Chapter 7 - My Employment

After graduating from the University of Utah it was required of me to work a year as an intern before I could receive my license to be a Registered Pharmacist.  My father suggested as a possible employer a pharmacist he knew who lived in our Stake.  He owned and operated the Temple Pharmacy, located at that time on the Northeast corner of Main Street and North Temple kitty-corner from Temple Square.  The building housed a pharmacy and a separate café behind; it had rental apartments on the second floor.  The building to the east was a bowling alley.  Those buildings were all later demolished and replaced by parking lots, until the Church History building was built there (dedicated in June 2009.)

 

Dad’s friend did hire me but I soon found that he was a pharmacist of low professional ethics, and a real skin‑flint, to be blunt about it.  Among his other faults, he was a miser of the first order.  I couldn't believe how he would take advantage of everyone, including his own family.   My beginning salary was 75 cents an hour, with the promise of a 5 cent an hour increase each month!  It wasn't much, but since I needed to work for a year as an apprentice before being registered, I considered this a part of my education, hoping for better opportunities to develop later. 

 

I worked at Temple Pharmacy for about three months. My boss was a member of the Tabernacle Choir and as such thought himself pretty cool.  His claim to fame with the choir, I am convinced, was by hoodwinking every salesman that came in his store into giving him samples of anything they had so that he could pass them out to the choir members, thereby gaining him some sort of perceived reputation of being a "good guy."  When in reality in his practice as a pharmacist and businessman he was downright unethical, unscrupulous and manipulative.  I am not sure I know enough adjectives to adequately describe his character.  (You can tell I really liked him, can't you?)   For example, he would go out of his way to do anything for a General Authority that might shop there, which was okay, but on the unsuspecting public he would use the most unsavory business practices.   One of the things that irked me most was how he would sell Bay Rum to the derelicts that frequented that part of town in search of a cheap bottle of booze.  He would wheel and deal with his suppliers for the best price on the stuff (usually buying it at 25 cents a bottle) and then sell it to the drunks for a dollar!  I honestly think he felt he was providing a service to the community!  I didn't have much use for this "fine, upstanding member of the Church," as a pharmacist, either.   His pharmacy was a dirt-pit, and frankly I didn't think I would have trusted him to fill my prescriptions accurately!  I could go on , but I wont.

 

After working for at Temple Pharmacy for three months I could take it no more.  One day I told him just what I thought of him as a person and as a pharmacist, and quit!  One of my faults is that I am sometimes not too tactful.  He sputtered and hollered something about me going to be being sorry for what I said and that I would never make anything of myself.  I said goodbye and walked away.  Probably one of the happier days of my life!

 

 

Being straight out of pharmacy school, filled with high aspirations for my chosen profession, here I was out of work -- a father with a wife and two children to support.

 

During my studies at the "U" I had become acquainted with a Mr. Lee Prisk who had spoken to us soon-to-graduate pharmacy students a couple of times.  Lee was the owner of two successful pharmacies in Salt Lake:  Medical Arts Pharmacy (located in the old Medical Arts Building on South Temple across the street from the Church Office Building (where the Deseret Book Store and the Z.C.M.I. Mall used to be), and Prescription Pharmacy which was located on the main floor of the Boston Building (on the Northeast corner of Main Street and Exchange Place, about 350 South.)   The Prescription Pharmacy was Salt Lake’s only all‑night drug store at that time, and continued as such for many years.   The day following my leaving Temple Pharmacy I interviewed with Lee Prisk and he hired me to work at Prescription Pharmacy, where I worked for about 2 1/2 years.  I also worked at Medical Arts Pharmacy a few times when they needed a pharmacist to cover for vacations. 

 

During the first year at Prescription Pharmacy I completed my internship and received my license as a Registered Pharmacist.   Lee Prisk hired me as an intern @ $1.25 an hour; quite an improvement over what I had been making.  I don't recall what I was earning by the time I left Prescription Pharmacy but think it was about $75.00 a week.   To compare what a pharmacist’s salary was at that time, my father was paying his shoe salesclerks $100.00 a week.   More than I made for several years as a pharmacist!  As I think back over the salaries being paid pharmacists at that time I feel like I came through the "dark ages” of pharmacy, at least here in Salt Lake.   It took many years before pharmacists were paid salaries commensurate with their training.

