Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph
The Los Gatos Pharmacy, which has been a fixture in Los Gatos since the early 1920s, recently closed.
Los Gatos embraces warmly its retired pharmacists. Latest to give up his pills, potions and lotions is Alden B. Johnson, who closed his Los Gatos Pharmacy at 151 E. Main St. across High School Court from the school's campus.
In announcing the closing and supervising the removal of fixtures, Johnson said he and his wife, Carolyn, will continue living upstairs at 45 E. Main St., their residence since coming here in 1967, after purchasing the Los Gatos Pharmacy from Clyde Kirkendall and Bill Vowels. The commute from upstairs to work was 32 feet, and after moving the business in 1979 to 151 E. Main, his walk was a mere block and a half.
In retirement, Johnson said, he and his wife plan to become better acquainted with their three sons and three grandsons.
The store's prescription records and patient profiles have been transferred to Thrifty Pharmacy.
Other retired town pharmacists are Fred and Lucia Callis, owners of the historic Green's Pharmacy who now reside at The Terraces of Los Gatos, and Alan L. Beattie Sr. and wife Jean, who are now residents of graceful Alpine Avenue.
Beattie was the last longtime owner of The Corner Drug Store in the La Cañada Building at the corner of Main Street and N. Santa Cruz Avenue.
Ralph Duncan's drug store, which bore the owner's name, was just south of the Los Gatos Theater; it closed with his death in the 1960s.
Los Gatos Pharmacy was founded in the early 1920s, after W. John Whisenant and his wife, Lura Fouts, inherited her father's grocery store at 47 E. Main. Whisenant added a pharmacy and cosmetics department and a soda fountain operated by his wife.
Eventually, Whisenant dropped the grocery side of the business, and the building shown in today's photograph was entirely devoted to the pharmacy and soda fountain, which served light lunches for working people and nearby high-school students. Johnson continued the Kirk and Bill soda fountain service until moving the drug store to its final location at 151 E. Main.
Kirkendall's son Bob continues a family tradition with Bob's Drive-In Pharmacy on Saratoga Avenue.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, October 16, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved