By Eugene Scheel
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Remington Drug Company , in the Fauquier County town of the same name, started as a business 100 years ago and is the oldest of five independent pharmacies remaining in the Virginia Piedmont north of the Rapidan River.
Fifty years ago, there were about 25 -- and not a single chain pharmacy.
Sometime in 1908, 22-year-old William "Will" Walden Ashby began selling pharmaceuticals, then called notions, at Robert Lee Willis's grocery, dry goods and hardware store (now Grove Hardware) on Remington's Main Street. Five years later, Ashby opened a pharmacy across the street, in a new brick building that still houses the drugstore. The property had been deeded to him by his father-in-law, Edgar M. Rouse, a traveling drug salesman.
Remington was then nicknamed "Bustertown" because so many of its businesses went broke, a 1895 downtown fire being one reason. It was three blocks by four blocks and had 250 people, making it the largest town within a 10-mile radius. Its businesses served an immense agricultural belt that included southern Fauquier and the eastern part of Culpeper County.
In fall 1918, the region was ravaged by an influenza epidemic, and "Doc" Ashby -- the title "Doc" was common to all local pharmacists -- succumbed to the illness in October.
"People were dying like flies," his daughter, Willa "Billie" Rich, told me recently. She was in her mother's womb when her father died.
In April 1919, Ashby's widow sold the pharmacy to his younger brother Evan and to George Russell Cottingham, the town physician who had attended her husband. Evan Ashby, like his older brother, had received a correspondence course diploma in pharmacy from the Medical College of Virginia, now Virginia Commonwealth University. When Cottingham died in 1924, Ashby bought out his partner's interest in the store.
"Doc" Evan Ashby, known to the family as "Ikey," ran Remington Drug until 1972, turning it into one of the Piedmont's legendary establishments. In 1935, he acquired the 15-foot-long white mottled marble counter from which he and his clerks dispensed the ice cream, malted milks and sundaes that are still served today.
In fall 1944, Ashby learned that his sister's son-in-law had died in a shotgun accident in the Richardsville area, across the Rappahannock River from Remington. He told her to invite the victim's family to live in the apartment above the drugstore. So the four of them moved in -- two boys ages 5 and 2, their mother and their grandmother.
The older boy was Wilbur "Will" Heflin, the current owner and chief pharmacist of Remington Drug, and he immediately began helping out at the store.
"I started washing dishes standing on a Remington shotgun shell box," Heflin told me recently, recalling that the store sold guns and ammunition.
Of the tragedy that brought him and his brother to their great-uncle's store, Heflin mused, "You know, had that not happened, we'd probably be driving high-wheel pickups with shotguns on the back [window].
"He formed a home for us. He was always there," Heflin said of his great-uncle. "I immediately knew I wanted to be a pharmacist."
While he was still enrolled at Remington Elementary, Heflin said, he realized that the family didn't have money to send him to college. He found out that the Middleburg Community Center offered two $500 college scholarships each year, one to a Fauquier student and one to a Loudoun student. He needed that scholarship, so for four years he hitchhiked the 13 miles to Warrenton High School. Its academic reputation was a cut above that of Remington High.
After he won the scholarship, Heflin and his Loudoun counterpart were honored at an estate garden party in Virginia's hunt country. "It was like I had gone to the city for the first time," Heflin said. "The house had a pool. I couldn't get over it."
He wanted to see another part of the country, so he chose to enroll at the University of Wyoming. "I can remember the expressions on the people's faces," he said of those who had awarded him the scholarship. "They were thinking, 'Is there really a school there, or are we wasting our money and he's just traveling?' "
Heflin received his degree in pharmacy in 1961, but his practical summer training was at Rhodes Drug Store in Warrenton. The pharmacist there, Russell Herring, "gave me most of my instruction," Heflin said. He also worked in drugstores near Washington State University, where he continued his studies.
Then, he came home. His great-uncle had crippling arthritis, and on Jan. 1, 1972, Heflin became owner and pharmacist of the drugstore where he had first worked as a 5-year-old washing dishes in 1945.
Heflin's business still maintains the features of an old-time drugstore.
"Most of our customers we know on a first-name basis. They are part of our business family. I still like phone contacts," he told me. "There are situations that merit helping out -- someone who can't afford a drug. Sometimes it bites you, but I remember a gal who came back after four years and paid her account -- not a great deal, but she never forgot it."
When I asked him what has changed most in the pharmacy business since he took over Remington Drug 36 years ago, Heflin mentioned pain-management drugs. "Few were used then, and a prevailing attitude was: 'Pain? Oh, you should be able to handle that,' or 'Give him a painkiller and you'll make an addict out of him.' Now, it's acceptable to give medication on a constant basis to control pain -- more emphasis on making a patient comfortable."
He also noted that to get quality treatment, a person used to need a prescription. "Now you can get that drug over the counter."
"We are also using more . . . avenues of preventive treatment," he said. "If you come in with an elevated level of blood glucose, even though it might not be in the danger range, we treat it early and maybe prevent it from being full-blown diabetes.
"To no longer be a liability to a more productive America -- that's the utopia we're working toward."
For further reading, see Faye Musselman's article "Some Things Never Change at Remington Drug Co." in the fall 1994 issue of Fauquier magazine.
Eugene Scheel is a historian and mapmaker who lives in Waterford.
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