WOODSTOCK — The Woodstock Pharmacy, a fixture in the village since the 19th century, said a recent agreement to sell the 167-year-old business to new local owners fell through but three parties remain interested in buying the business.
After a longtime customer posted on the listserve expressing dismay that the pharmacy would be closing and represented a loss to the community, owner Gary Smith responded that “it has not been sold” and took the poster to task for circulating what he termed “destructive” hear-say on the internet that “can only make a sale more difficult.”
“Anything that does not come from the horse’s mouth (mine) is just rumor,” Smith said via email on Thursday. “Fact is what is important … When the Pharmacy is sold, you will hear from me about the sale and relevant details.”
Smith, who has owned the pharmacy for more than 45 years but has had it up for sale for several years, noted “the future of the Woodstock Pharmacy is unknown” but added “we will continue to meet the needs of the community.”
Jireh Billings, whose family has run the F.H. Gillingham & Sons general store in the heart of the village since 1886, said the Woodstock Pharmacy, like Gillingham’s, have been defining businesses in the historic community for more than a century and provide a respite from homogenized chain stores.
The pharmacy chain Rite Aid tried to open a store in Woodstock several years ago but the “zoning board and town fathers” successfully fended it off, he said.
Billings said he has indelible memories of going into the store when he was a kid with his brother Frank Billings and sitting down at the soda fountain counter. And as the nearest pharmacies are at least a 30 to 40 minute drive away in Randolph, Hartford and West Lebanon, the Woodstock Pharmacy is a critical link in helping the town’s elderly residents avoid negotiating the curvy Route 4 drive.
“It would be terrible if there were not a way for someone to buy it and come in and make it work,” Billings said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
Correction
Jireh Billings is a co-owner of F.H. Gillingham & Sons in Woodstock. An earlier version of this story misspelled his first name.
