Legacy of Mrs. Harper

I saw Mrs. Harper last Friday.  She hasn’t changed in 36 years, except to be a tad forgetful.  Understandable now that she has great-grandchildren of her own.  She recognized me even though it has been over a year since she personally waited on me.

The Harper family has owned Crestview Pharmacy forever.  It is the oldest independent pharmacy in the city.  When I moved here in the mid 1970’s and found Crestview it was always either Mr. or Mrs. Harper behind the counter.  As their boys Jerry and David got old enough, they began to work in the family business and now manage much of the day to day operation.  In all these years they have consistently provided accurate prescriptions in the correct dosage without a single mistake and in the friendliest, fastest, most efficient way possible. 

But that’s not the reason I keep coming back.  What the Harpers do best is build relationships.  Just like their neighbors in the shopping center, the Prellops who own the Crestview Minimax, they know their regular customers by name, ask about their children and carry unique items in addition to the usual stock.   When my children were little Mrs. Harper would always make sure they got a piece of candy while I waited on my prescriptions to be filled, and maybe an extra piece if they were sick – no charge, of course.  She recalled those days on Friday as we visited – how she would make home or business deliveries – no charge, of course – and as mothers began working outside the home she would even deliver to the day care because the mothers trusted her so much to take the right medicine to the right place. 

I have an old-fashioned charge-account at Crestview Pharmacy.  When I go into pick up medicine I simply sign a charge slip and then pay my bill each month when it arrives.  As my children got old enough to drive it was wonderful that I could send them to pick up their own prescriptions, let them charge it and not have to send them with money.  Mrs. Harper recalled one time when a little girl came in with several of her friends and announced that her mom said she could charge candy for her and all of her friends.  Mrs. Harper said, “I’m not sure that’s what your mom said, let’s call and ask her”.  Immediately the girl confessed. 

There will come a day when Mr. and Mrs. Harper will no longer work at the pharmacy, and that will make me very sad.  It will be the end of an era, not to walk in and see his tall frame with dark hair and big glasses back at the filling counter, or over in a booth having lunch with a crony.  Or not to see Mrs. Harper’s perfectly coifed gray hair and smiling blue eyes, looking almost exactly like one of my grandmothers.  But I take comfort in knowing that Jerry and David will be there, and they have children so perhaps the legacy will live on past my lifetime.    I’d like that.