The Other Hitch-Hiking Pharmacist

by Lois D. Ambrosio

I read the story of UB's hitch-hiking pharmacist, Lyle Graves, with interest. My husband, Xavier D'Ambrosio, was also a hitch-hiking pharmacist.

After World War Two, he attended UB's School of Pharmacy. Like Lyle Graves, he hitch-hiked home each weekend - to Rochester, New York - to work at his mother's pharmacy. His father, also a pharmacist, had died in 1933.

Xavier stayed on campus during weekdays, and all the ex-GI's ate at a friendly bar, where they lived on spaghetti. Most of these young men returned to their hometowns to work in drugstores. Their hours were applied to the apprenticeship time required.

My husband and I almost purchased a little drugstore in Andover in the 1970s - that is, very close to the drug store owned by the uncle of that other hitch-hiking pharmacist, Lyle Graves. Lyle would have known exactly where it was. Buying the store was a big temptation, but after going through the finances, we did not think there would be enough income to support five children.

Just to keep the UB pharmacy connection all in the family: our daughter, Robin D'Ambrosio-Di Francesco, earned her MBA from UB and has worked in drug-kenetic research at the School for Pharmacy for many years. She started the work that is now being done at the school with the Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometer, and she runs the only LC/MS/MS equipment there, one of three such resources in western New York state.

It's a small world, isn't it? Lyle Graves created a scholarship fund at UB; and I, too, have established a small scholarship at UB in my husband's name.