 

During the time I worked for Prescription Pharmacy, it was one of the busiest (if not the busiest) pharmacy in the city.  At that time the Boston Building housed the largest number of physicians and dentists in town, and they generated a lot of business.  The pharmacy had a direct telephone line into each of the doctor's offices -- so that rather than write a prescription, the doctor would call in his prescriptions to us via telephone and we would have the medicine waiting for the patient when they came downstairs.  Since the store remained open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there were several pharmacists working there to cover the shifts.  I believe there were eight of us:  Michael Bastian (the store manager), Doug Lloyd, George Veasy, Warren Beales, Sylvan Godfrey, Doug Miller, Eddie Brown, and me.  Eddie Brown was an older man who worked the midnight shift every day of the year, except for one week a year when he took a vacation.  I worked for Eddie, during his vacation, a couple of times and came to realize that when you work the all‑night shift you live in a different world!  Later in my career, when I was given such an option, you can see why I would accept it.

 

I became well acquainted with most of the doctors working in the Boston Building during my experience there, some of whom remembered me for years to come.  Not too long after I left Prescription Pharmacy the doctors started moving out of the Boston Building into newer quarters with more convenient parking facilities, and it wasn't too many years after I left that Prescription Pharmacy closed its doors as the doctors had all moved.   About this time people started to commute more with automobile than by bus or street car.  There was very little parking available in town then and the natural thing was for the doctors to move out where more adequate parking was available.  One of the first office buildings built for physicians was on the S.E. corner of 5th South and South Temple; another was a group of offices behind Lowes Pharmacy (where I later worked), on 3rd East between South Temple and 1st South.  As time went on, it became more advantageous for doctors to move closer to a hospital until today hospitals have built buildings for doctors next them, or suites right in the hospital itself.   Most of the office buildings that I mentioned before later suffered a similar demise when doctors all moved out.

 

I really enjoyed my work at Prescription Pharmacy but after a couple of years it became apparent that if I was ever to get ahead in pharmacy I would need to look elsewhere for employment.  About this time the Republican Party had taken over control of the Salt Lake County from the Democrats, who had held all the S.L. county offices for over 20 years.  At that time many county jobs were considered ‘political plums’ to be filled by members of the ‘ruling party,’ and so the Republicans went through, in a clean sweep, and replaced all the Democrats who had formerly occupied county positions.  One of the jobs considered ‘political’ at that time was that of chief pharmacist at the Salt Lake County Hospital.  A member of my ward approached me to see if I, a Republican, would be interested in that position.  Since I was considering a new job anyway, I applied for and got the job.  I was then being paid the princely sum of $325.00 a month!  (Still lower than the salaries my father was paying his salesmen!)   The County Hospital was then located on the corner of 21st South and State Streets, now a County Office building.  The pharmacy was located in a wood-frame building that had been added on the north end of the hospital, which also housed their outpatient clinic.

 

I loved that job!  During the next six months I worked hard to bring about some changes the nursing staff had wanted in the distribution of medications within the hospital, with the great help and support from both the medical and nursing staff.  I think I accomplished a lot.  Many of the antiquated purchasing policies were changed much to the relief of both the nursing and medical staff, and the efficiency of the pharmacy department was improved greatly.  The problem was that I worried that if my predecessor could be removed from his job, with a change in county leadership, mine could be also. 

 

Never having been trained in hospital pharmacy, as such, I relied heavily on the help of other hospital pharmacists in the city (there were three) if I had a question.  I found that most of them were facing similar problems to the ones I was encountering and so I suggested that we might all gain from forming a professional organization where we could share information with each other more easily.  The idea was accepted wholeheartedly by all the hospital pharmacists in the state and we formed the Utah Society of Hospital Pharmacists (U.S.H.P.), which was formed with help from, and under the auspices of, the national hospital pharmacy organization, the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (A.S.H.P.)   We held a meeting each month at a different hospital, traveling between the all the hospitals located then in Salt Lake, Ogden and Logan.  Affiliating ourselves also with the American Pharmaceutical Association (A.Ph.A.), we were the first pharmaceutical organization in the state of Utah to do so (I don’t know if the Utah Pharmaceutical association ever has.)

