The Madison County Lions Club is seeking nominations for its 2010 Madison Award for outstanding community service. April 7 is the deadline for receiving nominations.

Ray Goodall Sr. is a Madison County native who enjoys the local wildlife and staying busy. His home office, which he shares with his wife, Lois Goodall, is full of family pictures and plans for new projects. “I’m getting too busy right now,” Goodall joked of his schedule. “You volunteer and work with the church trying to increase the membership (and) you can do something everyday that doesn’t have to do with running a business.”

Music has been one of the few constants in Madison County organist Judy Maxwell’s life. Her mother was a piano teacher and she started her daughter playing when she was 7 years old. However, even in those days the pipe organ was a captivating instrument for her.

Mary Slusser embodies the idea that a person can never be too old to stop learning. The 91-year-old Syria resident is taking time away from her third book to work on a paper that she describes as being “too complicated” to put in her book on the history of artwork in Nepal. She spoke to The Eagle while getting ready to return to her office at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. so she could get back to her computer and her notes. 

On Sunday, Nov. 15, Chairman Eddie Dean of the Madison County Board of Supervisors cut the ribbon to mark the official opening of the newly restored slave quarters behind the Kemper Residence on North Main Street in downtown Madison. The restoration was a two-year effort undertaken by the Madison County Historical Society. Mr. Dean expressed his gratitude to the historical society for their efforts in preserving this important historical structure.

U.S. Navy Reserve Cmdr. Scott Seeberger – who grew up in Madison County and is currently serving at New Al Muthana Air Base in Iraq – is the chief of the group of U.S. combat air advisors who have been training these pilots “to become a westernized performing airpower,” according to Seeberger. 

Chris Skinner was only 750 feet from safety when his life changed forever. “That’s like here,” – Skinner said from the stage in front of Madison County High School’s auditorium – “to the back of the room,” he explained to a group of Wetsel Middle School students May 14.

Rock Hall Baptist Church’s Men’s and Women’s Day event is set for 11 a.m. Sunday, May 3 and will feature guest minister Cleo Frye of Calvary Haywood Church.  Lunch will follow the morning service. The 3 p.m. guest minister is the Rev. Danny Johnson and his combined choirs. For information, call (540) 948-4129.

A Madison County woman will leave for a missionary trip at the end of this month from which she may not return. Mary Grace of Lost Valley will head to Suleimaniya, Iraq on July 31 as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team, an international organization that sends groups to areas involved in crisis situations, she said. 

Doctors didn’t mince words when Kathy Stein was expecting her first child more than 30 years ago. They told the former Madison County resident that her health problems made a successful delivery impossible. But she stuck with the pregnancy and nine months later, on Nov. 3, 1975, Stein gave birth to a baby girl. Weighing just five pounds, five ounces she felt as though her daughter was a “miracle baby.”