The building dates back to Civil War times. Ankeney remembers another business there, the Kress House Hotel and Restaurant.
“There used to be a lantern thing upstairs that had blue and red glass in it,” he said. He remembers also the old wood floors, covered several times by linoleum tile.
“There’s beams down the basement, old beams that you can’t drive a nail through hardly. It’d bend before you got the nail in,” he laughs.
Ankeney, now 91, was born in the log cabin that now houses Fairpoint Communications, Germantown’s telephone supplier.
Graduating from Germantown High School in 1936, Ankeney attended college at the University of Cincinnati and became a pharmacist. Then he was drafted into the Army in WWII.
His pharmaceutical skills placed him in an historic position. He once dispensed prescriptions to General Dwight Eisenhower.
After the war, Ankeney was working at a Cincinnati drug store when his father, who ran a small grocery store in the building across from library park, had a heart attack.
Ankeney came to Miamisburg in 1947 and ran the business until he retired in 1977.
He can still name prescriptions like it was yesterday.
Most popular, even then, were blood pressure meds and antihistamines.
His only local competition was Philhower’s (he attended college with Earl Philhower) and Reeds in West Carrollton.
But times have changed. “You couldn’t compete now,” he said.
Ankeney had a soda fountain, and he made his own ice cream, often freezing it in paper cones that were ready to sell. He sold Coca-Cola, too. “It was five cents for five ounces,” he said.
He sold also hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries, popular with Miamisburg High School students, then only a block away on Sixth Street.
He remembers selling cigars and cigarettes. The store had a small deli.
His wife, Barbara, who died in 2007, helped as did his two sons, Ed, now 65, and Mike, 60. The family lived at the rear of the business.
“It was a family affair,” Ankeney said.
One memory of rainy and snowy days sticks in his mind. “Kids would come out of that park like a thundering herd, mud flying all over. The place was a wreck!” he chuckled.
“I had to mop twice to get all the mud up.”
Even after nine decades of life, Ankeney maintains a ready smile and is happy with his life. He said he’s always welcome by his sons. “I go with the kids,” he said. “I hop in.”
“Eddie and Mike are good to me.”
And even though he has a doctor appointment or two to contend with, he does not use his own expertise when they give advice.
“I usually take their word for it. I don’t question them,” he said.
Could he slip back into his spot behind the pharmacy counter again?
“It’s changed quite a bit,” he admits. “It’d be hard, but I think I could do it.”
Contact this columnist at (937) 696-2080 or williamgschmidt@
verizon.net.
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