By Susan Maag Disbrow
My memory was when I was about 5 years old and I used to go to Luther’s Pharmacy on Bay Street with my parents. My grandmother worked there and I remember they had an old style soda fountain in the pharmacy. The fountain was on the left side in the front of the building if you were standing outside looking in through the big glass windows. They served fountains sodas, snacks, and ice cream … and I always looked forward to having an ice cream cone as a treat. Luther’s also honored a “prescription” for a free ice cream cone that was written by a local dentist, Dr. Sam Koutroulakis, which he gave to all of the children after they had been to his office for a dentist appointment. Also, long before there was a waterfront park out back, my grandmother would take me to look at the water from the back door of the pharmacy. I remember that there were some wooden stairs that led out the back door down to the water, which came up very close to the back of the building at high tide. The last time I was in Beaufort was in 2004, and at that time I discovered that Luther’s Pharmacy is now a restaurant which is known as Luther’s Rare and Well Done. I decided to have dinner one evening at the restaurant and sat outside on the back porch. The porch is in the exact location where the steps were that led down to the water when I was a child. What a wonderful memory.
Beauort Then & Now: This moment in Beaufort’s history is an excerpt from the book “Beaufort … Then and Now,” an anthology of memories compiled by Holly Kearns Lambert. Copies of this book may be purchased at Beaufort Book Store. For information or to contribute your memory, contact Holly at lowcountrymemories@hotmail.com or beaufortmemories@gmail.com.