Tucked away in the back of the hardware store on South Frontage Road, Gertrude Haden has an office where she keeps books. The room, which is not big, is filled with filing cabinets. There are also shelves laden with family photos and walls of memorabilia making the space feel cozy and warm — like a home away from home.

Haden has been a bookkeeper for more than 70 years and 60 of those have been at the hardware store she and husband, J.B, started in 1958.

“Before we moved here, my office was in the middle of the store kind of on the side in the open with things kind of around me,” Haden said, of their hardware store on Clay Street, “But this one is the best one I have ever had.”

Haden Hardware has resided at several locations over the years, but its one constant has been Gertrude Haden who has always served as the store’s bookkeeper.

“I have always kept the books,” she said.

And while the hardware store has been where the Hadens earned their living, it was also where the couple’s three sons, Mike, Eddie and Ken grew up.

“Even when the boys were little and couldn’t do anything they would stay at the store when we were working at nighttime,” Haden said.

Subsequently, this is also where her sons were educated, she said.

“The three boys did not go to college, but they got educated in the hardware store,” Haden said, and added it started at a very early age.

“They have been in business with us ever since they were big enough to work. I remember when Mike was six or seven years old, someone came in and wanted a key made and Mike was going to do it for them, and whoever the man was said he didn’t want him (Mike) to make the key, he wanted J.B. to make it,” Haden said.

But Haden’s husband stepped in and informed the customer that his young son was more than capable of making the key, “So from then on Mike was making keys,” she said.

Haden also recalled how her son Ken became an accomplished locksmith at a young age.

“I asked him how he learned that and he said, ‘Well Mama, I sit up in bed at night with a lock.’”

“And because he fooled with it until he could figure out how to use it — that is the way he learned,” Haden said.

Gertrude Haden graduated from Carr Central High school in 1947 and started working for her father, R.M. Ables even before receiving her diploma.

“My daddy was a building contractor and I kept books for him for years,” Haden said.

After graduation, she began doing bookkeeping work with Newman Motor Company and it was while she was employed there, she met her future husband.

The couple married in November 1949 and celebrated 66 years of marriage before his death in 2016.

J.B. Haden had been an adjuster working for Commercial Credit at the time he met his bride-to-be. When his job relocated him, the couple moved to Jackson and then Meridian, where they lived for a year.

And because of Haden’s job skills, she also found bookkeeping work while living in the two cities.

It didn’t take long for the couple to realize they wanted to return to the River City, Haden said, and after coming back to Vicksburg, they both began working at Ables Paint and Plumbing, Haden’s father’s business on Openwood Street.

After her father closed the doors to his business, Haden said she and her husband decided to take a leap of faith and opened a plumbing supply store in her dad’s building.

“My daddy and my uncle owned the building,” Haden said.

The couple had had someone offer to give them credit to buy plumbing material to sell in the store and in 1958 Haden Supply Co. opened.

“We started (the business) on our good credit,” Haden said, and obviously her role was to keep the books.

Haden Hardware has always been family operated, but as their sons got older, there were times, Haden said they would quit to try out something different.

But eventually, they all made their way back, something that has made her proud.

“We were able to give our boys a job where they could make a good living,” she said, and customers have appreciated the boys hospitality and knowledge, she added.

“We’ve got customers that just come in and talk for a while,” Haden said.

And one of her friends even told her, she said, that she wished she could work at the hardware store because the boys always make you feel good and because they are always kidding around.

Haden said it has never bothered her that she was the only female in the store.

“I guess because I had J.B. and the boys,” she said.

Gertrude Haden will turn 90 years old in June.

She is the oldest living member at First Baptist Church and has no plans of retiring from her bookkeeping job at Haden True Value Hardware.

“Somebody asked me when I was going to quit working and I didn’t know what to say at first, but then I said I was not planning on quitting, because I like to be around people and the boys. And it’s been a habit for so many years.”