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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 91 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. In 2010 John Backus became a partner.
In July, 2011 a closed door long-term care pharmacy was added.
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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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