Bob Heape's great life spanned half-century of pharmacy
Bob Heape, 89. retired pharmacist and owner of the West Side Drug Store, passed away Saturday. His life spanned a half-century of pharmacy in Du Quoin and he championed the work of the Du Quoin Kiwanis, which disbanded in 2009.
In 50 years as a Du Quoin pharmacist, Heape's life was witness to the evolution of pharmacy in Du Quoin. The community acknowledged his lifetime of philanthropy by bestowing its 2006 Outstanding Citizen of the Year award on him.
Heape attended the St. Louis College of Pharmacy after WWII. He worked in a pharmacy in St. Louis for 75-cents an hour while going to school and later signed on with the Brock's Walgreens pharmacy in Du Quoin, where worked for 13 years.
In the late 1960s Heape bought into John Maclin's West Side Drug Store. He later sold his prescription business to the Kroger Pharmacy where he worked for six months before finally retiring in 1998.
He told the newspaper in a 2006 interview: "When I graduated from school, we still mixed and measured the medicine," says Heape. "My class was the last to study roots, bark, leaves and berries. We used that knowledge in the store to flavor our medicines to mask their bitter tastes."
Heape worked during the time when public aid took hold across the nation. When local public aid began, it was located in the building across the street from the post office and it was run by a Mrs. Williams. During that time, Heape's drug store was one of the few pharmacies that took the extra effort needed to help its low-income clientele.
At the time, the pharmacists had to take all the government forms involved in filling a public aid customer's prescriptions and have them signed by the doctor prescribing them. Before the pharmacy could be reimbursed by the government, all these forms were to be signed correctly and mailed in.
Most doctors avoided using the program when it was first instated because the amount of paperwork involved was enormous. Dr. J.W. Stevens was one of the few doctors who worked with public aid patients, and Heape worked with Stevens a great deal.
The billing process became a problem soon after the program began. Reimbursement from the government took a long time.
Although the West Side Drug store never had financial problems in this respect, Heape says "it could have."
"Stores that depended on public aid customers always had a problem" he said, "but we had enough other business to carry us through the waiting period."
Heape did his best to keep the cost of his prescriptions low for his customers by keeping the price of the medicine the same as the amount public aid was paying him for the drugs. "Sometimes I filled prescriptions for as low as 25 cents a bottle," he said.
Later in his career Heape began to question the ethics of his industry as well. "Pharmacy was a good business in its day" he says, "but it lost its joy when I realized that I had to take advantage of the people I was trying to help just to stay in business."
Insurance gives the pharmacists a profit margin in regards to the drugs they sell, but the money from cash customers is imperative in paying the other various costs of running a business.
"That aspect of the business makes me happy I'm out of the industry," he said in the interview.
Heape was the last surviving member of the Du Quoin Kiwanis at the time it disbanded.
The name Kiwanis comes from an Otchpew Indian expression "Nunc Kee-Wanis"--shorted to Kiwanis--and meaning "We build."
Founded May 29, 1969, the 32 charter members of the Du Quoin Kiwanis certainly did that.
At the time it disbanded and donated its $20,000 treasury to the Du Quoin Youth Club, Heape told the newspaper Monday, "We all got old. There are only two or three of us left. I am the only remaining active member," he said.
The Kiwanis gifted tens of thousands of dollars to local charities over the span of its 40 years.
The remaining $20,000 being gifted to the Du Quoin Youth Club was largely the residue from the sale of the old Midwest Dairy, Inc. repair shop the Kiwanis purchased decades ago on East Olive Street.
The Kiwanis attained an enviable record for aiding individuals, organizations and other youth and senior citizen programs.
In short, the club raised money to donate. They sold to buy.
The organization sold brooms and light bulbs year around. They were the very best brooms available anywhere. The Kiwanis also held an annual Peanut Day, the sale of snow-cones and giant coloring books.