POCATELLO — When Greg Maag first started working for his father’s pharmacy in the early 1960s, he was 14 years old and delivered prescriptions via bicycle along the streets of Pocatello during the summer.
Now, after 45 years of owning and running Maag Prescription and Medical Supply in downtown Pocatello, he and his wife, Kathy, are set to retire and hand the reins of the oldest pharmacy in town to their son and daughter-in-law, Gary and Traci Maag.
“We have a wonderful staff,” said Kathy, chief financial officer of the pharmacy that was first opened in 1950 by Greg’s parents, Irv and Genevieve Maag. “It’s easy to leave when you have such good employees. When you’re not going to be thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder if everything is going OK.’ We know it will because we have such great employees and delivery drivers, and they’re all wonderful.”
As they prepare for their retirement date set for Aug. 31, the couple will also be celebrating the 72nd anniversary of the store’s opening with a customer appreciation barbecue on Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For over a decade, the pair have held an annual event that celebrates the pharmacy’s customers, many of whom are lifelong Maag patrons.
Such is the case for Floyd Anderson, who has been a customer since the early 1950s. On Greg’s office desk is a photo of Greg and Anderson holding Anderson’s first prescription the pharmacy filled when he was only 15 years old, dated Sept. 23, 1950.
“Our customers are wonderful because they’re our friends,” Kathy said.
The pharmacy also has a longstanding history of receiving support from the community during turbulent times, such as that first year when Greg and Kathy took ownership of the pharmacy 45 years ago.
In 1977, when Maag was located at 352 W. Center St. across the street from its current location, an arsonist started a fire that consumed the entire building in the dead of winter.
Greg explained firefighters allowed him to enter the burning building with a wet towel pressed to his face so he could retrieve all of the pharmacy’s paper prescriptions. And although they lost the building, they didn’t lose customers, who flocked to help in the aftermath.
“After our fire happened, we moved over here,” Greg said, referring to the pharmacy’s current location at 333 W. Center St. “We had a lot of customers coming in here to help stock shelves. I can’t believe all the people who came. It was amazing. And JC Penney’s was in town and had boards for cinder blocks to use for shelves, and we went down to JC Penney’s and got all those things and filled our whole store with them.”
Greg also explained that a few days after the fire, the police caught the arsonist and later brought him in for a needed prescription.
“I looked over and that was the guy that burned the building down. And he came in, of all things, in handcuffs, and I felt like giving him a laxative. I couldn’t believe it,” Greg said with a laugh.
The pharmacy became known as a hotspot in southern Idaho for difficult-to-acquire medical supplies when Irv decided instead of selling toys and cards, he’d stock surgical supplies, hospital beds, oxygen masks and more.
“In the early days in the 1950s when my dad started off, a lot of the stores had toys and greeting cards and all that, and he wanted to do something different,” Greg said. “So that was the beginning of our Maag Prescription and Medical Supply because people in those days didn’t have these resources in town.”
Greg also explained that the pharmacy constructed a compounding laboratory, where they take raw chemicals and create medications that are not commercially available such as certain hormone replacement treatments, medication for veterinarians and more.
“In those days, my dad started compounding and there was a dentist in town that made a certain toothpaste,” Greg said. “And we started making that for him and that was the beginning of our compounding lab.”
In addition to providing a diversity of professional medical supplies, they also have been delivering prescriptions to customers’ houses and administering COVID-19 vaccination shots at homes during the pandemic.
“It’s a small community and that’s what makes Pocatello so great,” Greg said. “And all the different departments are great, the sheriffs are great, the police and all those people do such a nice job. We could go on and on with the tales, but there’s too many to count.”
One last project that Kathy is working on before entering retirement is having a mural done on one of the building’s exterior side walls, with artwork featuring Sacajawea, local fauna and Native American women, painted by artist Heidi Yerbich.
“It’s been something other businesses have been doing in the alleys,” Kathy said. “It’ll be one of my last additions to the pharmacy.”
When it comes to retirement, however, Kathy already has her eyes set on one thing.
“We get to go fishing during the middle of the week instead of the weekend,” she said with a laugh. “That’s what we always say: ‘It’s always too crowded. I wish we could come in the middle of the week.’ And now we’ll be able to.”
The pair explained they look forward to spending more time in the outdoors hunting, fishing, camping and gardening, and feel at peace handing down a part of Pocatello that has become well-loved by many of its community members over seven decades.
“This is a new chapter in everyone’s life,” Greg said. “Just like when a person gets married and does these things, it’s a new change. And as long as we have our health, that’s the most important thing.”