 

I asked others to serve as the president of our new organization, and I worked in sort of an executive secretary capacity.  I am proud of the part I played in bringing that about.  The hospitals involved where the LDS Hospital in Logan, the Dee Memorial and St. Benedicts Hospitals in Ogden, and the LDS, St. Marks, Holy Cross, Veterans, and SL County Hospitals in Salt Lake.  I had the privilege of attending an A.S.H.P. convention in Connecticut; the County Hospital being good enough to pay for my trip.  It was while in Connecticut that I met Paul Parker (who was president of A.S.H.P that year.  Paul worked as chief pharmacist at the University of Chicago Clinics Hospital.   Later, while I was working at LDS Hospital I visited with him at his pharmacy.   Paul invited me to stay in his home in Chicago for the week.  Later, during a visit to Salt Lake, Paul stayed with us in our home.

 

Through my association with the hospital pharmacists, Harold Noall, chief pharmacist at LDS Hospital, informed me he was going to leave the LDS Hospital pharmacy to assume another position in the LDS Church’s purchasing department.  Feeling the insecurity in my employment at County Hospital, as mentioned before, I decided to apply for his job.  I had to take a cut in salary, as they only paid $300.00 a month, but figured it would be worth it to be in a more secure position.  Whether my making that change had any effect on the county politics, I can’t say, but the position of chief pharmacist was later removed out of a political role.  So much pressure was applied on the County Commission to remove "professional" people out of the political picture, future pharmacists at the County Hospital have never had to contend with being replaced.  I have always justified the move that I made that had I stayed I might have had a problem.   Who knows?

 

I went to work at LDS Hospital in 1953.  That hospital was much smaller then than now, located in a building on the block entirely north of 8th Avenue between C and D Streets.  It had three wings:  East, central and west, each with six or seven floors, with a total of 125 beds.  The pharmacy was located on the ground floor of the west wing’s southwest corner.  There was a entrance into the hospital’s basement right next to the pharmacy. 

 

When I arrived there, the other pharmacist who had been working with Harold Noall decided to move to Logan.  His name was Charles Anderson and is the one from whom we bought our house on 9th Avenue.  When Charles left, I hired John C. (Jack) West, who had worked as my assistant at the County Hospital,.  He was happy to get out of the hectic working conditions which were a result of the many indigent patients cared for at County Hospital.  I also hired a neat lady by the name of Jane Tucker as my pharmacy assistant.  Jane and her husband, Bill, became close friends to us.   Jane died a few years ago and we have now sadly lost track of Bill.  We had one other member of our pharmacy staff, Leticia Christensen, who did the patient billing for us.  (This was in the years before computers, so she had to go from floor to floor to gleen the hand-written medicine information from the charts.)

 

I soon learned that my work at LDS was a bit more uphill than it had been at County.  The nursing staff was quite comfortable with the status quo under Harold Noall, and was more resistant to changes than the nursing staff at County had been.  For awhile a few doctors also gave me a hard time at my insistence that they either replace (with manufacturers samples easily obtained) or pay for the medicine they took for personal use from the pharmacy.  Apparently my predecessor had been quite liberal in giving them anything they wanted, without charge, and a couple of the doctors weren't too happy when I took away their "free lunch".  Those beginning problems with a few of the doctors were soon smoothed over and I did enjoy my experience at LDS Hospital.  I finally got the cooperation of the nursing staff after they got to know me and realized that I wasn't trying to usurp their authority.

 

After I had been there about 2 1/2 years, the Church decided to enlarge the hospital by building a larger central wing.  Included in the remodeling was to be a new pharmacy.   I was sent to several cities to check out other new hospital pharmacies, including the beautiful new pharmacy located at the University of Chicago Clinics hospital where I stayed with Paul Parker, as mentioned earlier.  The purpose was so that we could try to create the most modern facility we could.  I worked closely with the architects as we developed a nice facility.  Unfortunately I never got the opportunity to use what I helped plan.  But, the new pharmacy was my design.  It turned out beautiful and very functional, if I say so myself.   In later years the two east and west wings were demolished and the large central wing was extended across the street to the South by closing 8th Avenue, and much larger wings were added to the east and west  as it is today

                       

Occasionally local pharmacists would come to me wanting to borrow medicines they needed quickly.   This is frequently done between pharmacies with the "borrower" replacing the merchandise.  It was very useful in emergencies and I did this myself occasionally.  While doing this I learned that one of the pharmacies I cooperated with, Lowes Pharmacy, was a local distributor for Lederle Laboratories and as such could sell me Lederle medicines cheaper than I could buy them from our wholesaler, even as a hospital, and we developed a good relationship.

