Times of crisis leave big impact on drug store

A couple of weeks off can be a good thing, if it’s planned.

A year after W.F. “Bud” and Helena Kramer bought the drug store at 134 S. Main St., the flood of 1951 in July caused the store to shut its doors for a week.

“That was an ordeal. People we didn’t know formed a troop and came in and set up merchandise,” Helena Kramer said about the effort to move items to higher locations.

The Army Corps of Engineers out of Kansas City told them as long as items were 18 inches off the ground, they would be safe, she said.

The water level in the store reached about 33 inches, but a few things stayed dry.

“I had put up the toilet goods even higher, and we didn’t lose any cosmetics,” she said.

A local doctor went in and pulled the motor that ran the compressor on the fountain and set it up high, where water never reached it.

Bud Kramer took out wooden sawhorses and placed boards across them to place damaged merchandise.

When the drug companies came through inspecting the damage of stores in the area, they were able to get a good idea of the amount of the store’s losses, which were replaced at no cost.

“That really saved a lot,” Helena Kramer said.

Another week off

The First National Bank, which shared the wall with the drug store, was remodeling. When the bank’s contractor, Louis Ames, removed some safety deposit boxes that had been installed under the wall, it came crashing down.

“There was a lot of dust,” George Kramer, who had obtained partial ownership of the store from his parents in 1956, said.

Helena Kramer remembers she hadn’t gone into work yet that morning.

She had just finished washing her hair when there was a knock at the door.

When she opened the door she saw LeRoy Green, who worked at the store, and he was covered with white dust.

He told her that Mr. Kramer had sent him to get her, because the south wall had fallen down.

“I went down there wet hair and all,” she said.

When she got to the store, she saw that the wall had pushed the desk where she sat to do the bookkeeping and the prescription case out and closed up the walkway for customers.

“It was a miracle somebody wasn’t hurt,” she said.

Herald staff writer Brian Williams can be e-mailed at bwilliams@ottawaherald.com.