For Joe Nathan Jr., getting everything neat and in order has been a lifelong goal.
Nathan, 73, retired eight years ago from Greenwood Market Place as a stocker, an occupation in which he spent his whole working career.
“I had my own money. It taught me how to treat people, how to talk to the customers,” he said.
Nathan, a native of the Browning Community, attended Greenwood’s segregated Stone Street High School in the late 1960s. He left school at the age of 17 and began working as a stocker at Piggly Wiggly on Mississippi 7.
At that time, Piggly Wiggly was owned by Mary Alice and Bill Gillespie, he said.
Being a stocker is tough, physically demanding work, Nathan said, which requires handling heavy boxes and standing on your feet for hours on end.
The placement of the cans so that their labels were visible to the customers on the shelf was always a concern.
“If you didn’t place them right, your boss man would come by and you’d have to do it over again,” Nathan said.
Nathan’s last “boss man” was Derrick Simpson, the general manager of Market Place. It was a great place to work, Nathan said.
About the same time Nathan began his working career, he married the former Ruth McIntyre. The couple had two children, Joe Nathan Jr., 51, and Ruth Robinson, 50. Nathan has numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Ruth Nathan died in 2009.
On Nov. 18, 2011, Nathan married his second wife, Ophelia Johnson-Nathan. Johnson-Nathan serves as a deputy clerk in the Greenwood City Clerk’s Office.
Nathan has been an active member of McKinney Chapel Missionary Baptist Church since his childhood.
He is also heavily involved in the Citywide Ushers Union, a group of men and women that has been in existence for 55 years.
Each of the 25 churches in the union has a church union president and vice president. Nathan serves as the church union president at McKinney Chapel. All members of the union go to union church revivals, and each church has its own annual Ushers’ Day.
McKinney’s will be held on June 1. Wesley United Methodist Church, where Ophelia is a member, will hold its Ushers’ Day on Aug. 1.
Nathan said he also was a member of the Greenwood Jaycees, which played a large part at one time in the city’s annual Christmas parade.
Asked what has made his life meaningful, Nathan replied, “I’ve helped people, and that always makes me feel good.”
•Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