 

Lowes was looking for a new pharmacist and offered me a job at $350.00 a month ($50.00/month more than I was making).  I really thought that the hospital would meet that figure, since I had been there over three years without a raise.  But when I applied for the raise, they said the budget would not allow it and the answer was no.  It was a bit upsetting to me as the pharmacy is one of the best money‑making departments in the hospital, and I knew I had been doing a good job for them.  So I came to the resolve that I would never get very far financially in hospital pharmacy and took the job with Lowes.  In later years, the position of Chief Pharmacist in hospitals has become a lucrative and prestigious position, including many benefits that had not been available while I was working at LDS, so it may have been to my advantage to stay.  But the die was cast and I moved on to another area of employment.   I might interject here that before I left LDS Hospital I talked the chief pharmacist at St. Marks Hospital, Nellie Vanderlinden, into replacing me.  We had become good friends through the U.S.H.P.  She was a talented, capable pharmacist and worked at LDS Hospital for many years after I left.

 

I went to work for Lowes in the spring of 1956.  It was an eventful year.  Because of my switch in employment I also lost out on my vacation that year, so Jeanné and I took our children on our very first real vacation – for three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.   I reported to work at Lowes the following Monday.

 

On July 16th of 1956, my father passed away.  I had just turned 30, four days prior to his death, and his passing was the most traumatic experience I have had in my life.  I loved my dad and missed him dearly.  But behind every cloud there truly is a silver lining.  It was just shortly after Dad's passing that we were able to buy our new home on Evening Star Drive.  We moved into that house in early September 1956.

 

After working for Lowes for about a year, the Lowe brothers took the opportunity to lease a new pharmacy being opened in Auerbachs Department Store.  That large store, comparable in size to Z.C.M.I., was then on the SE corner of State Street and Third South.  The Lowes asked if I would be the manager of the pharmacy.  Auerbachs had had a pharmacy earlier in its history, but it had been closed for some time.  I was not privy to the reasons for them wanting to reopen the department but it offered me an opportunity that I couldn't afford to miss -- and a raise to boot.  I think I was then paid $400.00 a month. 

 

The pharmacy was given a prime location; right in the center on the main floor, between the Men's department and the Cosmetic department.  I hired Jane Tucker, who had worked for me at LDS Hospital, to assist me and we quickly developed a nice business.  It always amazed me the number of people (especially women) who would walk by the pharmacy, do a double‑take as they realized that there was now a pharmacy in the store, open their purse, and take out a prescription to have it billed on their Auerbachs charge card!  Not too long after I left Auerbachs they moved the pharmacy to a less advantageous location, in the basement, but while I was there we had a great location!

 

I am not sure just how long I remained in Auerbachs but it was about two years.  Sherman Lowe, one of the Lowe brothers who operated Lowes Pharmacy, offered me $500.00 a month to become the production manager at Allied Pharmaceuticals in Centerville, Utah.  Allied Pharma-ceuticals manufactured intravenous fluids for hospitals.  Sherm belonged to a successful invest-ment group of business men who, by pooling their financial resources, purchased businesses that were having difficulties, but whom they thought had good potential.  Using their business acumen and financial expertise, they would infuse enough money in the business to make it successful and then divest themselves of the investment at a profit.  They had been quite successful doing this.  Allied had been operated by a pharmacist for years.  He was a man who had big ideas but not the wherewithal to make it successful.  He had also been somewhat shady when it came to doing business which didn’t help us when we took over.  I agreed with the group that the potential was there, and since I had become educated in how to prepare intravenous fluids while at the hospital ‑‑ including putting an area for making I.V. fluids in the new hospital pharmacy I had helped plan ‑‑ I felt I could handle the job. 

