”
“We’d come into work a few minutes early, show each other our projects and just talk about quilting, sewing — anything,” Loehr said.
Although Goings already knew how to sew, she happily signed up for quilting classes alongside Loehr — not because she needed to learn, but because she wanted the time together.
Lehman said that love of sewing began long before quilting became her sister’s passion. Their mother made much of the girls’ clothing while they were growing up, passing along skills that Goings later transformed into intricate quilts, each thoughtfully designed for the person who would receive it.
After Goings and Loehr left the clinic, they started a standing weekly tradition they called “Wine Wednesday,” gathering at ByGeorge Brewing Co. each Wednesday, though pear cider was usually the drink of choice.
“We just talked about life,” Loehr said. “It’d be kids. It’d be anything.”
That willingness to invest in friendships defined Goings. When Kelly’s husband died unexpectedly, Goings had just returned home from a weekend visit with Kelly and had begun unpacking her suitcase.
The phone rang.
She immediately gathered everything she had just taken out — clean clothes, dirty clothes and all — stuffed it back into the suitcase, loaded her car and drove 10 hours.
The following morning, Kelly awoke hoping the previous day had somehow been a nightmare. Instead, she heard a soft knock.
“I heard this little tap at the door: ‘Kimberly?’” Kelly recalled. “She quietly opened the door. She just crawled into bed with me. She held me and just let me cry. It was the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me.”
Kelly still struggles to talk about that morning.
“I wish I could be half the friend to her and to everybody else in my life that she was to me,” she said.
Loehr added, “I usually tell people she’s probably one of the most selfless people I know. If somebody needed something, she just went and did it. She never processed anything. She just helped.”
Livermore saw that same generosity at home. He remembers a mother who loved quilting, gardening. Outside her bedroom, she created what the family affectionately called her “pink garden,” complete with pink flowers, pink rocks and pink bird baths.
She wore bright colors. She loved jewelry.
“She had style,” Livermore said.
She enjoyed bingo at the Moose Lodge and, when Nick was in high school, she rarely missed one of his sporting events, often helping in the concession stand. Steffanie’s artistic talents were another source of pride, and over the years mother and daughter grew especially close.
“She was chaos,” Loehr said with a laugh.
Kelly laughed about shopping trips where the two would become separated, calling out “Cuckoo!” until Goings answered from another aisle. There were kayaking adventures that ended in fits of laughter, failed attempts to rescue snapping turtles and countless ordinary days that somehow became unforgettable simply because Goings was there.
Nearly a year after her disappearance, those closest to her continue hoping for answers. But more than anything, they hope the community remembers who Starla Goings was before the headlines.
“She was simply ‘Star’ — the little sister I spent a lifetime loving, protecting and laughing alongside,” Lehman said.
“She just genuinely loved to make people happy,” Loehr said.
“She was always there,” Kelly said. “No matter what, she was there.”
“She was my mom, but it’s deeper than that,” Livermore said. “She was, at times in my life, she was my best friend. You could really just talk through anything, and it wasn’t a big deal, like even if it was stuff that most people wouldn’t tell their mothers.”