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John Motheral -
Three Generations of Evolution in Medicine

On one adventurous afternoon, John's exploration of the five-foot tall metal safe in the financial department was an intriguing escapade for the inquisitive boy until he discovered he was locked inside the small enclosure.

"Fortunately there was about a 25 watt bulb in there that kept me from being absolutely terrified," John smiles in recollection some 60 years later. The dim bulb was little comfort, however, as he heard the voices of women outside his dungeon search frantically for the combination while discussing the limitation of the air supply within.

"I never did it again!" he exclaims. "I didn't have any desire to go in or even look around in there again."

Born on August 8, 1935, the only child of Lendell and Edna Motheral, John's neighborhood included the college campus, the Twin Pools on Stonewall Street, the drug store run by his father and mother located downtown on Cedar Street, Forrest Avenue where his home and many of his friends were located, and Main Street that was a major link between stomping grounds.

"Forrest Avenue," John says dreamily, as if he were raised in Shangri-La.

"Jerry Atkins and I grew up together; we had a great street! It had a lot of kids on it and we had a wonderful time," he says, basking in memories as warm and sweet as a summer day.

"So many things came from that experience on that street," he continues appreciatively.

Sadly, the virtues of living in a small southern town in the first half of the 20th century collided with its limitations when his father took ill at work one day after experiencing pain in his leg.

"He got deathly sick, and we had no hospital here then," explains John, who was 13 year old at the time. "They took him to the Paris clinic, but it moved to his heart and he died that night; it was a blood clot that moved to his heart."

Lendell Motheral died just one year after making his last payment on the former Covington's Drug Store. The pharmacist had spent the last decade gradually purchasing the business from Mr. Covington where he had begun working around 1935, joining his cousin, Jimmy French, in the store as a pharmacy technician.

"They both made pharmacists," relates John, whose mother, who had left Bethel to keep books for her husband around 1942, also became a pharmacy technician.

"I grew up down here, I was here everyday and caused a lot of grief for my parents," says John from the upstairs office at the store that has remained in the family, a grin breaking through his solemn memory. "I didn't think too much about the future until the day he died and it was such a shock to all of us. We were disoriented for quite a while."

In time, as Mr. Covington - who founded the store in 1910 - was growing old, Edna Motheral traveled to the pharmacy school in Memphis to recruit new help for the store. "You go home and sell it as fast as you can. I've never known a woman to be successful in the pharmacy business," the dean of the college advised. She returned home indignant at his response and determined to be a success. When the dean later wrote a letter to the same effect, she used the letter as an impetus toward success.

"When she died, there wasn't much in her lockbox but that letter was in there," her son chuckles lightly, "She'd said, 'I'll show him!' - and she did. She had a great business."

As a youth, John owed his membership in the McKenzie band to his father, who, John says, loved music and as a member of the school board did everything he could to get a band in the McKenzie schools. Mr. Charles Dorn started the McKenzie Band around 1946 after retiring from Huntingdon, recalls John, who in the sixth grade started playing clarinet. As a senior he added the saxophone to his repertoire though he continued playing clarinet throughout his high school career and "thoroughly loved it."

John played the saxophone a member of the "The Jive Five". When the group played in Mussel Shoals, Alabama after winning a talent contest, John says, "We thought we were going to Hollywood."

"The Jive Five" headed for Mussel Shoals after winning a talent contest. Pictured l to r are Morris Stofle, Bobby Joe Newton, Gene Richardson, John Motheral, and R.A. Finley.

Besides music, he enjoyed playing on the McKenzie Rebel basketball team, though, he says. "The girls won every game and the boys lost every game."

With his mother replacing pharmacists every two or three years as young graduates used the small-town store as a stepping stone to other ventures, John set out after high school to follow his father's footsteps as a pharmacist.

At Bethel College for his first year of preparatory work, he met people with whom he'd attended Cumberland Presbyterian summer camps from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Alabama.