 

The biggest hurdles to overcome, in marketing the product, was trying to compete with big manufacturers like Baxter Laboratories and Cutter Laboratories, giants in the field, and to overcome the stigma that Milo's business practices had attached to the operation.  As an attempt to overcome the poor reputation that Allied had, we changed the name to Burton Laboratories, taking the name from Sherman Burton Lowe.  My position with Burton Labs was probably the most motivating, and at the same time trying, work of my pharmacy career.  One thing I relish is a challenge, and I had a good one.  I worked with a local printing company to design a new label for our solutions and our labels took on a new, very professional appearance that were easier to read ‑‑ something I had learned while working with nurses.  And while we were fairly successful in marketing our products in nearby states, the local hospitals still worried about the reliability of our product (mostly because of their past dealings with Milo.)  Sherm Lowe and other members of "The Group" got the idea that we could overcome this concern if the United States Govern-ment would accept our products, reasoning that if the government would purchase the product, it would give them the credibility they had been lacking.  To some degree I had to agree with them, BUT to obtain a government contract they had to guarantee to be able to supply quantities of solutions far in excess of our current production capabilities.   Perhaps we all were a little naïve.  None of us had experience enough to realize that when you increase production there is a break‑in period necessary on the new equipment purchased.  They spent thousands of dollars on new equipment without realizing that equipment isn’t just turned on and expected to run without an occasional imperfection.  For example they bought a new still capable of producing the larger quantities of distilled water we would need.  That required the purchase of a new boiler to provide the amount of steam that the new still required.  This in turn required us to purchase water softening equipment to keep the new boiler clean.  And so it was with all the new equip-ment we bought.

           

It was during this equipment build‑up phase that we experienced a near fatal disaster.  One piece of equipment which we had inherited from the previous owner was an old mattress sterilizer that he had purchased through Army Surplus and had converted into an autoclave.  He had a metal shelving rack made to fit, and it worked okay, but it was far from being state of the art!  The bottles were stacked on the shelves, pushed into the autoclave and the large door sealed, after which the steam was brought up to the correct temperature and pressure and held there for the specified time to sterilize the product.  One day as my head technician, Jewel North, opened the door at the end of the sterilization cycle, the whole contents exploded!  Jewel had operated the autoclave for years, and was certainly adept at handling it.  As the bottles exploded, the liquid immediately turned into steam, and the steam and broken glass shot out into the room with a blast!  Fortunately the large door protected most of Jewel's body, as she was standing behind it, but she received terrible third‑degree burns on her legs and feet below where the door protected

her.  Glass was everywhere.    She was lucky to be alive.  We immediately took her to the hospital and it required a long recovery period before she was able to return to work. 

 

We determined that as the steam was being vented to the outside by means of a valve to reduce the steam pressure in the autoclave (which is like a huge pressure cooker), after the pressure was gone and the door cracked open, a freak gust of cold wind had blown down the exhaust pipe causing a hot bottle to explode, starting a chain reaction.  Needless to say that valve was closed prior to the door being opened from that time on!

 

Perhaps it would be well to explain that at that time all intravenous fluids were packaged in glass bottles.  It wasn't for some years after that they began being packaged in the plastic pouches as used today.  The I.V. fluid bottles we used had a rubber stopper through which the I.V. tubing was connected.  Intravenous solutions not only had to be sterile, but for esthetic purposes you couldn't have little “floaters” in the liquid and so the bottles not only had to be clean and sterile but free from any little tiny specks.  As production manager it was my responsibility to decide which new equipment to buy, and while I advised them the best I could, my experience was limited to what I could read and observe others using.  A special new state‑of‑the‑art bottle washer was a critical part of our new equipment.  The new washer was HUGE and required a lot of routine maintenance (like greasing, etc.) which was up to me to do.  Every time we got a new piece of equipment it required additional space, which required enlarging the building.   It was a major undertaking.  But I got it operating and shortly got it putting out the amount and quality of product we had to have.  I had a fine group of women from the Centerville area who worked diligently in their jobs.  My responsibility was not only to keep all the machinery working, and to weigh and mix the ingredients for each batch of fluids, but to test the product and run the sterilization tests on them.  For a time we had a couple of students from the University take care of the testing, but they had to leave and the job was left up to me.  It kept me busy.  We sent our finished product to the University who performed the final test -- for anaphylactic shock, which is done using live rabbits. 

 

The problem -- which turned out to be the ultimate downfall of the operation -- was that in their zeal to obtain the government contract ‑‑ which they did get ‑‑ they bid at a price that was below what it cost to produce.   That was a mistake.   I felt that, given our location – far from the two oceans – we were in an excellent area for protection from any enemy attack, and the government would have been willing to pay extra for that security, or that they would have possibly renegotiated the price if they knew we were losing money.   I’ll never know.

