After working 44 years at stores on Washington Street, Betty Ann Carr is retiring — for a second time.

“I’ll be 89 years old in January and I got tired,” she said, “My legs and feet just decided I needed to go home.”

Carr, who is known as “B.A.,” a nickname given by her husband Gordon, “Motor,” when they were in college, has worked part-time for the last 23 years at Sassafras, a gift shop on Washington Street in the city’s downtown district.

“I worked 54 years (in Vicksburg), and 44 of it was on the (Washington) Street,” she said. “I worked nine years with the Village Gallery, 12 years for Versil’s (gift and bridal shop) and 23 for Sassafras. Before that, I worked 10 1/2 years as a teacher. I taught fourth grade at Halls Ferry Elementary.”

Carr came to Vicksburg when her husband was hired as an engineering technician at the Waterways Experiment Station.

“My husband was a basketball coach and we traveled a lot. I taught at Shelby, Miss., and Brookhaven and Goodman, Miss., and we couldn’t make a living teaching school and coaching, so he got a job with the government and we moved down here,” Carr said.

Her husband, who died in 2009, retired from Waterways, and she retired from Halls Ferry.

She later returned to work after one of her sons was killed in a car wreck.

“I had to do something for my brain, so I was out about two months and I went to work at the Village Gallery. It was in the Battlefield Mall. I worked part-time — it was always part-time — and it was fun, and then they called me at Versils and they said, ‘Why don’t you come down here?’” Carr said. 

She went to work for owners Mike and Jerry Silver, starting a 12-year relationship.

“They were very good to me,” she said.

When the Silvers closed the store, she was out of a job, and approached Nancy Bullard who was buying the building that housed Versils to open Sassafras.

“ I said, ‘Let me work for you?’ and I told her I came with the building. I stayed there. I guess I was out of work for two months, and she got all moved in, and I went to work for Sassafras,” Carr said

She worked at Sassafras two days a week, adding, “They were wonderful to me, they’ve all been real good.”

Carr said she will miss the work and meeting the young people she’s been around during her time on Washington Street.

“I’ve worked with a variety of young people that were in high school who have grown and gone to college and now have children of their own. They have been wonderful to me and they treat me like their grandmother,” she said.

She said she’s not sure what she’s going to do with her free time.

“I kind of think I’m going to clean my house thoroughly and downsize. I can get buried in paper. There’s just so much paper in my house. I want to get rid of it. Just get rid of things. When I get to be 90, I will probably move to Tupelo to be with my son — we’re still thinking about that,” Carr said. 

There is also working at her church, First Presbyterian, “And I have some very good friends are very supportive and check on me.

“I’m sure I won’t be twiddling my thumbs. I’ll be doing something, but I don’t want to meet a schedule,” she said. “I just want to be me.”