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When he wants to escape his workaday routine, Bill Allain drives to Vicksburg or his hometown of Natchez, sits on the bluffs and watches the Mississippi River roll by.
The rhythm of the river is in his blood. His father, the late Henry G. Allain, was a captain on the mighty waterway that washes southward through the continent.
"I love that Mississippi River," Allain said in a recent interview, a look of reverie crossing his face. "It's just something about water that kind of makes you feel good, you know?"
Allain was governor of Mississippi from 1984 to 1988, and is one of the state's five living former chief executives.
At 73, he practices law in northeast Jackson and has given no serious thought to retirement.
"I don't know what I would do because I love the law," he said in a conference room at his office, where shelves were lined with tomes of law and history and a crucifix hung on a wall.
Divorced before running for governor, Allain has no children but is close to his two surviving sisters and other relatives.
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