Obviously, bidding at the price they did, they had hoped they could cut our production costs down, and we did try.  The goal became one of trying to reduce the cost per bottle, which we were never able to do.  The company ended up losing about 5 cents on every bottle produced. When you multiply that by the thousands of bottles we were expected to provide on the contract, things began going downhill financially fast.  It came to the place where many of the men in "the group" came and worked to reduce employee costs, and I have to give them credit for trying.  By this time the operation was becoming routine and most of the kinks had been removed from the operation, and I taught members of the group how to do my work.  I knew there were some things that could be done to avert the obvious, but those things required money and they weren't about to spend more money.  So after nothing was going to be done I felt the only honorable thing I could do was to leave and at least save them the wages they were paying me.  To his credit Sherman Lowe refused to let the company go into bankruptcy, but nearly ruined his own life because of it.

 

A truly sad epilogue to my work at Burton Labs was that a large California company had approached "the group" not long after we got the Navy contract.  They were re-packagers.  Companies would send them tank cars full of their product and they would repackage proprietary products for them under both the drug companies’ label and their own private label.  They were looking for a source of injectables to include in their private label line, but said they wouldn't be interested in any purchase until the Navy contract was fulfilled.  Had it gone through it could have been very lucrative for both the group, and me, as they indicated they wanted me to continue as production manager.  Several of us flew down to California to look over their operation.  One of their biggest accounts was Ronsonal Lighter Fluid!  They purchased it in a railroad tank car and piped it right from the tanker into their production line eliminating need for storage space.  It just wasn't to be, and I learned a long time ago not to cry over spilt milk.

 

Always the eternal optimist, I hadn't anticipated having to resign as I did.  As a result I hadn't even thought about looking for another job.  I luckily found a job with a small pharmacy that was filling prescriptions under contract from an insurance company and worked there for a few days.  I don't even remember the name of the pharmacy!  While working there I learned of an opening at the Key Rexall Drug Store in Kearns.  I went to see Glade Linebaugh, the pharmacist proprietor, and was hired on the spot.

 

I worked at Key Rexall for ten years.  I don't recall how much I was paid, but it was a good salary, and the store didn't open on Sunday which, to me, was a plus.  Glade was a pharmacist, but spent most of his time sitting at his desk in the back room.  I liked him.  He had a lot of good qualities, but he did smoke and liked to drink.  He left the operation of the store to me and another man (whose name escapes me) who managed the "front end."  I had another pharmacist work with me to handle the other shift and I managed the pharmacy.

 

It was a long ride out to 5600 South and 5400 West in Kearns but it wasn't as far as I had had to travel to get to Centerville, which had required an hour’s travel each way, so I didn't mind. Kearns was growing rapidly.  It had been started as low income housing after the war.  Key Rexall was in a strip mall located about 1/2 block from Kearns High School.   The store had a problem with shoplifting by the school kids, who would come over during lunch, but that didn’t affect my job.

 

One lasting memory I have of working at Key Rexall was the day I was at home eating lunch preparing to leave for work.  The announcement came over the radio of the assassination of President Jack Kennedy.  I had not voted for the man, nor did I care for his politics, but when I heard the announcement, I cried.

 

After working for Glade Linebaugh for ten years I began to get antsy.  Glade was getting older and talked about selling his store.  I had the feeling that he just might do it soon (which he did not too long after I left.)  I was not interested in buying a store way out in Kearns.  So I decided that it was time to make a move.  I responded to an ad in the newspaper and sent in an application for a job at the new Gibson’s Discount store that was then being built in Murray.

 

Gibson Pharmacy was a leased department owned and operated by Jack Walker.  Jack leased several other Gibson Pharmacies in Colorado, and also operated two Walker Drug stores in Moab, and Monticello, Utah.  Jack's home was in Grand Junction, Colorado, where one of his other leased Gibson Pharmacies was located.  This was to be his first Utah Gibson Pharmacy.  Jack came into the store in Kearns while I was working and visited with me.  He hired me to be the manager of the new Murray store.

