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Cloney's Pharmacy, Inc. does business as Cloney's Red
Cross Pharmacy and Cloney's Prescription Pharmacy.
Red Cross Pharmacy has been in operation since 1902, first under
the proprietorship of Wilbur Wells. In 1921 Eugene Cloney became a partner. This was the beginning of a family owned and operated
business (currently in existence for over 84 years)!
In 1939 Eugene became the sole owner. Eugene opened a new store
in the Fuller Building (present Red Cross location) on October 29, 1954.
In 1947, Eugene's son Donald E. Cloney joined
the business.
A second son, Stanley E. Cloney joined in 1955.
On February 3, 1963, a second location was opened,
Cloney's Prescription Pharmacy, on Harrison Avenue.
On February 1, 1985, Donald's son, Patrick joined the business
as a partner. Patrick represents the third generation of Cloneys to operate the business.
On July 1, 1998, Patrick
became the sole owner of both locations.
On July 1, 2002, Cloney's became a corporation.
On January 1, 2004,
Richard Spini became a partner.
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The Way It Was
by Courtney Hunt, 1/17/2006
Cloney’s Pharmacy may not seem like a legend in the history of business in Eureka, but it is.
For more than
a century, Cloney’s Red Cross Pharmacy has provided prescription and medical services to the community.
As one
of the original businesses in Downtown Eureka, Cloney’s has survived more than a century of business in an area that
has seen dramatic changes in the past few decades.
According to longtime owner and pharmacist Don Cloney, the Red
Cross Pharmacy was created by E.W. Wells in 1902 as one of just two pharmacies in Eureka at the time.
Wells and his
son Willard owned and operated the business in the newly constructed Gross building at the corner of Fifth and F streets.
Don’s father, Eugene, joined the pair in 1921.
“The main part of business (in Eureka) was down by Second
Street at that time,” Don said. “They put the drug store in the Gross building to help fill it up.”
Eugene
Cloney shared proprietorship of the business with Willard until his death in 1939. At that point, Eugene became the sole owner
and the business became known as Cloney’s Red Cross Pharmacy.
After graduating from the University of California,
Berkeley, and University of California, San Francisco, as a pharmacist, Don entered the military and served in Europe during
World War II. Upon his return in 1947, Don, who had worked at the pharmacy as a child, took over part of the business and
worked with his father.
At the time, several other pharmacies existed in Eureka, but business continued to grow steadily.
“When
I got out of World War II, there were six drug stores Downtown,” Don said. “In those days, you didn’t have
to operate on big volume like you do nowadays.”
The pharmacy truly became a family business when Stanley Cloney
joined forces with his brother Don after Eugene died in 1954.
From this point on, Cloney’s Pharmacy enjoyed success
during a time when many businesses were experiencing prime retail years in Downtown Eureka.
Though enterprises like
Arthur Johnson’s, Daly’s department store, Hornbrook’s Shoes and other retail stores Downtown prospered during
the second half of the 20th century, business for Cloney’s followed a more steady path.
“Ours was just a
slow, steady increase in business as the years progressed,” Don said. “We didn’t have a lot of ups and downs.
In good times and bad times, people still get sick.”
As business flourished Downtown, the Cloneys started thinking
about expanding their business to new medical developments on Harrison Avenue.
In the first part of the century, hospitals
and other medical offices were centrally located on Trinity and F streets, Don said, but in the late 1950s, the medical community
moved to the newly constructed Harrison Avenue complex.
In 1961, the Cloney brothers opened Cloney’s Pharmacy
across the street from St. Joseph Hospital.
Today, Don’s son Patrick owns both Cloney’s Pharmacy Downtown
and the pharmacy on Harrison Avenue. When his father and uncle, Stanley, retired in the mid-1990s, Patrick took full ownership
of the two pharmacies and has experienced success in both locations as other businesses have come and gone.
Nearby
stores Arthur Johnson’s and Daly’s closed in 1995, while Redwood Bootery remained in business until this year. Other
Downtown businesses slowly closed their doors over the years and now, Cloney’s is one of the last remnants of what used
to be the busiest commercial area of town.
“When I was a kid, Downtown was all there was to Eureka,” Don
said. “They didn’t have Myrtletown or Henderson Center or the hospital center. Those hadn’t developed, and
as they did, the Downtown area kind of diminished.”
Patrick, who began working at the pharmacy after he finished
his residency at UCLA in 1983, agreed with his father, but added that stores that went out of business have been replaced
with others that are doing well now.
“Downtown Eureka is constantly evolving, every city is constantly evolving,
this business is constantly evolving,” Patrick said. “In the last 10 years, there’s been a lot of redevelopment
that’s just helped everything.”
Business Downtown is different now than it was 20 years ago, but there are
a lot of “good things going on,” he added.
As someone who worked during the time when the Downtown area was
burgeoning as a mecca for small businesses, Don believes the area is being revitalized after experiencing a slow decline for
the past couple decades.
“I think that Downtown Eureka is coming back,” he said. “I don’t think
it will ever be the same as it was, but I think it’s coming back.”
When asked where he sees Cloney’s
Pharmacy in the next 10 years, Don said, “Right where it is now.”
Copyright (C)
2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved
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