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riental is about to get its first pharmacy in more than half a century. On Monday, Ed and Carolyn Denton plan to open Denton Pharmacy next to the Oriental Post Office. For the past few weeks, the Michigan natives and work crews have been transforming the front of the Croakertown building in to a drug-store.

A pharmacy comes to Oriental.

Ed and Carolyn Denton.

Ed’s worked for chains and in independent drug stores since graduating from Xavier University’s school of pharmacy in New Orleans about three decades ago. For a while, he and his brother ran a drug store in Michigan. The past few years, while Ed and Carolyn wanted to get back to owning a pharmacy for themselves.

They’ve been living in Greenville — and own a lot at Shine Landing on Dawson’s Creek — and spent time in Oriental. The chance to set up shop in Oriental, they say, “jumped out at us,” just about a year ago.

Ed Denton says that he’s counting on people coming to the post office looking next door and seeing a clean and warm environment that says, “please do your business with us.”

A local pharmacy for Oriental.

Denton Pharmacy will be the fourth drug store in Pamlico County, but the only one at this end of the county. Carolyn Denton says she thinks “people are tired of driving to Bayboro” to get a prescription filled.

Ed Denton says what he most enjoys about his work is helping people feel better. In addition to filling those prescriptions, he says he plans to offer “medicine therapy management.’ That means reviewing all of the medications that a customer is taking, and consulting with their doctors to “make sure they’re doing it right.” That MTM aims to get around the problems that arise when some medicines conflict with others.

He says he can also help customers who come in complaining of an ailment. “I’m not trying to replace a doctor,” he stresses, but says that there are a lot of drugs that with some guidance, customers can buy over-the-counter, without a prescription. At least, he says, that may make them feel better until they can get to a doctor.

At what may soon become the drive-through window, Carolyn and Ed Denton.

Denton’s Pharmacy is also planning a drive-thru window — thought to be the first in Oriental — and may also be offering delivery service; the pharmacist says he’ll be surveying customers about delivery to see if that’s something viable.

The walls of Denton Pharmacy are lined with shampoos, lotions, first aid and those over the counter medicines. But not the giftware that some drugstores carry. “All I want,” Ed Denton says, “is your prescription business.”

He adds however, that there’s now a “symbiotic relationship” with the giftshop that used to occupy the pharmacy’s space. Croakertown hasn’t gone away, it’s just moved further aft in the building. Customers can find art work, gifts and cards only a few steps from the pharmacy as Croakertown has now combined with Sylvan and Lynn Friedman’s wine shop.

The sign went up a few weeks ago and crews have been readying the front of the building to become a pharmacy. Ed Denton had hoped to open for business in September but will miss that by just a few days. An October 3 opening is planned.

While this is the first pharmacy that most people here remember, it is not Oriental’s first. According to Marion Hardy’s book, “A Glimpse of Pamlico County,” a Dr Oscar C Daniels ran a drugstore in Oriental, circa 1911.

Oriental native, Billy Kemp who is now 87, remembers that in the mid-1930’s, there was a drug store on Broad Street. It occupied what was, until recently, the Pamlico News building on Broad Street across from the Village Veterinary Hospital.

The building on Broad Street where Miss Maude Walker’s drug store operated. It occupied the main space, recalls Billy Kemp. To the right would have been the entrance to the doctor’s office.

As Billy Kemp remembers, the drug store was run by Miss Maude Walker, mother of his friend Dick Walker. He says it didn’t have the extensive supplies that today’s pharmacies do, but did have “a little soda fountain where you could buy, a Co’Cola.”

Billy Kemp. In his 87 years, the Oriental native recalls just two drug stores in town — one of them being Denton Pharmacy, about to open up on Broad Street, across from the Village Hardware where Billy spends many afternoons.

Billy says he remembers that as boys, he and Dick Walker were given the task of filling capsules with quinine powder that came out of a bottle. The resulting capsules were sold as a preventative for malaria, he says, and the taste was not pleasant. Billy recalls tasting a bit of the powder— just once — and then having to wash down its bitter taste with a Co’Cola, (which was the boys’ payment for doing the capsule work.)

By Billy Kemp’s count, Oriental in the mid-late 1930’s had about 300 people, and more than a few went directly to Miss Maude with what ailed them, bypassing a trip to the doctor. Billy Kemp says people did that because it was a way of avoiding paying a doctor’s fee – which in those days would’ve set the patient back a dollar.

The drug store was right next door to — and shared the same building with — the town’s physician, Dr. James Purdy. The “Glimpse of Pamlico County” book states that Dr. Purdy mixed prescriptions on his own. It is something that two area residents recall as well.

Remnant from an earlier era of drug store in Oriental: a chair where people could sit and drink their sodas, which could be purchased at the drug store fountain. You can see the chairs today at the Oriental History Museum.

By the time Pamlico County natives Carolyn Broughton Casey and Ben Casey were growing up, in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, there wasn’t a stand-alone drug store, they say. “Dr. Purdy kept jars and bottles of medicines for his patients’ needs in his offices,” Carolyn Casey says, “I remember pills being distributed in little paper envelopes with the directions for dosage handwritten on the envelopes. His was a full-service practice, going to homes to treat people when necessary and to deliver babies.” Doc Purdy practiced until the mid-1950’s.

Since then other doctors have served the town, but about half a century, Oriental-area residents have had to go out of town to get prescriptions filled. That is about to change next week with the opening of Denton Pharmacy.

Posted Friday September 30, 2011 by Melinda Penkava