Barbara and Billy Adams will have been married 60 years on Feb. 22. Although both are from Illinois, they met on Indian Lake in June 1957 while Barb was visiting Sue (Miller) Hunt. Bill drove up to the Miller’s dock in a pleasure boat. It didn’t take much longer after that for him to ask her for a date and for her to accept.
Her parents, Floyd and Opal Miller, came here from central Illinois in 1953 where he was employed by Wolverine Pipeline. She graduated from Vicksburg High School in 1957. Bill was from southern Illinois where he lived with his grandparents. He was in town to visit his mother (Helen Miller) who lived here at the time the two met. He took a job at Simpson Paper Company for 12 years and then worked for 27 years at the Fisher Body plant until retiring in 1993.
Barbara was a homemaker and a seamstress offering her consummate sewing abilities to many people in this area. Following Bill’s retirement, they traveled in their truck and trailer for 20 years to Arizona and Texas. The last 14 years of their marriage has been spent in Port Lavaca, Texas where Bill has enjoyed making a lot of fishing friends. Barb has spent her time sewing and quilting at a local quilting shop, making everlasting sewing friends, she said. Their last winter in the Lone Star state was 2015 as they have now settled down all year in Vicksburg at their home on East S Avenue where they have lived for 59 years. They had one son, Brad, who passed away in April 2017.
Bill has been treated successfully for esophageal cancer. He was born in 1936. Barbara was born in 1939.