DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 1997          TAG: 9711190468

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   69 lines

PHARMACIST RETIRES AFTER 37 YEARS OF DISPENSING A PERSONAL TOUCH

For 37 years, prescriptions at Village Drugs in Chuckatuck have come with a dose of heart.

The ingredient popped up often in conversation last week, as Bobby R. Jones sat in the back of his drugstore and watched customers at his retirement sale.

What has he especially enjoyed as village pharmacist?

``Raising my children here. They've always had a place to come.''

And ``serving the older people in this community that didn't have a way to get medicine and didn't have any money.

``My good employees, loyal customers, their families. . . .''

Jones paused to control a quivering bottom lip and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

``I didn't really want to get this way,'' he said.

He didn't really want to come to Chuckatuck, he admitted.

Jones, 67, was born and raised in neighboring Isle of Wight County. He graduated from Smithfield High School and worked for a while because he was uncertain what he wanted to do.

A Smithfield pharmacist suggested that he think about pharmacy school. Jones graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 1953, and returned to Smithfield to work at Simpson's Pharmacy.

Three months later, he was drafted into the Army. Soon after he came home, a drug salesman from Chuckatuck suggested that he open a drugstore in the crossroads village that was barely a speck on Virginia Route 10.

Finding a building that had been a feed and seed store, ``I was told I wouldn't last six months.''

That was in January 1961. The store was one-third the size of what it is today. Jones immediately put in a small lunch counter. He expanded two years later and again in 1968.

From the beginning, Jones catered to his customers.

``If somebody needed a prescription, we'd get it to them,'' he said. ``We put pins in watch bands, did gift wrapping, came down after hours to fill prescriptions. We tried hard not to make them wait.''

Soon, the drugstore and lunch counter, where chili dogs and hamburgers were a speciality, became the village social hub.

``It has never been like a job,'' said Peggy Chapman, who has worked for Jones since he opened. ``Coming to work every day has been like a social event. You get to see all of your friends. It's just a nice place to be.''

About 500 people live today in what is considered the village. Its main street, Virginia Route 125, rambles past a public park, one church, a mixture of historic and ranch-style homes, a hair-styling salon, a doctor's office, a post office and Village Drugs.

Convenience stores, gasoline stations and a commercial nursery make up the rest of the village.

Carolyn Melchor, a Tidewater Community College English professor who lives in the community, immortalized the drugstore in verse. It has always been a place, she said, where you could get anything you needed, ``from birth to death.''

For the past several years, Jones has been trying to sell the business. He can't find in another pharmacist the dedication it takes to run a small, community drugstore.

``If they work for somebody else, they can go home and forget it,'' he said. ``With this, the responsibility is always with them.''

Jones lost his wife in 1983. If she had lived, he said, he might have retired sooner. But now, he's the only member still working in his senior golf group. He likes to travel, and he has a lady friend.

``. . . I'm healthy. I want to enjoy myself,'' he said. ``I feel it's time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

Bobby R. Jones...

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