Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 6, 1994 TAG: 9404060018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RURAL RETREAT LENGTH: Medium
If local lore is to be believed, it also provided the soft drink named for that same physician.
Dr. Charles T. Pepper, born about 1830, was from one of the most prominent families in the New River Valley. He graduated from the University of Virginia Medical School in 1855.
After the Civil War, in which he provided medical help to the Confederacy, Pepper settled in Wythe County and opened the first drug store in a railroad town called Rural Retreat.
He and his wife, the former Isabelle Howe, had three sons and a daughter who was said to be very pretty.
At least Wade Morrison seems to have thought so.
Morrison was the young man Pepper hired as an assistant pharmacist a few years after the store opened. He soon became more interested in Miss Pepper than in pharmacy, but her father discouraged the relationship.
The young couple eventually left town, the story goes, and ended up in Texas, where Morrison opened his own drugstore, complete with a soda fountain.
He came up with several soda drink mixtures, one of which became so popular that he and his druggist, Charles Alderton, decided to mass-market it.
At the daughter's insistence, it was named Dr Pepper in honor of her father.
The details become rather mixed on the origin of the drink itself.
One version is that Morrison tried to develop a tasty soda and name it for Dr. Pepper, hoping that the doctor would then look more kindly on Morrison's relationship with the daughter.
Another is that it was Dr. Pepper himself who had experimented with various soda mixes, just as he concocted prescriptions from roots, herbs, fresh fruits and drugs. In that version, Morrison swiped those soda formulas - including the one that became one of the nation's oldest soft drinks - to serve at his Texas soda fountain.
Depending on which story you believe, the soft drink got its name out of a romantic hope or a guilty conscience.
Today's Dr Pepper executives will not endorse either story. But they never have challenged the sign above the store's entrance at the corner of Main Street and Railroad Avenue proclaiming it the home of the Dr Pepper soft drink.
It is one of the town's oldest businesses. "We used to have a picture of it, taken in 1875. It's been around at least that long," said pharmacist Baynard Barton.
Counts Drug Store in nearby Wytheville has been operating the facility in recent years, in the building owned by Rebecca Heldreth. Now it is closing, and its customers' prescription records will be moved to the Counts pharmacy in Wytheville at 289 W. Main St.
The store's prescription business has remained fairly stable over the years but has not grown, said Dennis Counts, secretary and vice president for the pharmacy, discussing reasons the business is closing.
"That's part of it. The other part is reimbursement from the insurance companies that we are receiving," he said. "That's really the primary reason."
Counts said insurance companies pretty much dictate the amount they will reimburse pharmacies for prescriptions sold, and those reimbursements are getting lower. He predicted that other pharmacies will be down-sizing for the same reason.
This time, the down-sizing is taking one of Wythe County's legends with it.
After the drugstore closes, the building will be occupied by Rural Retreat Florist.
by CNB