 

 I enjoyed working for Jack and he was very good to me.  The pharmacy in Gibson’s was well planned.  It was good to be working for a pharmacist with a real interest in the business and knew what he was doing.  Gibson’s let us carry any over‑the‑counter products that they didn't carry themselves so I stocked vitamins and over-the-counter medications, along with sickroom supplies, including canes, crutches and wheelchairs.  Jack's prescription pricing was so efficient that we soon became the low‑price leader in town and quickly developed a good business.

 

During the ten years I worked for Jack Walker I had my daughter, Ann, work for me for a while, and also my wife, Jeanné.   I also hired Jill and Jan Baird, my nieces, who were great workers!  Jack ran a pretty tight ship and had all of his managers meet together about once a month, in Colorado.  He had the idea that all his managers should be able to move from store to store in case of emergency so he paid for me to become registered in Colorado.  I took the test and passed, but later stopped renewing my Colorado license about the time we went on our mission to Tennessee as it was evident that I would never be going to Colorado to work.

  

One of the benefits to me of working for Jack Walker was that he didn't come to the Murray store too often.  Jack loved to work in his stores, and had the habit of watching over your shoulder as he worked with you.  Too much of that would have bothered me, I think, but we always got along just fine.  In fact I still make a point of saying hello to Jack when we visit Moab were he still operates his Walker Drug.  I think it is the only store Jack still has, Gibson’s stores have gone the way of all things.   Last I knew he was still driving to Moab from Grand Junction.

 

My reason for leaving Jack after 10 years was that he got into marital problems.  He did a lot of traveling by air and got involved with an airline stewardess.  As a result he was divorced by his wife, who was the one in their marriage with the money.  She was from a well‑to‑do Texas family.  There was a period of time when I wasn't sure if his Gibson Pharmacies were going to be in business the next day!  It turned out to be a difficult time for me.  Prior to this time, as you may have noted during my career, whenever I needed another job there always seemed to be an opening somewhere.  At this particular time there was a glut of pharmacists looking for work.  When I contacted other pharmacists to learn of open positions, no one was hiring, except at a much lower salary than I was then getting.

 

It was during this time of uncertainty that my son, John, began working as a Realtor for Heartland Realty.  I wasn't anxious to leave pharmacy, but it seemed like I might not have any other choice.  I thought I might as well investigate Real Estate.  I obtained my license and started working part‑time for Heartland with John, all the time still working at Gibson Pharmacy.  When it got to the point that I didn't think the store would be open much longer anyway, I resigned my position with Gibson Pharmacy and went to work full‑time for Heartland Realtors.  It wasn't long after I left that Jack Walker sold his Salt Lake store, and not much longer after that when Gibson’s Discount stores went belly up everywhere. 

 

While working there I observed that the operators of the Murray Gibson store were living pretty high on the hog, as it were, and they started engaging in some very poor business practices. The idea in a "discount" store is to buy it and sell quickly.  It is the turnover that makes the profit. The owners of the Murray store started buying in large quantities.  They even went so far as to build a large storehouse on some property behind the store.  They had forgotten the principle of turnover and started thinking that the small extra discount they received by purchasing in a larger quantity would make more money.  It just doesn't work!  Salesmen told me that the owner would buy anything if they offered it to him with an additional 5% off!   I knew that was the beginning of the end for them, and it didn't take long to prove me right.

 

I worked for Heartland during the years of 1975‑76.  John and I worked as a team and I enjoyed that relationship very much.  The only problem with the work was that while real estate had been very lucrative just prior to my entering it, home sales started plummeting to an all‑time low.  By the time I decided that selling homes wasn't for me, I had spent not only all of my savings but all the retirement that Jack had paid me upon leaving Gibson Pharmacy.

 

Jeanné and I spent the last of our savings and took a trip to England to visit our daughter Ann and her husband Steve.  We took them with us on a trip into Germany and Switzerland, having what was the best experience we ever had with the two of them.  When we returned home it was I had to find a job, or starve!

 

I called Wayne Borg, a pharmacist I had gone through pharmacy school with.  Wayne was employed as the new director of pharmacy for the Smith Drug King grocery stores.  At this time Smiths had pharmacies in only three of their stores, one in Ogden, one in Sugarhouse, and one on the corner of 39th South and State Street.  Wayne said he didn't have an opening right then but would keep me in mind.  The following day he called and said he had a job for me if I wanted.  That was June 1976.

