Pharmacy organization honors Wendling

Pharmacy organization honors Wendling

By Nathan Oster

For more than five decades, pharmacist Ron Wendling has been dispensing medicine and helping patients in their greatest times of need, occasionally even meeting them after hours to dispense medication or provide supplies.

His dedication was recognized at last weekend’s Wyoming Pharmacy Association annual convention in Thermopolis when he was awarded the Bowl of Hygeia. The highest award given in pharmacy, the Bowl of Hygeia is reserved for those who have devoted their lives to improving the profession.

Wendling has certainly done that. He’s now retired and working part-time at the Greybull Pharmacy, but if you count his internships in 1967 and 1968, this is his 57th summer working in a pharmacy in the state of Wyoming.

Looking back on it now, he admits he got into the profession “almost by accident.” He grew up on a farm in the Powell area, graduating in 1963. “I was big into sports — especially football,” he said. It led him to enroll in what was then a junior college in Powell. Unlike present day, football was played on the campus in those days and Wendling received a scholarship to play. “It wasn’t a huge deal in those days, but it was for me,” he said. To save money, he and his friends lived at home while attending school.

It didn’t take long, however, for Wendling to realize that he would not be able to go onto the next level to play at a larger school. “I was too small,” he said. Giving it up, however, freed his mind to more seriously consider what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

“I had a friend whose dad was a hospital administrator ... he kind of talked his son into going to school to be a pharmacist. My other friends were going to be engineers. That did not feel like a good fit for me. So I thought, ‘What the heck?’ I’ll go with my friend into pharmacy. He ended up changing his mind ... I stuck with it.”

In 1969, Wendling graduated from the University of Wyoming with his degree. He began his career in Cody in 1970. A few years in, he decided he wanted to own his own store. “I kept looking in the paper (for opportunities) and saw that Sundance had a hospital, a pharmacy and a clinic that would be opening in 1975 and was having trouble finding a pharmacist,” he said. “I’d been there before and thought it was a pretty area.”

Wendling made the move, buying the Hillside pharmacy in 1975. Some years later, he opened a second in nearby Moorcroft. Those were the energy boom years in that area. But after owning and operating both for a while, he sold the Sundance store in 1983.

By the early part of the 1990s, Wendling sensed that the energy boom would be ending soon. Wanting to be closer to his wife’s family and to return to his roots in the Basin, he bought Big Horn Drug in Greybull in 1991.

“In the late ‘80s, there were four pharmacies in this area — two in Greybull, two in Basin,” he recalled. “Jack Kvale (owner of Big Horn Drug) ended up buying out the other one in Greybull.” The same scenario eventually played out in Basin, which eventually was left with none.

In the early 2000s, Wendling saw an opportunity to provide a pharmacy there and started Basin Pharmacy. In 2005, he sold it to Craig Jones, who was looking to relocate from Idaho. Two years later, Wendling sold his pharmacy in Greybull to Pamida, which was buying out stores across the Big Horn Basin. “It was a golden opportunity to sell and at the time, I thought it would be a good thing (for the community),” he said.

It was ... until 2019, when the Shopko pharmacy closed. The community went without one for a short time before reopening as the Greybull Pharmacy, under the ownership of Jones, Ross Davidson and Brandon Tolman, the trio from the Basin Pharmacy.

Wendling said he continues to enjoy what he does, calling the present arrangement with Jones in Basin, Tolman and Davidson in Greybull and the team of employees they’ve assembled an ideal setup. “Plus it gets me out of the house,” he laughed.

Here’s what was said about him during last weekend’s award presentation: “Throughout his life he has looked out for those around him. His daughter Tomi (also a pharmacist) remembers him going in to open the store for a patient if they needed something outside of hours. He would get calls late, weekends and holidays, middle of the night — if someone was having an urgent need for their medicine or something in the store, he’d go in and help them, no matter what.”

In presenting the award, Craig Jones, recipient of the 2023 Bowl of Hygeia, remarked that Wendling’s legacy had changed the direction of his life and the lives of the next generations. There were very few dry eyes in the room as the two exchanged respect and words with one another. 

Joining Ron in attendance were his wife Laurie, daughter Tomi, her husband and daughter.