DAPHNE, Ala. — Daphne City Council members were fulsome in their praise for retiring Public Works Director Bill Eady at the council meeting Monday night.

Eady, 76, was attending his final council meeting before retiring after 20 years with the city.

“This man cares about Daphne. His heart has always been in Daphne,” Councilman Bailey Yelding Jr. said.

“You have meant an awful lot to this city and have been a great part of its success,” Councilman Ron Scott told Eady.

Councilman John Lake shared his memories of Eady amid the aftermath of Hurricane Danny, organizing a relief effort from the streets of Daphne in the hours after the storm struck.

In response, Eady, who joined the city in 1989, remarked that he had held more posts in the city than almost anyone in the room. “I don’t know if they were trying to find something I could do,” he said to laughter. “I have had some of the finest staff a man could ask for and I have enjoyed every moment of it.

“But I realize at my age, and with my health and my wife’s health, that the time has come” he said. Eady received a quadruple bypass in 2008 and has diabetes.

He says he has no grand plans for his retirement with his wife Ann, but “we are going to enjoy our grandkids.

“We are at a point in our lives when we can go when we want and come back when we are ready,” he said.