A 1929 Vicksburg High graduate has some words for the class of 2009 as members begin life after high school: the good part is just beginning.

“I liked school and I did well,” said Brownie Moore Davis, 97, “but my life really began after I got graduated.”

Davis’ commencement was 80 years ago Sunday, and as far as she knows she is the last remaining of the 52 graduates in her class.

She does not spend much time thinking about her school years — family and work have replaced those memories — but as Vicksburg schools, both public and private, send new graduates into the world, she shared some of what she recalls.

The 1929 graduation was at what was then Carr Central Junior High on Cherry Street, she said. “We had to have it there because the auditorium at Vicksburg was not big enough. I don’t think we wore caps and gowns,” she said. The building, later a high school and then a junior high again before closing in 1979, still stands.

Davis and another girl were chosen to lead the procession into the ceremony because they were among the shortest in the class.

A photo taken that day 80 years ago shows her in a white dress, seated outside surrounded by bouquets of pink blooms, hand-colored at a later date. The custom of the day was to shower graduating girls with flowers.

Davis was born in Obion, Tenn., the youngest of six children who grew to adulthood. Her parents, Henry and Hettie Ann (McWhirter) Moore, lost four other children to whooping cough and other illnesses in infancy.

They moved to Vicksburg in 1917 with Brownie, sister Dovie, then 18, and brother Joe, 12, when Henry Moore, a lumber inspector, took a job at Anderson-Tully. Three grown children stayed behind in Tennessee.

They lived in two different homes in the 600 block of Adams Street, a “nice, well-to-do area at the time,” she said.

Brownie — her given name — was named for the baby of her father’s cousin, who died in infancy. With four brothers, Dovie was thrilled when Brownie was born, and doted on her. “She took very good care of me,” Davis said. “She started taking me to Sunday school and church almost as soon as I was big enough to go.”

Through seventh grade, Brownie attended Main Street School and for eighth grade went to Carr in 1924, the year it opened. Then it was on to high school when Vicksburg High was at Clay and Howard streets in the block now occupied by Vicksburg Catholic School. The St. Aloysius Flashes still play football in a stadium built, in part, with money donated by Brownie’s Class of 1929. They gave the money in lieu of publishing a school yearbook that year, said Davis’ son, Larry.

In her first year of high school she chose Latin as an elective. “It was one of the dumbest things I ever did!” Davis laughed. She said she barely managed to pass the class — taught by Miss Eugenia Derdeyn — and afterward elected bookkeeping, typing, and shorthand, taught by a Miss Richards, whose first name she could not recall.

“Our teachers used to be pretty strict,” she said, “but it didn’t bother me. I learned in the first grade that if I didn’t behave I’d get it when I got home.”

Very few high school students in those days had cars, she said. “We walked nearly everywhere we went. There was a group of kids in every neighborhood and we had a good time going home from school. I think it was good for us.”

For outings Brownie and her friends liked to go to the 10-Cent Sandwich Shop across the street from the school. “We could get a hamburger and a ‘co-cola’ for 15 cents,” she said. “The couple that owned it had a daughter in our class — the Atkinsons. It was our favorite restaurant. We knew the Atkinsons and it was something we could afford.”

After graduation she attended a secretarial school to keep her skills sharp, and was hired as a typist by a Vicksburg ear, nose and throat doctor named Edwards. The job was only temporary, but Brownie heard about a job opening at the Saenger Theater and went right down to apply. She worked as a secretary there and a relief cashier, but found her way back to work for Dr. Edwards for many years.

After her family was grown Davis spent more than 20 years as a switchboard operator at old Mercy Hospital and later the Street Clinic.

Her husband was Howard Lee Davis from the little town of Union Church, near Fayette, and the couple had three children: Howard Lee Jr. in 1943, Larry in 1947 and Madge in 1952. They also took in a 15-year-old friend of Howard Jr., never formally adopting him but giving him roots, stability and a home when he desperately needed it, she said. The young man put himself through college and became very successful in business, and she counts his children among her four grandchildren. She also has seven great-grandchildren.

She’s got an extensive collection of spoons from all over the world, and also collects Snoopy and other Peanuts-character items as well as Garfield. She threatens “to haunt” family members if they throw them away when she’s gone.

Her parents, she said, died about four years apart, both at 79. “That’s the reason I always said, when 79 comes along I’m telling you all goodbye,” Davis said. “Well, 79’s come, and 89’s come, and 99 is pushing.”

In addition, she lost Dovie in the 1960s, Howard Sr. in 1978, and Howard Jr. in 1992. She sometimes wonders how she can still be here, but says she is blessed.

“I think I’ve got a lot to be thankful for,” she said.

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com