Bob Clark's holds half-century of memories

Havelock didn't need a mall as long as it had had Bob Clark's Pharmacy.

In its heyday, the drugstore and soda shop on West Main Street was the place to be and be seen, a meeting place for old salts and teenagers alike.

"This was the hub of all the world's problems," said Joe Hailey, a longtime customer. "Politics, sports - everything was discussed at the coffee table there. It was the only variety store between New Bern and Morehead City. The old saying used to be, ‘If you can't find it at Bob Clark's, you don't need it.'"

The city's oldest known business, Bob Clark's is closing next month after 51 years of selling smiles and stories. Steve Clark, the owner and son of founder Bob Clark, died of cancer on Feb. 15.

Hailey, a close friend of the late Clark, said the store's legacy will be its owners' generosity and compassion toward customers.

"People still come in today, 25 years later, and say ‘Mr. Clark helped me out when I was a young Marine and gave me medicine," Hailey said.

With just $450 in his pocket, Bob Clark opened his pharmacy in 1957, renting space in the Commercial Shopping Center across from Havelock City Park. He had worked with his brother, George, at his New Bern drugstore and wanted to go into business for himself.

Clark moved the store to its current location in 1963. The building had previously housed Branch's 5-and-10 and had a soda fountain already installed.

In the following years, Bob Clark's Pharmacy became the epicenter of community life.

"Although the merchandise has moved into the next centuries, the concept has stayed right in the 1950s," Hailey said. "Everyone just comes here and hangs out. It's a gathering place."

Eva Sermons, Havelock's longest-serving city commissioner who left the board last year, said the store was known for coffee and conversation.

"Bob would love for you to sit down and talk," she said. "At one time, there was a regular little bunch who would come up there and have coffee and share the news with Bob and Steve."

Sermons' son, Henry Jr., learned an important lesson after taking a plastic model airplane he found on the floor at Bob Clark's when he was about 6. He was taught not to take others' property and returned the airplane to Clark.

"We went back in, and Bob said, ‘Son, you did the right thing by bringing it back in here, and I appreciate it,'" Sermons said.

The business was always more than a pharmacy and soda shop. Bob Clark's sold gift items, handmade crafts, coffee mugs, holiday decorations, greeting cards and nearly anything else imaginable. But Sermons remembers the store for its personal service.

"Before the days of Eckerd and Walgreens and CVS, Bob would deliver prescriptions to all the elderly people in town," Sermons said. "He would send Steve right out to take it to them. That's unheard of anymore."

Steve Clark had begun working with his father in 1975. The store stopped selling food in the mid-1990s, and the pharmacy was phased out around 2000.

Gail Clark, Steve Clark's widow, said the father-and-son shopkeepers prized their role as Havelock's largest variety store.

"They did a lot of good for people," she said. "They helped a lot of people, and those people stayed loyal to the store for many years."

Everything in the store is on sale at half-price, and Gail Clark said she hopes to sell as much of the merchandise as possible before the doors close in late April.

"We appreciate the friendship and support of our customers over the years," she said. "They will be greatly missed."

She plans to rent the 12,000 square-foot building and is currently seeking a tenant, but she said she wouldn't rule out reviving the store's rich tradition someday.

"I would like to do something nice for my husband," she said. "‘Clark's' would definitely be in the name."