Charles Abraham stands in Charles’ Department Store Monday. Abraham will be retiring in 2003 after 50 years in the clothing business. (The Vicksburg Post/Melanie Duncan)

[11/13/02]Charles Abraham has been operating Charles’ Department Store on Washington Street for nearly 50 years. Downtown, he said, has a bright future, but he said he thinks it’s about time to lock his door for the last time.

Abraham, 73, started his retail career in the store owned and operated by his father, the late Haseeb Abraham.

“I grew up in that store,” he said, adding that even in high school, all he wanted to be was a merchant.

He opened Charles’ Department Store at the corner of Clay and Washington Streets with his sister, Betty, in March 1953. He was joined by his wife, Jeanette, a short while later. Betty soon married and moved to Florida, but Charles and Jeanette have worked together since.

As they make plans to close, they join a list of many other downtown, family-owned and operated retail firms that have done so Koury’s Children’s Shop, The Sports Shop and Karl’s Men’s Store just to name a few. Most were started as the World War years ended and prospered through the decades long before malls and even longer before Internet shopping.

“I want people to know this is really the wrong time to close,” Abraham said while being interviewed.

“I want people to know I’m not leaving a sinking ship,” Abraham said. “I really believe in what Mayor Leyens is trying to do.”

Mayor Laurence Leyens, whose ancestors owned The Valley Department Store, which closed after more than a century of retailing downtown, has set in motion a locally funded urban renewal. More than $5 million of a $17.5 million bond issue is being spent in the downtown area on new streets, parking, lighting and other amenities. Several new businesses have opened.

“It won’t be like it was in the 1940s and 1950s,” Abraham predicted, adding he feels the future of Washington Street is in specialty shops. Those and restaurants are the future, Abraham predicted.

A tornado that hit the city on Dec. 5, 1953, damaged the third floor of that first Charles’, at Washington and Clay.

“We had to take the top floor off and we operated in two separate stores for almost a year,” he said.

That old store underwent another renovation in 1960.

“We started off as a family clothing store, but we gradually developed into just men’s and women’s clothes,” he said.

The store now occupied by Charles’, 1314 Washington St., was occupied at one time by the S.H. Kress variety store and Charles’ moved there in November 1979.

His reason for closing, he said, is simple.

Several years ago his daughter-in-law took a job in Minneapolis, Minn., when the company she worked for here was sold. A short while later, Abraham’s son, Chuck, who had been in the clothing business with him, joined his wife and children in Minneapolis. Now, Chuck and his family are moving to Las Vegas. Their other son and three daughters also have interests other than operating the store and he has three long-time employees who are eligible for retirement.

“The end has come for all of us,” he said.

The final date for Charles’ has not been set, but Abraham said he has in mind a final day in January or February 2003.

Once the store is closed, Abraham said he will remain busy.

“I have the (Vicksburg) Housing Authority and my church work,” he said. The Abrahams are members of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church. He has been a member of the Vicksburg Housing Authority board for many years, and also served as a director of First National Bank, now Trustmark, and in many other community capacities.

And, then there are the Abrahams’ nine grandchildren who may be in need of some additional spoiling.