Pharmacist to the Nation

It was one of those stories newspapers love to carry: Old Charlie Morris was down on his luck. It was 1930. The black janitor had lost both his job and his savings after suffering a hand
injury. One day he decided to find out if the "rich drug merchant he'd read about in the newspapers" was his old friend from the drug-store in Chicago where he worked in 1896.

"The two old pals had the time of their lives renewing their friendship", wrote one newsservice of Charlie Morris's reunification with Charles Walgreen, Sr., the founder of the Walgreen Drugstore chain. "The rich man grabbed the aged Morris and hugged him like a long-lost brother". Walgreen arranged for medical care and when Morris had recovered sufficiently he gave him "a job for life".

The story was no newspaper hype. This was the real Charles Walgreen. "There was no bunk about Mr. Walgreen", said a friend much later at his funeral in 1939. "There was no front, no pretence. He was himself always. Simple, honest, direct..."

Charles Rudolph Walgreen, was born in 1873 in Illinois. His parents, Charles and Ellen, were like many in that area, immigrants from Sweden.

Charles Walgreen's role as pharmacist to the nation began in 1893 when he landed his first job at Rosenfeld's in Chicago. In 1898 Walgreen enlisted in the army to help his country in the war against Spain. He contracted malaria and yellow fever in Cuba, and considerably debilitated returned home to Chicago and another job at a pharmacy. He applied himself strenuously to his job to make enough for a down-payment to buy the pharmacy on Chicago's South side.

Charles Walgreen often wondered if he had made the right decision when he bought his first store. It was 50 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a cleared space down the middle. Haphazardly arranged in the front windows were clusters of products like The Only Genuine Old Fashioned Castile Soap, Peerless Tooth Powder, vegetable tonics, perfumes, and tins and small jars of pills and tablets for ailments ranging from dyspepsia to bronchitis. Looming above them were the traditional show globes, large apothecary jars filled with colored water - red to signify arterial blood, blue for venous blood. How would he earn enough to change the uninviting atmosphere. He started to work on service innovations. One such service - admittedly rather theatrical - he referred to as his "two-minute stunt." Whenever a customer in the immediate vicinity telephoned with an order for non-prescription articles, he always repeated, loudly and slowly, the caller's name and address and the items wanted so that Caleb Danner, his black handyman, could quickly collect and wrap them. Then Walgreen would prolong the conversation by discussing everything from the weather to current events. Invariably, the fleet Caleb was at the caller's door before she was ready to hang up. She would excuse herself because of his rap on the door, and when she returned she expressed her amazement and pleasure at the speed with which the ordered merchandise had arrived.

In the same spirit, Walgreens today have their Intercom - an on-line in-store pharmacy computer. Customer benefits include tax and insurance records, patient profiles and a prescription hotline. Where state law allows, Intercom also permits "prescription transferability" - so you can get refills at Walgreen stores other than the one where you first bought your medication, even if it's in another state.

In the early days, another way to entice more customers was through the soda fountain. Over the preceding 100 years, the soda fountain had become an integral part of the American drug store. The pharmacy fountains drew considerable patronage. Walgreen's ambition was to have a big fountain where he could serve customers such delights as ice cream soda, sundaes and cones. Ice cream was already being made in the store's basement because Walgreen wanted a product with a higher percentage of butter fat than he was able to get from suppliers. Before long, Walgreen's desire for a larger fountain was realized. When the adjacent store to the south was vacated, he rented it and the fountain flourished. He talked his young wife Myrtle into making sandwiches, soup and desserts to extend the brisk business of the warmer months into winter. The fountain luncheons service was a success that confirmed Charles' thesis: "If you serve your customers with the same thoughtfulness, interest, courtesy and friendliness that you would show if they were guests in your own home, then you will have satisfied customers and find
greater enjoyment in your work."

This enjoyment seems to be shared by Walgreen shareholders today. "I love coming to the shareholders meeting", said one elderly shareholder at the 1989 meeting. "There's always good news."

Good news indeed - Walgreen's first humble pharmacy sprouted rapidly into no less than 1.511 Walgreen drugstores operating today!