"I loved Bethel; it was a wonderful place and I didn't want to leave," he says. At his mother's insistence, however, he left for the University of Tennessee at Memphis the following year and, he admits, "Like a lot of things, it worked out."

"I was there three years and had a wonderful time there, too," he smiles, though he admits the coursework was "very difficult, but it wasn't unbearable. I look back on it with fond memories."

Edna remarried while John was in pharmacy school, adding husband Lloyd Parnell to the family.

"I got out of pharmacy school in June 1957," John relates, grinning, "and I've been here almost every day since; I'm not sure whether I've got the longest tenure of any pharmacist in McKenzie. It's either the longest or probably tied with somebody."

In time, John met Huntingdon girl Jo Ann Bennett, who worked for Dr. Howard Smith, who office was next door to the apartment house owned by John and in which he resided. John was attending classes for extra credit at Bethel, where Jo Ann was also a student in the evening classes. The two married in 1966.

Jo Ann continued working for Dr. Smith a few years before becoming a stay-at-home mom. In the meantime, John and his mother opted to convert their private business to a Super D franchise, a move that influenced Mrs. Motheral to retire from her duties as bookkeeper.

"Super D wanted to do it their way," John explains with a fond chuckle for his mother's "bursar skills."

Jo Ann then assumed her own role in the business as bookkeeper before deciding, around 1978, to go to beauty school. "She took off a year or two and then decided after probably one or two years that wasn't for her," relates John. "Then she came back to do the accounting, bookwork, and all those things pharmacists don't do well. She virtually manages the store; she has the hardest job in the store for sure. Paul and I would both be in a desperate situation without her," he continues, referring to the store's newest family partnership that now includes son Dr. Paul Motheral, who graduated from pharmacy school in 1997.

McKenzie Pharmacist John Motheral and wife Jo Ann with son Dr. Paul Motheral, his wife Suzi (Putman) and children Victoria and Abbey. John's daughter, Rebecca, now lives in Sarasota Florida.

Mrs. Edna continued working for the business until she was nearly 82 years old. "She came every day as long as she could," John says proudly. "She was one of the earliest pharmacy technicians and she loved it."

As the Super D franchise took hold, the store outgrew the confines of the original store and its owners were faced with the decision to move. When the adjoining building became available for sale, however, they opted to remain, expanding their enterprise by cutting an opening between the two.

The addition of a drive in window in 1984 was "one of smartest moves we ever made," declares John. Though many people have questioned his decision to keep the store at its original location, he believes customers are better served at the downtown location which is the first pharmacy available to customers coming from Gleason and the north/west sides of town, as well as being within walking distance of many customers.

Customer service is one of the most important facets of the business to Paul and John, who emphasizes, "There are no dumb questions when it comes to asking about medicine."

"People feel strongly about their medicines and you can't downplay it. Anything that helps people feel better about the medicine they're taking - what it is, why they're taking it, how to take it or what to expect - is going to ultimately lead to their better health. If we don't respect their feelings we're not contributing to their health."

The primary functions of the pharmaceutical trade is to select medicines, store them properly and dispense them properly, John relates. "In the old days they had to smell, taste, and feel," he continues. Today, certain drugs must be refrigerated or stored in special ways, and freshness is a virtue that can't be exchanged for profit. "If you bought a five years supply (at discount) that would be great the first year," he explains, "the other four years, not that great."

The Motherals are thankful for the many interesting employees they've had over the years. "I think everybody in McKenzie has worked here at one time or another," he jokes.

Evolutions in Medicine

John actually witnessed the evolution of medicine from 1942, when he was seven years old. "After World War II there wasn't a whole lot of sophistication in medical science, then all of a sudden things started happening," he says with a note of excitement, citing antibiotics, cortisone and birth control pills among the miracles that transformed medicine and society.

"The birth control pill probably changed more than any single thing I can think of as far as freeing women to work and do other things," he advises, recalling as well the mass polio vaccination program that took place in around 1959.

The entire community was required to report to the McKenzie high school gym in the mandatory effort in which oral vaccine was prepared by pharmacists including John Motheral and was administered by doctors J.T Holmes and E.E. Edwards.

