Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

January hasn’t been a good month for our family.

It was January 23, 2012 my brothers and I lost our Dad.  Then, 10 years later, on Janary 4, my wife, Kim, and her siblings lost their Mom.  Now, two years later, on January 7, my wife lost her Dad.

For us, January isn’t the month we want to see roll around on the calendar.  These days, we’d just as soon skip it.

Kim now knows what its like to be an orphan, I guess.  No parents in this world, just a lot of memories as she works through the sorrow of losing both parents in just a couple of years.

It isn’t that we’re unique.  Most children, if they live long enough, lose their parents.  But we’re weary of January right now and what it has brought to our family.

Kim’s Dad was a pharmacist and that career pretty much defined him.  Most of my memories of him revolve around his store and his work.  As a small-town pharmacist he worked around the clock.  I can remember him getting calls in the evening or on Sundays and holidays and quickly leaving the house to fill a prescription for someone who couldn’t wait until the next work day.  He did that often.  To him, it was just part of being a  pharmacist in a smaller southwestern Minnesota town. He didn’t have a second pharmacist in his store or any relief pharmacist to take some of the pressure off throughout the year.  He just worked…every day.

In fact, his store was the only store open on Sunday morning.  Even if he planned to take it off, he usually ended up there.  And the townspeople knew it too.  They’d show up while he was busy getting a prescription done and he’d fill a few more and even sell some over-the-counter items that couldn’t wait until Monday.

And, for those who couldn’t get to the store, he’d deliver the prescriptions to their homes on weekends or long after stores closed for the evening.

He was 87 when he died.   That probably tells you about how things were when he was running a community drug store.  In a small town in his day, you didn’t just work 8 to 5 on Monday through Friday or Saturday.  You pretty much worked around the clock.  Everyone knew they could give him a call, day or night, and he’d deliver what was needed.  That’s who he was in this world.  His ways, rare now, are missed.