SEQUIM — The past couple of days have been both happy and sad for Ella Frick and her husband, Cy, as the longtime 74-year-old owners of Frick’s Healthcare, Medical Equipment and Photo glide into retirement.
They will continue feting their many loyal customers from today with an extended storewide sale, including on fixtures, and with the second of two days of serving cake and punch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at their 609 Sequim Village Center business.
The store, a Sequim fixture for 65 years, will close, the Fricks said, though they don’t have a date set yet.
“I’m sorry to see the community without an independent drugstore,” Cy said.
Ella was busy tending to her clientele Thursday morning.
“I need roller skates,” she quipped.
“It is bittersweet, that’s what it is, because it’s like ingrained in me,” she added.
“I’ve been doing it so long. It’s part of every day’s schedule, and to know that’s going to be changing is both exciting and apprehensive.”
Cy agreed he has mixed feelings and will pursue other business interests — the couple own a farm — but was sad after being unable to find a buyer.
The Fricks sold the store’s pharmacy to Walgreens in 2010, and they’ve been trying to sell their establishment since then, they said, blaming the economy and the strength of Sequim’s big-box drugstores for their inability to do so.
The celebration also marks the 65th anniversary of Frick’s, which they bought in 1964 from Cy’s parents, Bud and Dora, who founded Frick Drugs in 1947 at 129 W. Washington St., now home to Blue Whole Gallery.
Cy grew up in Sequim and graduated from Sequim High School before going off to college.
When his parents divorced, he moved back to run the business.
He remembers that first day.
“I saw people I’d known all my life,” he recalled.
“Holy smoke, I had to stop and talk to them,” he said.
“I hardly got to get any actual work done in the pharmacy. It made for a real compressed day, I can tell you that.”
When the Fricks bought the store — Ella was a fifth-grade teacher at the time — Sequim Drugs was the only other drugstore in town, Ella said.
Competition was not really part of the owners’ vocabulary; congeniality was.
“We’d confer back and forth,” Ella said, on such topics as: “Will you be open Sunday, or should I?”
Over the years, the Fricks’ three children — Douglas, Craig and Sonja — grew up working at the store, she said.
More stores arrived selling similar goods, but the Fricks always held their own, held onto their niche, Ella said.
“It was sort of based on an old-time drugstore, meant to have something of everything,” she said.
Now there are seven pharmacies marked on Google’s map, including, Ella noted, multiproduct Rite-Aid and Walgreens drugstores just a block away.
The sale will continue after today on the eclectic array of store items, from an extensive collection of pictures of the Dungeness Valley to photographic equipment to greeting cards.
“We don’t have a specific closing date,” Ella said.
“We won’t let it drag on.”
On Thursday, Ella lauded her “great and loyal customers” and “the greatest staff that anyone could have.”
That staff has included writer and nature photographer Ross Hamilton, 69, of Sequim.
Hamilton worked in the photo department full time in the ’80s and early ’90s, he said Thursday.
The Fricks allowed him to slowly work fewer and fewer days until he finally was able to make a full-time living with photography, which he’s done ever since, Hamilton said.
When he worked there, Hamilton was already well-known, so much so that he drew customers to Frick’s, Ella said.
They’d line up and patiently wait to talk to him about his craft.
Hamilton recalled how flexible the Fricks were about letting him pursue his true passion.
“They were 100 percent behind me in my efforts,” said Hamilton, a Sequim resident for 43 years who called the Fricks “a fixture” in Sequim.
Ella said that once she and Cy leave the store, the couple, who also are celebrating their 52nd anniversary, will stay put.
Roaming around the country in a recreational vehicle isn’t in the cards for the two South Dakota natives, who met on a blind date.
“I live in vacationland,” Ella said.
“We are going on 75, and I need exploring time,” she added.
“I just believe every new day is a miracle, and I’m up for it.”
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
