Photo by RR Best
Old fashioned soda fountain drinks and sundaes are among the attractions that remain at Dicks Pharmacy. From left: regular customer Patti Grant and Dicks Pharmacy owner Cindi Reed prepare to enjoy a hand dipped shake and green river from server Cheryl Grove.

•January 27, 2016•

By Nick Fiala
For the News Progress

Dicks Pharmacy, a well-known establishment on Vine Street in Arthur, recently came under the ownership of Cindi Reed, who owns the Oakwood Apothecary here in Sullivan. It’s part of an expansion of her business, Reed Pharmacies,LLC.

“We closed on it November 2.” Reed said. “In June of last year, I got wind that Dicks was on the market again. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in Arthur, but I knew of the pharmacy. We decided to expand Reed Pharmacies and Oakwood Apothecary and purchase Dicks Pharmacy under it.”

The decision requires a busy work schedule in order to make sure the transition is smooth for the pharmacy’s regular customers who come from all around the area.

“Dicks is really uniquely-situated, because we provide the pharmacy services in Arthur and a wide delivery radius of patients who need them,” Reed said. We’re able to provide those services to a lot of rural areas that are otherwise underserved.”

Reed’s decision was made largely out of a love for small towns and a desire to see local businesses remain free from the obstacles that come with large corporate chains.

“I was born and raised in Sullivan,” she said. “My family owns Reed Funeral Home. I went to pharmacy school in  St. Louis at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, graduated in 2008 and did almost five years at Sarah Bush in Mattoon as a clinical pharmacist. And then I heard that Hagen’s Pharmacy was going to sell to CVS Pharmacy, and I decided that I didn’t really want to see that happen which is when I decided to open the Oakwood Apothecary in 2012 from scratch.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.