Ella Brooks Simpson went to her house Friday to make quilts, and, “That’s all I’m going to do,” she said.

The soon-to-be-89-year-old Simpson, who has been a fixture of Vicksburg retail businesses since she moved to town in 1960, retired from Battlefield Drugs, where she’d been for 15 years. That job followed 26 years at The Valley until the downtown department store closed and a few years at Treasury Drugs and a fabric store.

“I’m going to miss working, but I’m 89 years old, and I’m tired of working,” she said.

Simpson’s road to retail began in the classroom. After graduating from high school and college, the Moss Point native took a job teaching in New Orleans. There, for five years, she taught fifth- and sixth-graders, and she met the man who would be her husband, Joe Simpson Sr., who fought in World War II as a member of the Army Air Corps. The couple had two sons, Joe Jr. and Walter, and moved to Vicksburg.

At Battlefield, Simpson had reduced her hours to “part-time,” but she still was in charge of ordering supplies and keeping the shelves stocked.

“She’s worked her heart out for us,” co-owner Chad Barrett said as Simpson packed up Friday. “She always made sure she was doing her job and the younger people were doing theirs.”

Simpson, who knew most of her customers by name, said she has seen plenty of changes.

“When I started working,” she said, “I had to approach the customers and show them around. Now everything’s self-service. You’re lucky if you can find someone to wait on you.”

And in the ’60s, she said, the cash register was a giant till with a drawer that flew open when the “total” button was pushed. “Now it’s all computers.”