By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

When I heard the news this week of Creek View Elementary second-grader Makayla Hale raising $92 in one day by selling 25-cent bookmarks at Fox Valley to benefit the victims of last week’s tornado outbreak, I was amazed.

I was even more impressed when I visited the school last Wednesday to see Hale and her classmates selling bookmarks at a table in the hallway before classes began.

When I walked in, it was almost hard to tell where the table was because so many kids were crowded around it trying to purchase the foam bookmarks, which were crafted by their classmates.

“The kids get off the buses and come down this hallway, so that’s why we decided to set the table up right here,” 8-year-old Lindsey Cook told me in a very businesslike tone. “The line usually starts here and goes down the hallway.”

Judging by the crowd surrounding the table, many Fortune 500 companies would do well to enlist the help of the school’s entrepreneurial second-graders.

After the kids saw a video taken by Cook’s father in Tuscaloosa, they became driven to help the families who lost everything during the April 27 tornadoes. So driven that the kids had reached nearly half of their two-week goal in three days.

I hope kids at the school and their parents will continue to support the charity drive like they have during the past week, because the proceeds could not be going to a more worthy cause.