Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
SENATOR BACK AT CAPITOL AFTER HEART ATTACK, SURGERY
"You look good!"State Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, heard it 100 times if he heard it once Monday.
But Marye soaked it up every time.
The sometimes irascible, mischievous senator - perhaps the General Assembly's best teller of homespun tales - was back in his seat Monday. A heart attack Dec. 10 forced him to miss the first 2 1/2 weeks of the session.
It was a more somber Marye who sat at the back-row desk in the Senate chamber.
"You'll never know how good it is to be back unless you've been through what I've been through," Marye told his colleagues when they gave him a standing ovation.
"We missed him terribly. We missed his good humor, we haven't been the same group without him," said Sen. Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk.
Marye's munching healthy foods - two apples and a banana in the morning, and a turkey sandwich for lunch - to start regaining the 15 pounds he's lost in the past six weeks.
His absence has given the assembly a year's respite from his pet cause: the "bottle bill" to require a refundable deposit on bottles and cans.
Marye had the bill ready and signed in the clerk's office before his illness, but "I hadn't laid the groundwork," he said. "I usually call around the state to get groups behind it; and I didn't get that done, so I just let it go."
Marye's perennial fight for the legislation has produced some of the Senate's most entertaining debates. He keeps a discarded Budweiser can in his desk on the Senate floor to use as a prop for the speeches. On occasion, he's also brought in bags full of bottles, cans and other debris collected along the roadside between Richmond and his Montgomery County home to illustrate his contention that deposit legislation would curb littering.
A week after his 67th birthday, Marye was cleaning out space in his barn for a sick cow when he felt as though he had heartburn.
"I walked up to the house to get a Coke or something and by the time I got there, I knew I was having a heart attack," he said.
His doctors at Lewis-Gale Hospital were so concerned they advised Marye's wife to call in the family that night. The following day, Marye underwent single-bypass surgery.
Marye said his doctor gave him the go-ahead last week to drive a car, "but he's telling me to stay away from the tractor."
A retired Army major, Marye is a veteran of World War II, where he served in Europe in the infantry, and of Korea and Vietnam, where he served as a commissioned officer.
After leaving the Army, he ran a gas station with his brother before settling down to farming. He has been in the Senate for two decades.