Bill and Shirley are native to and both grew up in the Vicksburg Area. (Bill�s grandfather grew up at Windsor! Shirley�s grandfather and uncle were both Speakers of the House of Mississippi.)

Bill (Vicksburg, Mississippi, city boy) carried the newspaper to this home for a few years when it was the Old Ladies Home.

Shirley (Mississippi country girl) grew up north of Vicksburg a quarter mile north of the Warren County line in Greater Valley Park, Mississippi (as opposed to downtown or metropolitan Valley Park) and had to come to Vicksburg for everything not grown on the farm.

Shirley is a School Teacher, homemaker, and Bill�s boss at the Inn.

Bill is a former rocketship engineer with NASA turned Innkeeper (during the Apollo "Glory Years," and The Systems Engineer for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in New Orleans when he "retired") .

They returned to Vicksburg in 1995 (after 32 years in New Orleans) to take care of aging parents, and renovated and opened this Bed and Breakfast Inn. The family lives in the back wing of the home. Bill and Shirley live with their son, Bill V, their Granddaughter, Bethan, and family pets (Two dogs - a Corgi and a Pug- and three cats).

If you have read this far, there is more below:

Shirley graduated from Cary High School (long gone- consolidated into Rolling Fork) and went to Millsaps College and got her BA from Mississippi College (she has done graduate work at several places including the University of New Orleans, part of LSU, William Cary, Holy Cross, and Mississippi Southern). She was a longtime organizer of the New Orleans Floral Trail each year, Spring Fiesta, Miss Louisiana Pageant, Mother�s March Chairman for the March of Dimes, Girl Scout Leader, Epilepsy, Business and Professional Women, and many other civic ventures in New Orleans.

Bill left home to go to the United States Naval Academy (Class of 1957), has a BSEE degree from Mississippi State University, and has done graduate work at SMU, and UCLA. Bill has been a guest lecturer at Tulane, LSU, Texas A&M;, Michigan State, University of Wisconsin, University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and many other Universities. His professional career included working on Corporal, Redstone, Lacrosse, Sergeant, and a long series of guided missiles; the Apollo launch vehicles - Saturn I, Saturn IC, and Saturn V- as well as components for many others - and the Space Shuttle for NASA. For the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), he was The Systems Engineer, with a number of special responsibilities including: all SPR pipelines, design criteria, leak detection, and even chaired a Security Task Force. In Civic work, he was President of several Parent - Teacher Organizations, President of the Young Men�s Business Club (YMBC), Board Chairman of the New Orleans Floral Trail, Board Member of International House, Save Our Trees, Monk Simons Memorial Foundation, and many other civic, environmental, legislative, energy, medical, art, and preservation endeavors.