Brementowne Was 'More Than Just a Drug Store'

For Inge Hickey, an entire community now ceases to exist.

Today marks one week since , 7545 West 159th St., shuttered its doors and windows. The longstanding pharmacy accepted its last prescription on May 25 and officially closed June 10. It had opened in 1972 and Hickey, who worked there for 36 years, said it was more than just a drug store.

"When the store closed, a piece of history also closed because you will never ever have that rapport again," the 69-year-old said. "The customers were on a first-name basis with all of us. People would come in and share their problems with the pharmacists and they took time like they were family. It was a community. It was not a store."

Brementowne not only had medicine, but gifts, cards, stamps and other convenience items. Hickey called it a "department store without all the clothes." But Paul Rozewicki, one of its two owners, said it just couldn't compete with differential pricing in the prescription drug market.

"When we were looking at the numbers, I was surprised we lasted as long as we did," said Rozewicki, 53. "There are no answers for this. I only have questions. … The majority of my business was determined by third party."

The typical pharmaceutical product comes with about five different price tags, depending on who is buying it, he said. He credited most of the Brementowne's loss in business to mail-order prescription companies that can buy the same drug Rozewicki did for less than half the price.

Those same companies — often part of health insurance policies for employees of major businesses — then require their customers to have their drugs shipped to them in the mail. Taking a prescription to Rozewicki was no longer an option for a lot of his most loyal customers.

"Employers, they go to these companies and they say, 'What is the cheapest way I can do this?'" he said. "Of course, they say 'mail order.' Why this differential pricing goes on, I have no idea. But I'm out of business because of it."

The pharmacy original opened in 1972 but was taken over by Rozewicki and his business partner, John Mascarello, in 1988. The two attended pharmaceutical school together, he said.

The past week has been spent tying up loose ends, like selling shelving and donating merchandise to local organizations. Much of the stock has gone to Orland Park Christian Church and cards were given to Oak Forest Rotary Club. A portion of the donations will even make it as far as Honduras, where an orphanage is in need of school supplies, Rozewicki said.

"Whatever I can donate, I will," he said. "I'd much rather donate it than sell it for pennies."

Despite the fact that the doors have closed, there is still a lot of work to be done.

"You can't just close a pharmacy," he said. "It's not like another business where you can just walk away. A pharmacy has records and refills and narcotics."

Rozewicki has made a mutual agreement with , which will absorb his records and prescriptions. It's made the transition easier, he said.

Well, as easy as it can be.

"It's really sad," Rozewicki  said. "… In our day, we sold a lot of cards. But even that business had dropped off because there are so many other places to get that up and down 159th and Harlem … and then with being independent, companies really don't pay attention to you anymore. It's the big chain that they go in and service. … We're not marketing people, we're not accountants. We're just pharmacists trying to make a living. Eventually, everything just caught up to us."

He said he used to get customers in all the time who had returned to the area after leaving for 15 or 20 years.

"They'd be talking to their kids telling them how when they were a kid, the used to come to Brementowne," he said.

It's those types of stories Hickey said she'll miss the most. She was near tears Wednesday discussing memories from the store that she will hold onto forever, including the fact that all five of her children once held a job there.

She said that never once in all those years did she say to herself, "Ugh, I don't want to go to work today."

"In the end, all of the prescriptions were taken away from us," she said. "It's the insurance companies and corporate America that gobbled up the little guy. … That was our community. That was our gathering place. Every single day the people came in and we laughed together and we cried together."

She wishes she could do that now, she said, but felt comforted the other day when Rozewicki gave her a call.

"He said, 'Well Inge, at least we had a wonderful time,'" she said. "And we did. We had such a wonderful time."