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 .
