As a young child, he lived through the Siege of the International Legations in Beijing; he was able to remember some of these events even in his old age, when he must have been one of the last survivors. He attended the Chefoo School in Yantai (Shandong), the Oberlin Academy in Ohio, and Williams College, from which he graduated in 1917. In 1918, soon after the United States entered World War I, Goodrich joined the US Army and was sent to France, where he worked with the Chinese Labour Corps in France, workers who were brought to France during the war, and were now participating in the post-war rebuilding of the country.