 

Smith's started opening up pharmacies as fast as they could.   I soon lost track of how many they had.  They changed their name to Smiths Food and Drug and started opening up stores all through Utah and into Idaho, later adding other states.  I worked for Smith's as a pharmacy manager for 13 1/2 years until I took early retirement in May of 1989.  At the time of my retirement I was the oldest pharmacist (in years of service) they had.  Wayne Borg had retired earlier because of health problems, and died a little afterwards.

 

In the early years of Smith's pharmacies, they would move their pharmacy managers into new stores as they were opened.  I started working in the store on 39th South and State Streets (it later would be closed), going from there to 9400 South and 20th East in Sandy, and then to Olympus Hills Mall, then Sixth Avenue, and my last store on 106th South and 7th East (which was also later closed and is now an aquarium.)  It was during my employment at this last Smith’s store that Ann and her family came here from England and moved in with us.  Unfortunately it was the same period of time that I had had a series of health problems beginning with an operation to correct a hammer toe on my right foot.  This was followed by a urinary problem that had to be corrected by an operation called a T.U.R.P.  This is explained in chapter thirteen. All of these things affected my work.   I guess the best way to describe it is that it was making me rather “testy” in the handling of my customers.   Smith’s was closing the 106^th South store and moving to a new location on 13^th East and about 103^rd South.  No one told me outright, but I learned that I was not scheduled to be transferred to the new store.   

 

I need to take a moment and explain one of the facts of life – people sometimes make mistakes.  I am no exception.  Twice during my 40 years as working as a pharmacist, I had made a mistake in dispensing the wrong medicine.  My first error was while working at Key Rexall in Kearns.   I dispensed the wrong medicine to a patient.  I think I didn’t catch it because the medicines looked alike and I have to admit I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been, not having dispensed prescriptions for a couple of years.   It didn’t cause the man any serious harm, thank goodness, but he sued the store.   Fortunately the store had insurance to cover the contingency – because those things happen.   The second mistake was at the 106^th South Smith’s store.   It was a mistake that the patient noticed and I immediately corrected, but he was upset with me and went to store management and made a complaint – which was his right to do.  I want to repeat at this juncture that this was during this period when all of these problems were happening in my life, mentioned in the preceding paragraph.  I don’t believe I realized at the time that was acting testy – and, I must confess, it probably was not only with the customers but with my help as well.  I have always been sorry about that.  Well, Smiths’ directors of pharmacy (two brothers who had taken over Wayne Borg’s position) apparently took it upon themselves to remove me as a manager and cooked up some facts against me that weren’t true.  They called me into the office and presented several “problems.”   The error in dispensing a wrong medicine -- and some others of which I honestly don’t believe ever occurred.   It was my word against theirs and instead of being transferred to the new store; I learned that they wanted me to take over the midnight shift at their new 8th South and 9th East all‑night pharmacy. This would remove me from being a pharmacy manager – and cheat me out of a promised $50,000 bonus which was promised to managers at retirement.           

 

Shades of déjà vu.   As I mentioned above, Ann and her family had moved to the United States and were living with us in our home.  That change in my work would have meant me having to sleep during the day ‑‑ and had I taken the shift, it would have been very difficult with five teenagers in the home.  I felt betrayed.  My health was probably the poorest it had ever been at that time, and I am sure it affected my work.  I always felt bad that they never asked for, nor gave me, an opportunity to explain. They had done their groundwork very carefully and said I was not performing my work according to their liking, so that move they offered was my only alternative.  I disagreed. I would be 64 years old in one month and instead I took early retirement.  Probably the best decision made in my life.

 

After our mission to Tennessee-Nashville, I went to work part‑time for Jolley Drug, then on 9th South and 9th East.  I wasn't too keen, but they needed my help and I decided I could use the money so I worked for them about 2 or 3 years, a night or two a week.  They started closing their store at 7 p.m. so they didn't need me as much and I was pleased.  I worked for Jolley a little at both their 9th South and their Sandy store, but began to feel uncomfortable with all the new drugs that were recently coming on the market, not wanting to take the time to keep up with them like I wanted to, so I stopped working for them in 1997.  They were so good to me, after I left, allowing me to buy my medicine from them at their cost, as I had while working for them.  This was very helpful during my next two missions.

 

I discontinued renewing my license, and haven’t worked since Jeanné and I moved to Sandy in 2002.