Cornelius Means
The Shelbyville Republican
Monday August 18, 1947
Page 3 column 3
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CONRAD SCHROEDER
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(Picture)
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The somewhat unusual experience of training a youth, quite a few years ago,
the drug store business and then ending a 50-year career in the business with
that same "youth" as his "boss" is one chalked up by Conrad
Schroeder, of 509 South Tompkins Street.
Mr. Schroeder remembers, as he relaxes with an open collar on the cool porch
at his home, that Ralph Worland, by whom he was employed from about 1933
until his retirement a little over a year ago, came to work for him when just a
lad and worked for a long while before and after school. Doing the same things
that boys do now on part-time drug store jobs, sweeping out, arranging stock and
in general learning the business from the ground up.
Long a familiar figure behind the counter at the Worland Pharmacy,
soft-spoken "Cooney," as he is known to hundreds of people, looks back
on his years as a druggist with a great deal of satisfaction. But he maintains
that the drug store business itself hasn’t changed much with the years. Other
than new articles which are discovered and put on the market from time to time,
people pretty much ask for the same things year after year-and the crowds of
young people coming in after school and the nightly shows and those dropping in
for a "coke" over which to exchange the latest bit of gossip or
discuss current problems haven’t changed much either.
Mr. Schroeder was born in Shelbyville and after graduating from high school
here went to Purdue where he graduated from the School of Pharmacy in 1894.
There were 31 in his class and so far as he knows 14 of them still are living.
He went back for a class reunion not long ago and since than has been presented
with a gold certificate by the university for 50 years of service as a druggist.
In May, 1896, he went into business in a store located where the Worland
establishment now stands. He and George Ensminger were in partnership and
their place was known as "Ensminger and Schroeder’s." That same
year, in December, he married a home-town girl, Miss Nellie Russell Green,
a sister of Dr. Green who formerly practiced medicine here. After Mr.
Schroeder and Mr. Ensminger had respectively sold their interest to Peter and
Phillip Hoop, he started a store of his own just two doors south of the
present Haag Store. He recalls that there were eight drug stores in town then.
Now there are six. After a few years in that location he moved next door and his
next step was going to work at Worland’s.
He retired on April 6, 1946 and now although Mrs. Schroeder says with a
laugh, he isn’t the best "mechanic" in the world, he putters about
the home doing those odd jobs which need to be done and in general takes life
easy. He’s quite a baseball fan but doesn’t take in many of the games.
"My feet and ankles aren’t what they once were," he says. He likes a
daily afternoon nap (this information also was provided by his wife and their
only child, Mary Jane) and enjoys nothing more that moseying down to the
Elks Club to chin with the "boys." Incidentally, he is a "Charter
Member No. 1" at the club. He was the first man to sign the charter when
the Elks lodge was installed here on December 2, 1898, and is the only living
charter member.
Contributed by Barb Huff
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