NATCHEZ — The tabletops and counter space in Richard and Lillian Noble’s living room can barely accommodate a coffee cup.

Now that the couple is great-grandparents, Lillian said wants her husband to empty a room to display photographs of her family because the living room furniture has reached capacity for framed memories.

“She’s been jumping on me about that,” Richard said.

When The Dart landed at the Nobles’ house in the 800 block of Maple Street, the couple proudly pointed to photographs of their five children and talked about each of their accomplished careers.

“All of our children are workaholics,” Richard said.

Although the Nobles came from humble beginnings, they instilled in their children the value of working hard and are proud of how Charles, Patricia, Gwen, Richard and the late Lionel turned out.

The elder Richard’s education ended after fifth grade, he said. He grew up in Wilkinson County and moved to Natchez at 16, already with work experience under his belt.

Lillian, who attended high school at Brumfield in Natchez, said she moved to the area because there was not a high school that admitted black people where she grew up in Jefferson County.

The couple, who met as teenagers and neighbors in Natchez, married in 1952 and went on to raise five children who grew up to be an engineer, a banker, a professor, a county employee and a supervisor of a world famous museum.

“I’m proud of all of them,” Lillian said of her children.

The oldest child, Patricia Noble Johnson, works at Britton and Koontz bank; the second oldest, Charles Noble, is an exhibits supervisor at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.; the late Lionel Noble, who died of a heart attack in 2001, was an employee of Adams County; Gwendolyn Noble Miller is an engineer in Starkville; and youngest child Richard III has a PhD from University of North Carolina in Chapelhill and is a math professor and at a college in North Carolina.

Richard said he worked hard growing up and wanted to instill a work ethic in his children.

“I brought them up working,” Richard said of his children.

A retired cabinetmaker and carpenter, Richard said his sons would hold his tools and help him work when they were young.

Lillian remembers Charles and Lionel got an early start with yard work.

“Charles and Lionel would mow the grass and push (the lawn mower) together because they were too little (to push it alone),” Lillian said.

Lillian, who worked until she was 62 years old cleaning houses, working at the Natchez pecan factory and caring for sick and elderly people, said her daughters helped out at home.

“Everything in his house works,” Richard said.

“That’s what my daddy taught me. I was taught if you didn’t work you didn’t eat.”

Richard said he knew he wanted to teach his children to work and to learn the value in of working and to avoid trouble.

“I definitely wanted (his children) to learn to work and not be on the street,” Richard said.

And while the couple said teaching their children the importance of work was intentional, Richard gave credit to them for learning the lesson well.

“I have a gift of working children, and I have never had any lazy children,” Richard said.

Nowadays, the couple sometimes makes visits to Washington D.C., Starkville and North Carolina, but they mostly spend their days quietly in the house where they raised their children, they said, making sure — like many great grandparents — they never miss a birthday of their children, nine grand children or four great grandchildren.

While some of their children are scattered across the country pursuing their careers and raising families of their own, they remain close, the couple said, and the phone rings often.