And so it is that Joe and his wife Cindy established the Joe & Cindy Goldberg Family Children’s Opportunity Fund with The Guilford Foundation (TGF) this year. The fund will benefit Guilford children and families through a wide range of programs, including education, child care, wellness, recreation, mental health, and social services.

Joe and his brother Lenny founded and built one of the most enduring and beloved eateries on the shoreline, Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale, in Madison and Westbrook. Their restaurants reflect family values – good food in a casual atmosphere where fun is appreciated and a sense of community is nurtured. Many of their employees have been there for decades, with children of former employees seeking summer jobs. And countless customers have made Lenny & Joe’s a family tradition over the last 45 years.

In 1999, they installed the Charity Carousel at the Madison location to celebrate their first 20 years in business. Surrounded by picnic tables, the carousel — created by the historic Dentzel Carousel Company and hand-painted by local carousel painter and restorer Donna Wolcott — provides joy and entertainment to 10 riders on a menagerie of animals for a nominal fee. All the proceeds benefit charitable causes, and nearly $1.2 million has been raised in the last 25 years.

Joe and Cindy raised their two daughters, Amy and Melissa, in town. Joe served on the board of directors of TGF and the Guilford Fund for Education. Somewhat non-traditional work hours allowed him to spend time in his daughters’ schools when they were young and to volunteer with Guilford Mentoring, while Cindy spent 35 years as a teacher in the Hamden school system. Those combined experiences led them to make empathy a guiding principle in their lives and parenting.

“Empathy is something we can all instill in our kids,” Joe says. He recalls his time with the Guilford Fund for Education, helping to organize new and innovative events like an adult spelling bee, with the dual purpose of reinforcing the relevance of education and raising funds to support teachers with out-of-the-box ideas beyond the school budget or a circus program promoting physical education, outdoor experience, teamwork and confidence building for children.

Knowing that politics and bureaucracy can be limiting, Joe hopes the Children’s Family Opportunity Fund will help support creative ideas and programs that need a little helping hand. He also knows that endowing the fund through TGF will have an impact that will last well beyond his lifetime.

“Now is the time for us to care for the legacy that we want to leave. What will be the needs in 20 years, 50 years, and 100 years? I’ll be gone, but we can still have a meaningful impact,” Joe says.

Joe and Cindy Goldberg are members of Legacy Circle, as they pledge to include TGF in their estate planning to ensure our important work continues for generations to come.