Once You Pick a Girl's Brain, You've Got to Marry Her

by Jean Frank

Pharmacy was a very demanding course of study, a lot of science, a lot of labs. We were told that you don't get on football or basketball teams. About the only thing you could join in the University was chorus and fraternities. Eddie, my future husband, was in the UB Chorus.

Our paths would not have crossed, except a pharmacy fraternity, Beta Phi Sigma, was in the Annual Sing Fest, a competition of choruses. I went by myself to see the competition. I watched the whole thing, and my gosh, his quartet was terrific. I went to school the next morning and said, "Who is the one who held the beer mug up high and sang 'Coney Island Babe'?" And it was Eddie.

I eventually met him through a professional organization called the American Pharmaceutical Association Student Branch. We went to the meetings, and after we would go to a bar and dance and drink beer. And there's where we really met each other. But we didn't date. It wasn't until he came home from the Korean War, having spent two years in Germany.

When he came home, he looked at his pharmacy notes - he had to take the State Boards - and the notes had faded, they didn't look very good. He told his best friend, "I don't know what I'm going to do." The friend, Tom Mogle, was in the pharmacy class of '53 - I'm in '54, Eddie's from '52. Anyway, Tom said, "I work with a girl at Smither's, who just graduated from Pharmacy School. She has a beautiful set of notes and she has good handwriting."

Eddie walked in the drugstore and started talking about the State Boards, and so we decided to study together. We took the State Boards and passed them. His brother-in-law, Albert Hock, who owned Leroy Pharmacy in Buffalo, said to Eddie, "Once you pick a girl's brain, you've got to marry her." And so he did!