Thursday, February 28, 2013

The End of an Era


Watermont Pharmacy is closing. After serving the community for fifty two years, the family owned business has fallen victim to a changing health care marketplace.

I feel at least partially to blame. When we first moved to this Ellicott City neighborhood in 2006, I began getting my prescriptions filled at Watermont. By then the pharmacy was being run by Jodi (Dagold) Lare, the daughter of the original pharmacist, Donald Dagold. The pharmacy provided the kind of personal service you’d expect from local owners, including home delivery.

Over time however, as my health plan changed and I had to shoulder more of my own medication costs, I switched to an online pharmacy reducing my costs by a third. Undoubtedly this was true with other of their former customers as well.

The store reminded me of pharmacies I knew growing up, when they typically included a soda fountain. Though the soda jerks are now long gone, the counter and stools remained as reminders of another era.

The name Watermont was coined by combining the names of the crossroads where the store was located, Waterloo and Montgomery
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