The Crittenden Press Full Version (PDF)
Dr. Mayfield joins CHS hospital staff As a child, Dr. Steven Mayfield’s mother would read him passages from the Bible. The words from those gospels, as much as anything else, led this former Texan to medicine.
A verse from Revelations was partly responsible for Dr. Mayfield taking up the sword of compassion and caring.
“I always wondered who would care for people at the end of time,” he said. A strong desire to help others pushed him to change career paths and work toward a medical degree after several years of moving dirt.
Two weeks ago, Dr. Mayfield joined Crittenden Health Systems as an in-house family practice physician. He will see patients at the hospital’s clinic and handle other duties, including shifts in the emergency room.
Mayfield, 49, took a non-traditional path to becoming a doctor. At 28 he decided to leave his full-time job as a heavy equipment operator and enroll at the University of Texas-Arlington. He already had some community college credits, and at first, he chose civil engineering, something he knew a good bit about. Somewhere along the way, he swapped majors and pursued pre-med. It took him a while to finish that undergraduate degree, working his way through college and starting a family at the same time.
“I had three children by the time I finished college,” he said.
Dr. Mayfield met his wife Melinda while taking Tae Kwon Do classes. He’s part Native American and German and she urges him to lay off the soft drinks. The couple organically grow their own fruits and vegetables and Melinda makes their own bread from crushed wheat. They now have nine children ranging in age from 1-19. The doctor is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and also has Choctaw and Cherokee running through his veins.
Dr. Mayfield received his medical degree after attending schools in the Caribbean and England. His residency was at Trover Clinic and he has spent the past three and half years at Livingston Hospital.
The family of 11 lives on 20 acres in Burna. One child is in college and the others are homeschooled. By staying close to home, Mayfield anticipates retaining many of the patient-doctor relationships he’s forged in the past few years.
At Marion, Dr. Mayfield will join Joe Drawdy, an advanced registered nurse practitioner, in seeing patients at the hospital.
Dr. Mayfield will be in Marion three days a week, and two days a week he will see patients at the Burkhart Clinic in Salem.
Mapleview Expansion: Cemetery doubling An expansion of Mapleview Cemetery that will eventually double the size of the burial ground, will include a small reflection pond and modern arrangement of gravesites.
Development won't start until 2011, but planning has been ongoing for several years. Currently, 90 percent of the estimated 960 available plots are occupied in the 27-acre cemetery.
Bill Fox, chairman of the Mapleview Cemetery Association, said the expansion will be done in phases on the 31 acres on the northern edge of the cemetery. The first phase will include 1,310 graves, some of which will be situated around a reflection pond on the southeast corner of the new development. Plans for the expansion were drawn by a New York firm recommended by the Elberton Granite Association, of which Henry & Henry Monuments is a member. The association also helped pay for the land-use plan.
The cemetery board bought the 31-acre plot to the north of the cemetery in 1990 from the Rayburn family. Since then, the board has rented the land to a local farmer, helping to pay annual expenses which included $14,000 in 2009 for mowing.
The board – which consists of Bill Fox, Ricky Brown, Mike Byford, Otis Millikan and Wayne Crider – had income of just over $29,000 in 2009, including one $15,000 bequest from a Marion resident. The board's annual income comes from the sale of lots, grave maintenance fees collected by local funeral homes and money it collects from deed transfers when gravesites change hands.
Henry and Henry provides all of the administrative support for the cemetery association, including housing a large wall-mounted plat of the cemetery which identifies ownership and availability of all burial plots.
Fox, who has been on the cemetery board since 1975 and involved by virtue of his work with Henry and Henry since 1951, is in large part responsible for removing flowers after burials, providing fill dirt when necessary and cleaning monuments.
“This is a very good board, they are always very helpful especially if there is a problem, like after the ice storm last year,” said Fox.
He described the proposed Mapleview development as modern, with graves situated in curved patterns rather than in straight rows lying east to west as in the older portion of the cemetery.
The complete land-use plan, which includes 20.15 acres excluding roads and water, will hold 15,110 graves.
John Lamb had Mapleview plotted as a graveyard in 1893 after Marion Cemetery (on Gum Street) was full or nearly full. R.L. Moore, Sr., was the first grave in Mapleview Cemetery.
Livingston County primary elections Here is a list of candidates who have filed to seek election in the May primaries. Asterisk denotes incumbent. DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
County Judge Executive Jeff Armstrong
Chris Lasher*
Rebecca Glendening County Attorney Clint E. Watson
Billy Norwood Riley* Property Valuation Admin. Sue Ann Carver* County Clerk Jonathan Hubbard
Jerry Bebout
Sonya Williams Sheriff
John Ray Franklin
Jim Wilson
John M. Rundles
Alan Glendening Jailer
Benjamin “Benji” Guill*
Bobby J. Dickerson Coroner
Michael Oliver
Andrew S. Fox Magistrate District 1 Terry R. Stringer* Magistrate District 2 Franklin Walker* Magistrate District 3 Larry E. Barnes Magistrate District 4 Marvin L. Buford
Danny Joe Crawford
Harry Van Smith*
Rodney Fratzke Constable District 1 Dennis Keith Jones* Constable District 2 R.J. Nestle Constable District 3 Owen L. Hurley Constable District 4 Terry Wayne Cobb*
Phillip R. Ramage
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Sheriff
Bobby Davidson
Magistrate District 3
Jimmy “Brent” Ferrell*