Cornelius Means


The  Shelbyville  Republican
Monday August 18, 1947
Page 3 column 3
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CONRAD  SCHROEDER
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(Picture)
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            The somewhat unusual experience of training a youth, quite a few years ago, the drug store business and then ending a 50-year career in the business with that same "youth" as his "boss" is one chalked up by  Conrad Schroeder,  of 509 South Tompkins Street.
            Mr. Schroeder remembers, as he relaxes with an open collar on the cool porch at his home, that Ralph Worland, by whom he was employed from about 1933 until his retirement a little over a year ago, came to work for him when just a lad and worked for a long while before and after school.  Doing the same things that boys do now on part-time drug store jobs, sweeping out, arranging stock and in general learning the business from the ground up.
            Long a familiar figure behind the counter at the Worland Pharmacy, soft-spoken "Cooney," as he is known to hundreds of people, looks back on his years as a druggist with a great deal of satisfaction.  But he maintains that the drug store business itself hasn’t changed much with the years.  Other than new articles which are discovered and put on the market from time to time, people pretty much ask for the same things year after year-and the crowds of young people coming in after school and the nightly shows and those dropping in for a "coke" over which to exchange the latest bit of gossip or discuss current problems haven’t changed much either.
            Mr. Schroeder was born in Shelbyville and after graduating from high school here went to Purdue where he graduated from the School of Pharmacy in 1894.  There were 31 in his class and so far as he knows 14 of them still are living.  He went back for a class reunion not long ago and since than has been presented with a gold certificate by the university for 50 years of service as a druggist.
            In May, 1896, he went into business in a store located where the Worland establishment now stands.  He and  George Ensminger  were in partnership and their place was known as "Ensminger and Schroeder’s."  That same year, in December, he married a home-town girl,  Miss Nellie Russell Green,  a sister of  Dr. Green who formerly practiced medicine here.  After Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Ensminger had respectively sold their interest to  Peter and Phillip Hoop, he started a store of his own just two doors south of the present Haag Store. He recalls that there were eight drug stores in town then.  Now there are six.  After a few years in that location he moved next door and his next step was going to work at Worland’s.
            He retired on April 6, 1946 and now although Mrs. Schroeder says with a laugh, he isn’t the best "mechanic" in the world, he putters about the home doing those odd jobs which need to be done and in general takes life easy.  He’s quite a baseball fan but doesn’t take in many of the games.  "My feet and ankles aren’t what they once were," he says.  He likes a daily afternoon nap (this information also was provided by his wife and their only child, Mary Jane) and enjoys nothing more that moseying down to the Elks Club to chin with the "boys." Incidentally, he is a "Charter Member No. 1" at the club.  He was the first man to sign the charter when the Elks lodge was installed here on December 2, 1898, and is the only living charter member.
Contributed by Barb Huff

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