Editor’s Note: Hyam Eglash, longtime proprietor and pharmacist of the Oriental Pharmacy, passed away Feb. 11. Writer Brenda W. Quinn worked at the East Side landmark for nearly a decade.
He looks almost exactly the same.
The straight hair is a bit whiter, and the determined gait just a tad slower, but Hyam Eglash, R. Ph., looks very like he did 20 years ago, when the Oriental Pharmacy was still open on the corner of Farwell and North Avenues.
He and I met for coffee on a beautiful fall day in 2015 and talked about many things, including the late great Oriental Pharmacy. Eglash owned and operated the business for 28 years. I had worked there for nearly 10 years, but never knew most of its early history. Here are some of the stories he told me.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
1. The Oriental Pharmacy almost didn’t make it.
When Hy Eglash opened his small independent pharmacy in 1967, it was on such a tight shoestring budget that – according to his accountant – Eglash couldn’t afford to hire a bookkeeper. So the accountant taught Hy’s wife the needed bookkeeping skills, and the family business was born. Eglash is the first to say that without his wife, Sheila, the Oriental Pharmacy would never have been successful.
The timing on the new enterprise wasn’t great for another reason: The Oriental opened just a couple of months before the Milwaukee race riots in July 1967. More than once when the curfew was in effect, Eglash would tell his employees to stay home and he would man the store alone. Eglash lived on the west side at the time, and would leave his pharmacist uniform on because he was invariably stopped by the police barricade near Estabrook Park on his way home.
2. The Oriental Pharmacy was trashed by protestors.
As challenging as 1967 was, 1969 brought another type of unrest to Milwaukee. During the summer of 1969, at the height of the Vietnam war, protesters would regularly congregate at the water tower park near St. Mary’s Hospital. Police would break up the assembly when the 10 p.m. curfew arrived.
The protesters then marched west on North Avenue, breaking huge panes of glass, ultimately smashing all the business windows on Farwell Avenue. Eglash called a service to replace his store windows that very night.
3. The vandals who trashed the Oriental were from out of town, and East side neighbors tried to make up for it by painting a mural over the damage.
The following night, Eglash watched from an employee’s apartment as the destruction was repeated. This time, police arrested three people, two of whom were from Racine.
A couple of days later, a number of customers, neighbors and students came in to speak with Eglash. They felt bad about what had happened, and wanted him to know it wasn’t his customers that had broken the windows. They wanted to decorate the wooden boards that were placed where the windows had been. Eglash agreed and supplied the paint.
The mural stayed up for two months. Then the landlord used the insurance money to put up a brick wall instead of more windows.
4. Hy Eglash thought up “I’m Hooked on Oriental Drugs.”
Sometime during the early1980s, Hy Eglash came up with the slogan. His children had it designed and put on a t-shirt, presenting it to him as a birthday gift. Seeing the shirt gave him an idea: “I realized that this was something my customers would be interested in.”
“I’m Hooked on Oriental Drugs” t-shirts became ubiquitous East side apparel. And though Hy Eglash has no idea how many of them sold throughout the years, he sold about 2,000 during the last two weeks that the Oriental Pharmacy was open.
5. When the Oriental opened, pharmacists weren’t supposed to counsel patients.
“One patient asked me about thyroid medication, and I gave her answers,” Hy Eglash remembers. “The next week I got a call from her doctor, saying any time one of his patients came in, he didn’t want me to advise any of his patients, ever.”
With the advent of the medicare system, however, regulations changed. Pharmacists are now required to consult with patients, and answer questions. Eglash thinks the present way is better, and that it helps patients.
“Many doctors put down ‘take as directed,’” he says, but patients “were not properly directed, or forgot.”
6. No one ever held up the Oriental Pharmacy with a gun… because of the soda fountain.
I always thought the Oriental was lucky enough not to be robbed at gunpoint – as many other East side establishments were – because its neighbors held the business and its owner in such good esteem. Eglash, however, attributes his good fortune to the customers at the fountain, who would have been witnesses to such an incident.
When Hy Eglash began his career working at a Walgreens while in high school, every pharmacy and corner drugstore had a soda fountain. What the other businesses eliminated over the years later became the Oriental’s biggest drawing card.
The counter was the place to meet. You could drop off a prescription, have a cup of coffee, mix with the breakfast crowd.
“It was packed on the holidays,” recalls Eglash.
7. There was only one strong-arm robbery at the Oriental. It took place on a Christmas Eve, and the perpetrators were caught and convicted.
It was Christmas Eve, about 9 at night when the young men came in. One bought a pack of gum, and when the cashier – Eglash’s daughter Anne – opened the register to make change, he immobilized her with one hand and scooped money out with the other. She screamed, and the chase was on.
While employees ran out of the store yelling about the theft, a passerby watched three young men get into a Cadillac, and took down the license plate number. The police were called.
Fifteen minutes later, a squad car drove up with the three suspects inside, and they were identified as such. Eglash later testified at the trial.
8. There was a wedding at the Oriental lunch counter.
Employee Monika Schatzman was married there one Saturday morning during the 1990s. The restaurant was reserved for the reception, and bells were hung from the light fixtures. A clergyman officiated, and many employees were there.
The “wonderful mix of people” on Milwaukee’s East side kept Hy Eglash dispensing medications and advice one day a week at the CVS Pharmacy on Farwell until he was in his 80s. Pharmacists are required to take continuing education credits, so he continued to learn and keep up with treatment changes.
The Oriental Pharmacy has been closed for 20 years. Hy Eglash doesn’t miss the 12 hour work days, but he has no regrets about the 28 years he owned and operated that place where so many Eastsiders met.
“I looked forward to going to the store every day,” he says. “There was always something new and interesting going on.”
