On her 99th birthday in late September, Blanche Clark answered 17 phone calls from friends and family, enjoyed visits from her daughters and had pizza, beer and her favorite yellow cake with caramel icing.
“It was exhausting,” she said, with a big smile.
Near the bouquets of birthday flowers that dotted her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., sat a 1941 Yackety Yak – the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s yearbook. And beside the yearbook, Blanche had placed a print edition of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s alumni magazine that featured, on its cover, a picture of the 17 women enrolled in the School in 1937 – Blanche’s first year.
“I remember the names of most of them” she said, looking at the photo.
Blanche graduated from the UNC School of Pharmacy in 1941. At the time, Howell Hall housed the School of Pharmacy, named for the first dean of the school, Vernon Howell. Classes were held in the auditorium which featured wooden bench seats. There were four fulltime faculty members, including the dean, John Grover Beard. In Blanche’s third year, a fifth faculty member was added. And she said many of the courses given were offered through other departments at the University. For example, general, qualitative and quantitative chemistry in the chemistry department; economics in the School of Business Administration; physiology and pharmacology in the two-year School of Medicine.
For Blanche and her family, pharmacy runs deep. Her father, Samuel Brainard Burrus, and her brother, Brainard were pharmacists, as were Brainard’s three children (two boys, one girl), and several cousins. All were graduates of UNC except for Samuel.
Growing up, Blanche’s family lived in an apartment above their pharmacy in Canton, a paper mill town just west of Asheville. Blanche says she spent nearly as much time in the store as she did in the apartment, and she loved helping her father by running errands for him or being allowed to help customers whose needs were simple.
She recalled the kindness of her father, who would respond to anyone who needed medications, even after the pharmacy had closed for the day. During the Great Depression, her father often allowed people to charge their medications, even when he knew the chance of getting repaid was small.
“I don’t think he ever refused anyone the medication they needed,” Blanche said.
Following pharmacy school, Blanche went on to work at the Duke Hospital pharmacy. During her time there, penicillin became available to the general public, which she said was a game changer for health care. There, she also met her husband-to-be, Dr. Henry Clark, Jr., who later became the chief administrative officer of the Division of Health Affairs at UNC.
In 1990, Henry and Blanche created the Samuel B. Burrus Award for Community Service to honor her late father. When other family members learned of it, they wanted to be a part of it, too, so the award was changed to be the Samuel B. Burrus Family Award for Community Service. The award is given to an alumnus/alumna of the School in recognition of outstanding and unselfish civic, community or church volunteer service outside the scope of regular pharmacy practice. Occasionally the award may be given to a pharmacist functioning in the public interest at the state or national level. Recipients receive one monetary award for themselves and one monetary award for a charity of their choice.
Blanche added, “I’ve been so impressed by the young people who have won this award, and by all the students in the School. For the research they have done, the experiences they have had, the amount of information they are expected to know, and the outside activities they participate in.”
Today, Blanche continues to be an advocate for the pharmacy profession and students advancing medicine for life.
“I think it’s a wonderful profession,” she said.