Eighty-five years ago, in the middle of America’s Great Depression, a young man by the name of Jules Terry opened a drug store on Bloomfield Avenue in Verona. He worked there for five decades, often alongside his wife and sons. His brothers would open Terry’s Drug Stores in other towns. Along the way, Terry’s small Verona store would get quite a bit bigger and pioneer several changes in retail pharmacy and healthcare services.
The Terry family sold their store to Les Gwyn-Williams 35 years ago, and it remained a staple in the center of Verona for all those years. But its run of service to the Verona community will come to an end soon: Terry’s Family Pharmacy sold its prescription business to Walgreen’s in June and put its gifts, toys, accessories and apparel on clearance. So take a few minutes to take a look back at a business that defined Verona for generations.
Terry’s first store in Verona was a few doors east of its current location, and far smaller. By the time Jules’ son Gene graduated from college, the business had moved to its current site and expanded into the storefront next door. Terry’s was winning accolades for its business and many awards for its pharmacy displays, and other businesses were taking note: Terry’s was one of the first drug stores in the entire country to carry Estee Lauder cosmetics.
“We were known for that,” says Gene Terry, who now lives in Florida where he is helping to expand his wife’s luxury travel business. “We had six cosmeticians working for us and Estee Lauder company reps would come in and do makeup sessions.”
That was the part of Terry’s that many Verona residents saw when they filled their prescriptions there. But there was much more. Terry’s struck partnerships with eight nursing homes in our area to be their exclusive pharmacy supplier. It became the in-house pharmacy at Montclair Community Hospital, which once existed on Harrison Avenue. (Full disclosure: This reporter’s life was saved by Terry’s, which donated all the medicines I needed during a severe childhood illness that was treated at Montclair Community.)
Gene Terry also started a surgical supply department, home delivery, house charge cards (“before credit cards were a thing”) and added a Christmas gift catalog to grow Terry’s gift department. At its height, the catalog was mailed to 2 million homes across America. And at the height of gift-giving season, every member of the Terry family pitched in to wrap, often until late in the evening. “I was called out on Christmas Eve,” Gene Terry recalls, “because a client didn’t have toy batteries. I went back and opened the store to get the batteries and deliver them.”
Jules Terry also became one of the linchpins of the Verona business community, serving on the original Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club, and advising the Verona Board of Health. “He was a dynamite guy,” says Gene Terry.
But Gene Terry, who also pioneered an intravenous drug compounding business that became the foundation for a national company, knows that the world of pharmacy now is much different that the one he grew up in. “CVS and Walgreens dominate the business,” he says, “when one opens, another one opens across the street. The fact that Terry’s survived this long as an independent pharmacy is legend.”
There won’t be a Terry’s Drug Store on Bloomfield Avenue the next time that Gene Terry comes up from Boca Raton. But he notes that there is still Lakeside Deli, which he once regularly called on for catered Sloppy Joe lunches. “We don’t have those in Florida.”
It has taken a long time for me to respond to this article because it is a subject so dear to me and so sad. Thank you Virginia for this snapshot of a town icon. I miss Terrys as much as anyone and it was with a terrible feeling that I had to close it. I carried the torch for 36 years but the pharmacy world changed and it was no longer feasible to operate a 5000 sq ft store on the margins the insurance companies allowed us. Many, many kids worked at Terrys over the years on their way to careers all over the world. I hope that their employment gave them something to remember and value.
Nothing in my retired life has come close to filling the vacuum created since leaving Terrys. The store lasted a long time but everything changes and with new generations values change. Different models of business will step in to become the new icons of the town. All we can do is accept and change with them. For me, the memories are sweet and will never fade away.
I remember my Uncle, the dentist Dr, William Freedman being great friends with the Terry folks. Hearing him always talk about a “Bud” Terry. Dr. Freedman’s father, my grandfather Barney, owned the old Freidman’s Deli on Bloomfield Ave. and they all lived upstairs of it early on. I think maybe Lakeside Deli must be the old Friedman’s? Love to hear any mentions…Patricia Dumas, ps dumas at comcast dot net .