Marguerite Boyd sits next to her birthday greetings from friends and family in her home on Chambers Street. Boyd turned 90 years old Wednesday.(Melanie Duncan Thortis The Vicksburg Post)

[9/1/03]Marguerite Boyd left City Hall in 1973 after 30 years, but she hasn’t forgotten about it, and she hasn’t quit keeping up with the goings-on there.

Now 90 years old her friends gave her a birthday party last week she keeps up with her former employer through the memorabilia in her home on Chambers Street and by watching TV 23, the city’s cable television channel.

During her years in city government, Boyd was the manager of the city’s Water and Gas Administration, then located on the first floor of City Hall.

“She knew which customers she needed to be harsh with and which ones she could be friendly with,” said Marie Pantoliano, a longtime city clerk who was at City Hall at the same time.

“I worked upstairs, and I remember going downstairs to say hello,’ and Marguerite would be sitting at her desk humming away,” Pantoliano said. “I asked her if she was in a really good mood, and she said no, she was humming the blues away after a hard-headed customer.”

John D. Holland, who now lives in Jackson, was mayor of Vicksburg from 1957 until 1968, years Boyd ran Water and Gas.

“Anytime you asked Marguerite a question, you knew you were going to get a straight answer,” said Holland. “She was very straightforward, but also one of the most dynamic and generous people I’ve known,” said Holland, who left Vicksburg to take a position with Mississippi Power & Light.

“I remember her sister-in-law worked as a secretary at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, and Marguerite told me anytime I ever wanted to go to watch the Masters Tournament, she could get me tournament passes with clubhouse entrance,” Holland said. “I was always too busy and never took her up on the offer. I still regret it because Marguerite was trying to do me the greatest favor.”

Boyd was born Aug. 27, 1913, in Natchez and graduated from Natchez High School in 1931. After graduation, she moved to Vicksburg with her family when her father, W.A. Lowry, got a job as a ticket agent for the Illinois Central Railroad.

She began working in City Hall in 1943 and married her longtime love, Horace Boyd, in July 1945.

Boyd made friends across Vicksburg, but her best friends were Bessie Thornton and Milloree Cronin. Now Thornton’s granddaughter, Megan Schrock, and Cronin’s daughter, Jan Jackson, serve as caretakers for Boyd.

“We’re the daughters she never had,” Jackson said. “We check in with her every day, take her to vote, take her to the beauty shop. We really are like family; we’re just not related by blood,” she said.

Schrock best remembers Boyd as always being an extremely giving and sharing person.

“She took care of her mother and sisters when they were sick,” Schrock said. “She is like a second grandmother to me, too,” she said.

Boyd is a former member of the Business & Professional Women’s Club, several bridge clubs, a garden club, the Ambassador’s Club through First National Bank and a member of First Baptist Church and Sunday school.

Boyd said she doesn’t have a secret for long life because she considers every day just “another day.”

“I don’t know how I got to be 90,” she said. “I guess by just plain living. That’s all I know.”