A&B Emporium co-owners Bret Williamson and his wife Alice said they’re closing the store in downtown Crawford this week. Alice Williamson said they plan to retire and have sold the space to Blake Arnold. (Submitted Photo)
Alice and Bret Williamson look forward to visiting their grandchildren and taking more cruises with their newfound time.
The Williamsons, who live in Lexington, are closing A&B Emporium in downtown Crawford on Thursday, July 18.
“My husband’s health is not the best,” Alice said. “It hasn’t been for a while, and even though he’s hanging in there and all that stuff, we feel like maybe we need some time for us to do some things that we wanted to do.”
Alice said she looks forward to spending more time with Bret’s parents, who live nearby, and with their grandchildren, who live in Buford and Snellville.
“Some of the things we want to do is we love to go on cruises, so that may give us more chances to go on cruises, not during just the summer or times when we’re closed,” Alice said. “And then there’s things (like) we want to take the grandkids up to the Ark (Encounter), and my husband and I love museums and things like that, so that’s probably going to be in our plans.”
Alice said she still plans to run the Community Emergency Response Team for Oglethorpe County.
“The only thing I feel bad about is that we used to help a lot of people that lost things in fires and stuff like that,” Alice said. “We used to help them out, and now I don’t know if somebody else will pick up the slack, but that’s one of the bad things that I feel bad about, is not being able to help people anymore.”
A&B Emporium is having a going out of business sale to sell as much inventory as it can.
Alice said Blake Arnold bought the space and said the Williamsons can leave whatever is left.
Arnold, who owns Crawford Pizza on the same block as A&B Emporium, said he doesn’t have plans for the space.
“I’d like to say thank you to everybody that’s ever come in here, and thank you to the community that allowed us to serve them,” Alice said.