One of Aberdeen's oldest businesses is closing its doors. Jewett Drug was family owned for more than a hundred years. San Francisco-based McKesson bought it a year and a half ago and has decided to close it at the end of the month.
You could almost call it a member of Harvey Jewett's family.
"My kids, all of our family, everybody's worked there, my wife, everybody's worked at Jewett Drug," Jewett said.
Only, this member's been around since 1883. And aside from some memorabilia sitting in his office, Jewett Drug won't be around very much longer.
"It wasn't the world's biggest shock, but I was just saddened to hear it. It was like the passing of an old friend," Jewett said.
He was the last in a line of Jewett's to own the company. A picture of all of his predecessors hangs on his wall. There was a great-grandfather who came to the Hub City in 1881, a grandfather and father who both returned from war to run the place, and then himself, the only one still around to see it go.
"I just kind of wander around here and wonder what my great-grandfather and grandfather and father think about all this," Jewett said.
And what would they think about this report from September 2005:
A new company now owns Aberdeen's Jewett Drug Co.
In 1999, D&K Healthcare Resources of St. Louis purchased Jewett Drug from Harvey Jewett IV of Aberdeen. Now, health care giant McKesson Corp., based in San Francisco, has acquired D&K.
Jewett said the transaction shouldn't impact the Aberdeen business, which is a pharmaceutical distribution center with a mail-order pharmacy program. Jewett Drug will remain open and maintain between 40 and 50 employees as it does now, Jewett said. He said he now has no formal relationship with McKesson, but will make sure Jewett Drug and its employees won't be hurt by the transaction.
Less than two years later, Jewett drug closes and the employess are without a job. And here is the details of the 1999 sale:
D&K Healthcare Resources said it has completed its acquisition of privately held Jewett Drug Co. Harvey Jewett IV, the sole stockholder of Jewett Drug, received $34 million in a combination of cash and D&K common stock, and he is expected to join the D&K board of directors. Jewett Drug, based in Aberdeen, S.D., provides pharmaceutical distribution services to more than 250 outlets and to a mail-order pharmacy program owned by CIGNA.
At least Harvey came out of it smelling like a rose. I would hope that Cory Heidelberger would agree that a wealthy man running South Dakota's Higher Ed, controlling millions at Great Plains Education Foundation, and providing thousands of campaign dollars to Governor Round qualifies as plutocracy?
Now Harvey Jewett wants South Dakota taxpayers to pony up and invest millions of dollars into his Higher Ed empire in a plan to provide "economic development". Time for the "quiet taxpayers" to speak up.
