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50 years a pharmacist: Cultivation of relationships key part of career
McCOOK, Neb. -- Jack Clark remembers when $20 was considered expensive for prescription medicine.
"There was no insurance for prescriptions and everything was paid for out-of-pocket," Clark said. "So that was considered very high priced."
He would know: he's been a pharmacist for 50 years and has seen a lot of changes through the decades.
"When I first graduated, generics were a dirty word," he recalled. "It was considered bottom of the barrel. Now, we use generics whenever we can or we don't get paid."
And it used to be just penicillin and tetracycline prescribed for antibiotics; that's opened up to many antibiotics now available. Plus, there's medicine for preventing and controlling heart disease that wasn't around 30 years ago as well as more opioid drugs approved for pain management, like hydrocodone and oxycontin.
Then there were the stacks of handwritten prescriptions and patient records that had to be typed on cards, a laborious process that was done at the end of the day. When the electric Selectric typewriter came out, with its self-correcting key, "it was like a whole new world," Clark said.
Despite all the changes he's witnessed the past 50 years, he never intended on being a pharmacist in the first place.
Instead, after being discharged in 1960 from the U.S Navy, Clark fully intended to use the electronic training he received in the service and go to California and work at Hewlett Packard or for the government.
But while visiting family back in Gibbon, Neb., before the move, he started driving a high school friend of his to classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. That's when he decided on a whim to take one semester.
He liked it, got good grades and decided to take another semester, this time taking a mechanical drawing class for an engineering degree. But he hated the class, Clark recalled, and decided to opt out of engineering and into something else.
That's when the college of pharmacy came calling, he said. "They grabbed onto me like a rich uncle," he laughed. At the time, the college, located in Lincoln, now on the Omaha campus, was seeking to increase enrollment or risk being shut down, graduating only five the previous year.
He rolled with it and ended up graduating in 1965 with former Nebraska governor, Bob Kerrey, as a classmate. The pharmacist program back then was four years long, then raised to five years and is now a seven year program, Clark said. He became licensed in 1966 after taking the written exam and working an internship for a total of 12 months.
He worked for a time in a drug store in Hastings where he did his internship and picked up the finer points of the business from the pharmacist who owned it.
"He was an excellent role model. I never heard him raise his voice," Clark said. "He explained what it took to be a good pharmacist and how to listen to people."
It was his wife's mother, who lived in McCook, who told him that Prest Drug was looking for another pharmacist. Clark came down for a visit, liked what he saw, and worked for Prest. In January 1968, Warren Farrell came on board as a partner.
Farrell later bought Prest Drug, renamed it Farrell's Pharmacy and Clark stayed there until 1976, when he moved up the street to Walt's Pharmacy, owned by Walt Hosick.
While there, he worked part-time for Community Hospital and in 1979, was hired at the hospital as the head pharmacist until 2014.
But he wasn't done yet. Angie Langan contacted him about working for her a couple times a week at McCook Pharmacy, located in the old A and M Rexall location on Norris, now the site of Tequila's Restaurant.
Nowadays, he works two days a week for Langan at U-Save Pharmacy and is on his third or fourth generation of clients, many of whom he bumps into while shopping at Walmart.
"My wife asks me, 'Is there anyone you don't know?'" Clark said.
That's because being a pharmacist is more than just dispensing medicine, but listening to customers and cultivating a connection, he said, his favorite part of the job.
"I enjoy the relationships with customers, asking about their husbands, their mothers," he said.
"You get to see families grow up." Many times when listening to clients, Clark said he can pick up things that are helpful in their care, such as if they casually mention they're having headaches or other symptoms. "Then you find out they're not taking their blood pressure medication correctly," he chuckled.
Over the years, he did some community service work, serving on the Mid-Plains Community College Board of Governors for 16 years, the McCook School Board for eight years and on the state board of health, representing pharmacists, for six years.
He has nothing but praise for the industry and those in it. "I've worked with some great people and with great area pharmacists," he said.
"There wasn't really any competition between the community pharmacies, he said, as "we're all taking care of people."