BY BILL STERLING, Special to the Eastern Shore Post —
In April of 1975, Tommy Rayfield and his wife, Francie, purchased Nassawadox Pharmacy and opened for the first time the doors of Rayfield’s Pharmacy, retaining the original soda fountain tables from 1913.
They were only the third owner of the pharmacy, following Alan Arnold and then Potter Henderson, who purchased the pharmacy in 1963 after selling Parksley Drug Co. Henderson sold the pharmacy, which was then located where Smiling Dolphin is today, to the Rayfields for less than $20,000 on a handshake.
Now, 50 years later, Rayfield continues to arrive at the pharmacy in the early morning hours seven days a week, and at 84, he has no plans to stop as long as he is physically and mentally capable of filling prescriptions for customers, whom he refers to as a long line of friends.
“Francie passed away almost three years ago,” said Rayfield, sitting in his office one day recently. “I could not have had a more perfect wife and companion. She had Alzheimer’s in her last years, a horrible disease.”
Indeed, Mrs. Rayfield kept the doors open in the early years as Tommy took a position as the hospital pharmacist. A Winchester native who met her husband in pharmacy school at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) in Richmond, she dropped their older son, Severn, 6, off to school that first year, and kept younger son, Berkley, only 3 years old, with her at the drug store until his kindergarten teacher, Clara Ann James, would pick him up. At the end of the school day, James would return Berkley to the drug store, where he would nap until his mother left for home at about 2:30 p.m., when Tommy arrived from the hospital. He kept the pharmacy open until 5:30. Then he would return to the hospital and fill prescriptions that had come in since he had left. He would then go home for a quick dinner and return to open the pharmacy until 9 p.m. because Dr. Edmund Henderson kept evening office hours five days a week.
“Berkley went to kindergarten for three years. We always said he had a Ph.D. in kindergarten,” said Rayfield. “I remember one time he was sleeping so soundly in the back room, Francie left him with me while she went home to make dinner. She wasn’t happy with me when I came home and forgot he was in the back room. I rushed right back and found he was still sleeping.”
Rayfield added, “The hours were long, and we didn’t take a cent out of the store for the first three years, depending on my salary from the hospital.”
Rayfield was also on call 24/7 in the event a nurse needed help finding medications. “It sounds like a grueling schedule, and it was, but what I enjoy about running a small-town pharmacy is that it is like having friends come in all day and visit for a minute,” said Rayfield.
Born at Cobb Station near Cheriton and delivered at home by a family doctor who charged his father $5, Rayfield graduated from Northampton High School in 1959 and went directly to MCV.
He has been surrounded by pharmacists ever since. His late wife was the daughter of a pharmacist whose sister was a pharmacist. Both the Rayfields’ sons became pharmacists, and one is married to a pharmacist, and the other is married to a doctor.
“We had maybe 15 pharmacists in the wedding party when my younger son was married. Our conversations are pretty narrow when we get together. We always say we are a family heavily involved in drugs,” said Rayfield with a laugh.
Rayfield worked at the hospital for 13 years, even after the pharmacy moved to its current Nassawadox location in 1981. Moving with them was Debbie Bridges, a loyal employee who has been with the Rayfields for 48 years.
“When we moved to Hospital Avenue, people were telling me, ‘You are set for life because the hospital is not going anywhere.’ Well, we know how that turned out,” said Rayfield with a smile, adding that the blow that came when the hospital moved to Onley eight years ago was overcome with the support of a loyal customer base.
With sons Severn and Berkley back on the Shore, the family purchased Savage’s Pharmacy in Cape Charles in 1997 and built a larger drugstore in Cape Charles four years later. By this time, Francie Rayfield was working at the county heath department until her retirement.
“People told me we were crazy buying property in a dying town like Cape Charles. I said then Cape Charles may never be a railroad town or a ferry town again, but it could see another heyday. And now with all the shops and restaurants there and a golf resort that came about through the vision of Dickie Foster, it’s a great place to do business.”
Rayfield believes an independent pharmacy can provide service that big chain drug stores cannot. “For a long time, we had a motto that said, ‘You can park 10 feet from the door and get your prescription filled in 10 minutes,” said Rayfield. “Sometimes complications with the insurance don’t allow us to meet that time frame, but it’s something we strive for and usually do.”
Rayfield noted that regulations are also making it tough on independent pharmacies, and too often he is reimbursed less than what he can charge to fill a prescription.
But seven days a week, even on Sundays when he is relieved at 10:30 a.m. by Severn so he can attend church, he will continue to rise early and enter the doors of a pharmacy he and his wife founded 50 years ago this month.
“As long as I am able, I will be here until God retires me,” said Rayfield.
