This August, the Vicksburg Water Treatment Plant at the city’s harbor will celebrate another anniversary, its 37th since its dedication in 1969.

It will be the plant’s first, however, under the watch of someone not named &#8220Heffner.”

Lamar Heffner’s retirement this month after 14 years as plant manager ends a four-decade, two-generation run at the helm of the facility, a stretch begun by his father, Ray, and preceding the plant itself by half a decade.

It was a stretch, they both say, neither had planned.

&#8220It just kind of happened,” said Lamar, 51.

Ray, 75, admits he may have unwittingly pushed his son, one of four children, toward following in his footsteps. As teenagers, Lamar and his younger brother were already familiar enough with the ins-and-outs of the then-spanking-new site to give tours to guests. It was at the plant that he was stuck with his two sisters in an elevator for an hour and a half, at the plant that he watched a reputed whiskey maker driving up next door in a Rolls Royce and at the plant that he and his brother carted around the wheelchair-bound wife of former city commissioner Charles Guion – pre-Americans With Disabilities Act, he adds, before wheelchair and handicap access to public buildings was mandated by law.

So it was no great leap, then, when it was to the plant that Lamar returned at age 27, after spending several years as an auto body repairman, or that he took over when his father retired in 1982 after 28 years.

Since, Ray has begun a pool-cleaning and renovation business, which he’s also now handed over to his son. On his first trip to the plant in more than a year last week, the stairs to myriad, multicolored pipes pumping water throughout the building or to the 1 million-gallon lime-softening units weren’t so easily navigable as he remembered – he’s recently had a knee replaced, he said, and is also barely recovered from a broken ankle – but he was pleased with the state in which Lamar was leaving the operation.

&#8220Keep in mind this place is 37 years old,” Ray said as he prepared to board one of the plant’s elevators, the ones he now regrets not using before his knee replacement. &#8220He’s done an outstanding job of keeping it clean and keeping it looking good.”

Lamar Heffner’s replacement hasn’t been named, said Public Works Director Bubba Rainer, though he added Pat McGuffie, a longtime worker at the plant with the appropriate certification, is a candidate when Heffner officially retires. That comes June 1.