Philadelphia Pharmacist Russell Friedman ’68
keeps an independent streak going
By Sherri Kimmel
His word processor is a manual Underwood that looks like a prop from
The Front Page. His hard drive is a filing cabinet. And instead of the fluorescent
lights, blaring red signs and product-packed aisles of the typical pharmacy, his is modeled
after an 1880s apothecary, accented with ferns, huge Chinese jars and a hand-painted
mural by a noted artist.
Nor does our pharmacist resemble the usual pill-pounding whirlwind
behind the counter. If you walk past the large glass windows of the Barclay Pharmacy,
several paces from Philadelphia’s
elegant Rittenhouse Square, you’re likely to see Russell Friedman ’68,
not behind the platform where he plies his trade, but sitting by the front counter,
his frizzy hair a corona above blue eyes scanning a copy of The
New Yorker. Classical
music wraps comfortingly around him, and his shepherd/retriever mix, Jake, reclines
beside him.
Friedman is a third-generation independent pharmacist, running the business
his father, Bernard, began in 1939. The 150-year-old building has been in the family
since 1959. Like his father, Russell specializes in dermatological compounds, hand
prepared in his tiny lab in Wedgwood mortars and pestles. Dermatologists from around
the nation order them by mail, but he also fills walk-in prescriptions like any other
pharmacist.
This is not a man under pressure. “I spend half my time here reading
the paper and magazines. I’m a Luddite. I don’t have a computer,” he
explains.
Friedman, who has no employees, works weekdays 10 to 6—no weekends,
with fairly frequent European vacations folded in. He just puts a note on the front
door three months in advance, letting customers know when he’ll be gone, so
they’ll get their prescriptions
filled in advance. He also avoids the stress of dealing with insurance companies
by simply asking for payment up front, though he often helps customers submit forms
for reimbursement and makes calls on their behalf.
“People who don’t want
to put up with it go somewhere else,” he states
succinctly. “I do a lot less business, but what I do is a lot more profitable.
If the ingredients cost $100 and I bill out $104 and have to wait six to eight weeks
to get [reimbursed], then I have to do a tremendous volume.”
He explains that
a prescription may take 40 minutes to prepare. “If I make $4 per
prescription, then I have to knock one out every three to four minutes. That’s
20 to 30 prescriptions an hour.”
This, he says, is why when you fill a prescription
your pharmacist appears to be so grouchy. And it’s also why mistakes occur,
often at the hands of an unskilled assistant.
“Because I’m the only person
here, not only do I fill the prescription, but I come out and tell you how to take
it. I know what else you’re taking and know
if there will be a conflict.”
Conflict is the last thing you contemplate when
you visit the Barclay. Friedman’s
glass display cases are filled with soothing relics of the past—brushes and
combs with the patina of the 1950s, feminine products that seem holdovers from grandma’s
reproductive days, greeting cards that can be had for pennies. The walls are Wedgwood
blue, as is the smock that Friedman wears. He livens it up with a brightly hued tie.
The mural which his father commissioned from artist Kenton Warne Hudson depicts 48
plants from which drugs are made, and in the back, where Friedman keeps customer
records on white index cards, are bottles with art-deco lettering reading “Caffeine,” “Amonii
Citra” and
so forth.
Both of Friedman’s uncles and his grandfather were Philadelphia pharmacists.
He ticks off the number of Rittenhouse Square–area pharmacies in the 1950s—“one
at 15th and Spruce, two at 18th and Walnut, one at 18th and Chestnut, one at 17th
and Pine ...” He stops at 20. “Now there are three in the area.”
The
Barclay, at 18th and Spruce, is close enough to his home that he can put a note on
the door and nip out to meet the plumber. He’s lived in his 1850s-era house
since 1976, when he bought it from broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell, wife of
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. When he heard that she’d landed a
big job in Washington, after making her name in Philadelphia, he rang her up and
said, “Please show me your
house. I’d like you to sell it to me.” He’d never been inside.
“I’ve
lived here all my life and knew the houses in the area. The location was perfect.”
The
pharmacy profession certainly was not his idea of perfection when he was young. Friedman
majored in English at Dickinson, worked at a bank for a few years after graduation,
then “finally
dealt with my demons about my father. I decided I could go into the field.”
His
lack of science aptitude wasn’t a problem. “Pharmacy has nothing to do
with chemistry. Mostly, it’s count and pour. It’s closer to cooking than
chemistry.”
Pharmacy today, he says, is “still a very good field, but
not as good today. Managed health care has destroyed most of the medical profession.”
When
asked if he has any plans to retire he says, “I have no need to retire, as
long as the area stays safe. I don’t work that hard.”
