While scores of residents, customers and other businesses are looking forward to reveling and praising Bayshore Pharmacy as it celebrates 60 years at Bayshore Shopping Plaza in Atlantic Highlands Saturday, June 8, its founder Richard C. Stryker, is going through notes, letters, photographs, and memorabilia of the more than six decades since he first decided he wanted to be a pharmacist.
For Dick, it all started back in the 1940s when he was a kid in the Atlantic Highlands High School. There were three pharmacies in town at the time, all on First avenue. There was Whalen’s, Antinodies, and Shannon Rexall Pharmacy which was located at 98 First Avenue.
The Rexall pharmacy was the popular one. They had a soda fountain, a cigar display case AND a liquor license. You could get hot lunches at the soda fountain and Jane Logan ice cream.
Anna Hoffmann was the owner of the pharmacy, a friend of the Strykers and unique as one of the very few female pharmacists at the time. So Dick wanted a job summers and weekends during the school year and applied to Anna for a job. She hired him, at first to help out with the window displays; then he had to keep the humidor moist for the cigars, and he also had to work at the fountain, all of which interested him.
But Dick found out he was also most fascinated by the pharmaceutical compounds, and the prescriptions that were blended and mixed for the five local physicians in the area. Very few medicines were already made during the earlier part of the 20th century, and it was up to the pharmacist and his own mortar and pestle to mix the ingredients to the proper prescription. It enticed Dick. And that’s what led him to making his decision the last year of high school to attend St. John’s University in New York and go to their pharmacy college.
The next four years meant daily commutes to Brooklyn from Atlantic Highlands, starting with the train, then the ferry, and finally the subway to college.
But it resulted in a degree in pharmacy followed by a year interning in the field at Lloyd Pharmacy in East Keansburg.
Once he had his license, Dick was inducted into the army and spent the next two years at Fifth Army Medical Headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.
By 1957, and married for five years, Dick had the opportunity purchase Modern Pharmacy on Carr Avenue in Keansburg. He spent a lot of time working with doctors, other pharmacies and hiring his own help for his store. Because of his own experience, he always sought out local youth and as it happened, many of them worked through their high school and college years and some still stop in to see him today, all with their own stories of how Dick Stryker impacted their lives and careers.
Three years after the East Keansburg pharmacy purchase, Dick had the opportunity to also buy the Sea Bright Pharmacy at 1090 Ocean Avenue, where Mr. Goldberg had his business. Shortly after, when the First Avenue pharmacies were closing in his own town, Dick achieved his ambition to open his own pharmacy in his own hometown.
It was also a time when the shopping center had just been built and the Food town was the focal point. There was a 20 by 80-foot store adjacent that Dick was able to lease. And Bayshore Pharmacy opened its doors.
With Dick and Pat, his wife whom he met on the train when both traveled to New York, married and raising four children, Dick opted to step down from the workload of the three pharmacies and devote his time to Bayshore. That was a wise move for family and business and made even better some years later when Pat’s brother, Joe McDonald, formed a partnership with Dick in a business that continued until Dick’s retirement.
Even in retirement, Dick kept Bayshore local. He sold his interest in the partnership to Scott Eagelton who had been a long-time employee.
When Joe retired a few years later, he sold his share to his nephew, Dick’s son, Richard P. Stryker. Rich, like his dad, had gone to pharmaceutical college, earned his degree and was in the family business. With Scott retiring several years ago, it’s Rich the son who owns the business started by his dad.
The store itself has expanded twice in its 60 years, the first time when Foodtown needed more room and spread further, then five years later, when Foodtown again expanded, and the pharmacy moved to the other side of the building to its present location.
But the senior Stryker’s memoires go back to the early days where there were no prepared medications, no antibiotics, just Sulfa drugs. Where each doctor had his own formula Dick compounded for the patients, where there were no insurance papers to worry about, where a pharmacist could make the prescription at hand, give it to his the patient and collect the $4 to $5 charge for the prescription, who practically always paid in cash and with a smile and thanks.
The pharmacy changed to keep up with the times, and while that included having to explain to customers what their insurance would and would not cover, it also meant purchasing a computer. In the 1970s, when Bayshore acquired its first one, Dick recalls “it was the size of a telephone booth!” and had to be backed up nightly with 52 discs before he could close.
There were so many satisfying times over the decades, Dick muses, but best was when he was able to tell a customer…they always came to him before going to a doctor…. they should see a doctor since he could sense and recognize a serious illness. Many times, residents came back and thanked him for the referral, saying it saved their lives.
Six decades of memories include seeing how so many of his employees over the years when out to their own successes in their own lives, in fields as diverse as nursing and law enforcement, education, tutors, NCAA referees, CPAs, and even pharmacists.
There have been the four marriages that came about after the couples met and worked together, including one of the funniest memories Dick has.
That was when a young lady who was eloping with her boyfriend and planned to be married. Dick was also the Mayor of Atlantic Highlands and was going to marry them. But he couldn’t close the store. So, the couple simply went up and got married at the pharmacy. Dick laughs when explaining it was truly a candle lit ceremony, too. It was the same when the lumber yard burned down.
There was also an armed robbery attempt, at gunpoint. The thief got away, only to have an accident getting on to the highway. He was captured, charged, tried and sentenced. No harm done at the pharmacy.
Looking back, Dick now says it was in those years he felt, and still feels, “the time of the local pharmacy is almost over. Residents will no longer have someone who they can confide in and get treatment and advice. The insurance industry who owns pharmacies is making it most difficult to survive.” But he adds grimly, “I hope not. As I look back, many memories and good times are all due to my career in pharmacy.”
Couple that with celebrating a 72nd wedding anniversary with Pat this year, raising four children and the dedication of all of them. Dick sits back, smiles and admits, “ without all of that, all those good times at the pharmacy “never could have happened.”