"The line of people went all the way through the gym and out; that was a big step as far as medical evolution is concerned," John says.

Another change that has made a big difference for small town pharmacists is the presence of local hospitals that have relieved the need for after-hour calls for services.

"In the 1960's there was a time when I came up here every night for over two years," says John, who notes as well that the minutes of every meeting of the local school board, of which he was a member, read that he had to leave early due to a call from a customer.

"We still have people talk about me and mother coming out when their child was sick and that they don't know what they would have done without us," he says.

He laughs at other changes the store has gone through with other businesses from a photography studio to beauty shops occupying the upstairs loft and days when he mixed wallpaper paste and supplied veterinarians' needs through the pharmacy.

In addition to his busy work schedule, John's former years were chock full of community leadership. "I was really active for a long time in everything," he notes, "the Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce, Junior Chamber of Commerce, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the School Board, the Bass Club. During the 70's business was getting bigger and better with Super D."

The overload manifested itself in colitis, a disorder that led John to seek out doctors in Paris, Milan, Huntingdon and Martin besides those close at hand.

"They all told me the same thing," he says, "You've got to learn to live with it."

He nevertheless continued in his search for a cure that led him to the emergency room in Huntingdon where he was content with waiting for the first available physician. What that doctor said to him changed his life.

"I'm going to send you home," the doctor began."

"I thought, 'Here it comes,'" John relates sardonically, "He's going to say, 'You've got to learn to live with it.'"

Instead the doctor looked at him and commented, "Some people cry on the inside," then turned and left the room.

In shock, John thought, "That's the strangest thing I've ever heard from a doctor. He's supposed to say you have to learn to live with it."

He ran into the hall and accosted the doctor, "What did you say?" he asked.

The doctor repeated himself and stated further, "I think it is emotional in nature and the quicker you can work on that the quicker you can get well."

John was stunned. He was the only doctor who had ever used the words "get well" in connection with the disorder.

Upon John's insistence, the M.D. referred him to a like-minded internal medicine physician who was able to increase his enlightenment regarding his condition. He first gave John a homework assignment to list all his activities and all his titles in everything he was involved in.

"I worked really hard on that sheet of paper," John relates. When he presented it at his next appointment, the physician said, "This is very impressive. Now I want you to quit every one of these clubs and things except two and I think that will help you."

"I did and things got better - it absolutely got better," John says in amazement. "I was somebody trying to be in everything."

Soon he was pounding a punching bag a few times on his way out the door each morning. As he continued talking with the doctor and making changes in his life, the symptoms of the colitis subsided and eventually disappeared.

With his activities curtailed, Jo Ann picked up a few of her own, and as local chairman of the American Cancer Society co-wrote the book on the Hee-Haw fundraising shows that John says is still in use today.

"They had us come to Chicago for a national convention and present that book," John continues, proud of his wife's accomplishment.

Another activity that went by the wayside during his time of healing was evening stints with local bands as a saxophone player. A necessary sacrifice at the time, two years ago he began practicing once more the love he had left behind 25 years earlier.

"I thought it was impossible but it came back pretty easily, not great, but better than I ever expected," he nods.

John joined fellow musicians Ross Martin, Frank Moore, Mike Kelly and Jerry Powell (Powers?) in the band Smooth Country that plays at Lakeside Retirement Center the second Tuesday of each month and plays at McKenzie Retirement Center the third Thursday with another group of gentlemen.

He and Jo Ann, who have in the past taken trips with the McKenzie Banking Company's travel program to Ireland, Switzerland and New England, among others, recently traveled to Metropolis, Illinois for a Merle Haggard concert and have ventured to Arkansas and other nearly jaunts to her Delbert McClinton and Jerry Reid.

They are also longtime members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in McKenzie.

"It's been an interesting 47 years - it's not dull!" John exclaims with a big smile. "There's nothing dull about our life I'll tell you, but I wouldn't want to swap with anybody else."

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