HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - A memorial service for former Huntsville Board of Education president and planning commission chairman Ed Starnes has been scheduled for Thursday.
The service will begin at 2 p.m. at Church of the Nativity Episcopal, 208 Eustis Ave., with visitation immediately following. Laughlin Service Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.
Starnes, 79, died Saturday night following a battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Starnes was elected to the city school board in 1976 and became its president the following year - a role he held until stepping down in 1990. He later volunteered for the Huntsville Planning Commission and also became a leader there, rising to chairman. Outside of city government, Starnes was a respected watercolor artist whose paintings have been sold across the U.S. and Europe.
Following a 1999 flash flood that damaged dozens of homes along Aldridge Creek, then-Mayor Loretta Spencer put together a volunteer committee to study ways to improve drainage in that area. Starnes was one of the first people she called. Several years later, Starnes proposed an in-depth study of every city school building.
"It allowed us to know what the enrollment was, how much each school cost to operate, the age of the roofs and the heating and cooling systems - just everything," Spencer said Monday. "It was a wonderful study, and Ed initiated it."
During her time as mayor, Spencer commissioned Starnes to paint City Hall. Rather than painting the front of the building facing Fountain Circle, Starnes chose a prettier vantage point in Big Spring International Park.
Follow me on Twitter: @swdoyle