In Memoriam

Madeleine Godefroy

On Thursday 28th September in the evening, and during the EARSeL SIG-meeting on Land Use and Land Cover in Bonn, Germany, the sad news came to us that our dear former secretary Madeleine Godefroy passed away in a Hospital in Caen, France.

Madeleine served our Association for more than 24 years. Besides running EARSeL's secretariat, she was organising the annual symposia and the numerous workshops of the association and collecting articles for the Newsletter.

Everybody who joined EARSeL meetings knew Madeleine, she did the reception of the participants and guests at "her" reception desk. She was the friendly and kind lady who welcomed everybody. In other words Madeleine was the face of the Association. She was also called "the mother of the Association", and indeed she was. She worked for EARSeL almost as long as the existence of the Association itself.

Madeleine's first intention was to retire in 2002 after the Prague Symposium, but then Gent came in 2003, and Dubrovnik and Cairo in 2004, all places she still wanted to see and see the EARSeL events take place. EARSeL was her association, and she could difficulty say goodbye from the job. She decided finally to retire after the Porto Symposium in 2005. Unfortunately a couple of weeks before the doctors discovered a cancer, and due to the heavy medical treatment, Madeleine could not make it to Porto. But Madeleine was fighting against her illness. Last June she came to the Warsaw meeting, and there we could honour her for all these years of service to the association. Madeleine was in an excellent condition and we thought her illness was over. Unfortunately in August the doctors discovered seedings of the cancer. This fight Madeleine lost last Thursday 28 of September.

We will especially remember Madeleine for her warm personality, her kindness, willingness and her devotion towards EARSeL.

Prof. Rudi Goossens
President of EARSeL