Pharmacy Right Prescription for Williamstown Man
 Photos by Paul Guillotte
Conroy's frequently gone the extra yard for his customers to make sure they're taken care of. |
"I love pharmacy," Conroy said recently. "And I enjoy helping people."
Conroy's love of pharmacy was sparked when he was a teenager. "I was always interested in the sciences, and when I was a high school student, I worked in a drug store," he said. "The pharmacist let me use the mortar and pestle. I liked it. It was fun!"
A native of New York City, Conroy graduated from Fordham Pharmacy College in 1957, then filled his pre-requisite for a pharmacist's license by working in a drug store for several months. Soon after he had earned his license, he went into the Army and served as a medical officer for two years.
Conroy's Army buddies set up a blind date for him with Anne Johnson, a native of Pittsfield who was then a student nurse at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York. It was a good match: Ed and Anne fell in love and, in 1958, they exchanged wedding vows.
While stationed as lieutenant at Loring Air Force Base in Maine, Conroy and his wife traveled to Pittsfield to visit her family in October 1959.
Conroy was reading The Berkshire Eagle when he noticed a help wanted ad. "Phil Hart was looking for a pharmacist," Conroy said these many years later. "And I asked Anne, 'What is Williamstown?'"
Conroy answered the ad and Hart hired him. "Phil waited for me until I was discharged from the Army in March," Conroy said. "Then Anne and I moved to Williamstown on a Saturday, and I went to work on Monday."
At that time, there was a soda fountain in Hart's, and Conroy handpacked containers with Wagger Ice Cream produced in Troy, N.Y. "Cole Porter's chauffeur used to drive in every Friday to buy that ice cream."
Store patrons included well-known and influential people such as the Spragues and the Vanderbilts. But whatever a customer's circumstances, Conroy protected their privacy.
"His ethics are phenomenal. He never brings anything home," said Anne Conroy, referring to the information Conroy is privy to as a pharmacist.
At times that may have caused Anne to be disappointed. For instance, one day she was eager to share good news with her husband so when he came home, she blurted out that a certain woman was expecting a baby.
"Ed didn't say anything, but he wasn't surprised," his wife recalled. She surmised he had been supplying the pregnant woman with pre-natal pills.
In 1970, Phil Hart was ready to retire and sold the business to Conroy. When asked why he did not change the name of the store, Conroy replied, "I never would do that. Phil and I were friends for years, and his father had established the business in the Depression."
"And why change the name?" he continued. "It is a good name people knew and respected."
As owner, Conroy never knew when he would receive a phone call at home that would send him hurrying to the store. "When you enjoy what you are doing, you go the extra yard," he explained.
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"Ed went to the store to meet the man," said Anne.
Conroy has never turned away from people who need his services, such as the local married couple who had just returned home after the wife had been discharged from an out-of-state hospital. "I have to get seven prescriptions filled for her now,” the husband had told Conroy. So again he opened the store in the middle of the night.
Over the years, Conroy hired Mount Greylock Regional High School students to work part-time in the store. A number of them became intrigued with pharmacy, as Conroy had as a teenager. One student, Danny McFarland, stands out in Conroy's memory. "I tried to guide him, hoping it was in the right direction," said Conroy. McFarland did decide to enroll in pharmacy school and achieved his goal of becoming a pharmacist.
Some of those high school students are now in their 40s and stop at Hart's Pharmacy to say "hello" to Conroy. "I like meeting and chatting with people at Hart's and watching the children who come in grow up."
When the Conroys' daughter and two sons were old enough to help out in the store, they knew they would not garner any privileges because they were related to the proprietor. Their father had made it clear that while he "expected 100 percent from everyone else, I expected 125 percent from them."
Conroy "retired" nine years ago and sold the business to the current owner, Steven Wiehl of Pittsfield.
Yet he works at the store 20 or so hours a week, filling prescriptions for regular customers and those tourists who forgot to pack their medicine. And there are still lots of college students who seek Conroy's advice when they are suffering flu symptoms or rashes.
"Every day is a good day," said Conroy, "when you are able to go to work."
