Hometown Prescriptions

By RHONDA AGHAMALIAN
For the Mansfield News-Mirror | December 4, 2009
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In a time when corporations seem to have plunked down a Walgreen’s or CVS on every corner, shopping in a pharmacy owned by one of your neighbors seems to have gone the way of eight track tapes and record players—except in Mansfield.

Locally-owned Ray’s Pharmacy, with stores in Mansfield, Arlington, Hamilton and Kennedale, has been in business since 1954, and the small chain continues to take on the big boys with the opening of a fifth store at Canon and Broad streets.

Besides a full-service pharmacy that specializes in the company’s trademark personal service, the new location features a drive-through window and a drugstore stocked with health and beauty aids, gift items and other trinkets.

“My wife Suzanne usually does the gift buying,” Danny Ray said. “She’s done a lot with the front end of this store.”

Suzanne Ray, who began working for the family when she and Danny Ray were high school sweethearts, is also the namesake of Suzy Q’s, an old-fashioned soda fountain and grill housed in the new store.

“I’ve always had a ‘dream drugstore’ in mind,” said owner Danny Ray, who took over the family business from his father, Lee Roy Ray, in the late seventies.

“A lot of independents are getting away from the drugstore side of things, but I think it’s important to keep our identity and that ‘old-time’ feel,” Danny Ray said. “Drugstores started taking out the soda fountains because wages were going up, but I think that keeping them around was actually important to the industry.”

Ray said he views the new store as a legacy of sorts.

“Mansfield has been good to my family, so I wanted to leave behind something that was good,” he said.

Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, Suzy Q’s features menu items like pancakes, burgers and chicken fried steak, as well as shakes and malts, banana splits and ice cream floats served in a frozen mug.

The restaurant’s retro atmosphere is punctuated by a golden oldies soundtrack, a soda fountain counter and wall prints depicting the early days of pharmacy. Drugstore guests can also check out Danny Ray’s pharmacy memorabilia display, which includes items from his father’s early days in the pharmacy business—including a prescription tablet bearing the family names of several contemporary Mansfield residents.

“We celebrated our 50th anniversary five years ago,” said Danny Ray. “At that time and still, we had people who have been doing business with us the entire time.”

Longtime customer Linda Harris said Ray’s Pharmacy helped her and her husband Rex during the early days of their marriage.

“He [Lee Roy Ray] let us charge and that helped us so much,” Harris said. “When we were sick, he would bring the medicine and leave it on our doorstep.

“There are three generations of Harrises who have been customers,” she said. “They’ve been a good store for three generations.”

Lee Roy Ray said going the extra mile for customers was all in a day’s work.

“We built our business on service,” he said. “It wasn’t unusual to get a call at two in the morning or during Thanksgiving dinner and then head over to the store to take care of someone.”

Danny Ray is quick to credit his father with teaching him the business—a pride that is matched by his father’s pleasure in seeing the company grow during his son’s tenure at the helm.

“When I retired, I had two stores, and now he has five, so I think he’s outsmarted me,” he laughed. “I’m real proud of him and I couldn’t be happier.”

The building occupied by the new pharmacy and soda fountain also includes a spacious second floor with floor-to-ceiling windows, which Danny Ray ultimately plans to offer as leased office space. The effort represents Ray’s first venture involving construction, an experience he said he found a bit exhausting.

“It’s funny, now that I think about it—my dad sold out to me shortly after he built a store,” laughed Danny Ray. “Now I see why.”