Jack Eckerd

Jack Eckerd, founder of drugstore chain, dead at 91

TAMPA, Fla. - Millionaire philanthropist and civic leader Jack Eckerd, a hard-driving businessman who turned three rundown drug stores into an empire that bore his name, died Wednesday in Clearwater at 91, his family said.

The family said he died in the presence of his family. No other details were immediately available.

Eckerd started the Clearwater-based Eckerd Drug Stores in 1952 with three stores. By 1971 he had 240 outlets in four states, plus a chain of 21 department stores and other subsidiary firms.

He was chairman of Jack Eckerd Corp., which by 1975 had ballooned to 465 drug stores in 10 states with 12,000 employees and 60 optical centers in Florida, a food service equipment and supply firm and a security services company.

J.C. Penney purchased the drug store chain in 1996. It recently announced was selling the struggling chain to rivals CVS Corp. and Jean Contu Group Inc.

Born May 16, 1913, in Wilmington, Del., to son of a wealthy drug store owner, Eckerd set his sites at age 20 to become a millionaire in his own right and he found his niche as a successful self-made businessman, a feat he couldn't match in politics. He failed in three runs for statewide office: twice for governor and once for U.S. senator.

Eckerd came to Florida in 1952 and bought three run-down drugstores for $150,000. The chain now has more than 2,600 stores in 20 states.

He amassed a fortune - last estimated in 1975 by Fortune magazine to be $150 million - which in turn financed many causes, including Eckerd College, a private liberal arts college in St. Petersburg, and Ruth Eckerd Hall, a performing arts center in Clearwater.

It was on a business visit to Texas in 1968 when Eckerd first saw a wilderness camp for troubled kids. As family and colleagues now tell the story, Eckerd was searching for some way to give back to the state that had so richly rewarded him, and the plight of troubled kids appealed to him.

In typical Eckerd fashion for getting business done, a boys camp opened near Brooksville, about 70 miles north of Tampa, just six weeks later.

In the years that followed, he had three failed bids for public office in Florida, running for governor in 1970 and 1978 and for the U.S. Senate in 1974.

He served as head of the General Services Administration, the federal government's housekeeping agency for two years. He was appointed in 1975 by then President Gerald Ford and reappointed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter but quit soon afterward in a dispute over a top aide appointee.

He was a trustee of Florida Presbyterian College from 1966. Five years later he made a $10 million donation to the four-year liberal arts school and the following year the school changed its name to Eckerd College.

Eckerd once told a reporter that when he was asked about having the school named for him he said: "At first, I thought 'Oh no, everyone will misunderstand.' But then I thought, 'Oh, what the hell - I'm a human being. I admit I'll get a terrific kick out of it.'"

Eckerd made his first attempt for public office in the 1970 gubernatorial race and spent $1 million in an unsuccessful campaign for the GOP nomination. He lost in a runoff to Republican Gov. Claude Kirk. Democrat Reubin Askew won the election.

He was a 1974 candidate for the U.S. Senate and a 1978 candidate for governor at age 65 - his third and last run for statewide office.

In 1974 he easily beat Public Service Commissioner Paula Hawkins in the primary and in his run against Democrat Dick Stone, former secretary of state, called for an end to wasteful government spending and a head on attack to solve the problems of inflation. Stone won.

In 1978 he was a candidate for governor with Hawkins as his running mate. Eckerd beat U.S. Rep. Lou Frey of Winter Park in the Republican primary, building on his message that state government was big business and it was time to send a businessman to Tallahassee.

After losing to Eckerd, Frey didn't campaign for him. Instead, he took a trip to Europe and later acknowledged it was a mistake.

Bob Graham, a state senator and virtual political unknown statewide, and front-runner Robert Shevin, state attorney general, battled it out on the Democratic side. Graham won and served his first of two terms as governor before beginning his long career as a U.S. Sen.

Eckerd was graduated from Culver Military Academy in Logansport, Ind. in 1930. During World War II he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a pilot. He entered as a 1st lieutenant in 1942 and was discharged in 1945 with the rank of major after logging 2,000 hours bringing bombers into the European war zone and ferrying supplies between India and China.

Eckerd was a voice in Florida.

He fought the corporate profits tax. He fought school busing in 1972. And in the mid 1970s he fought a ban on eyeglass advertising in a suit brought by Eckerd Optical Centers Inc. A judge ruled the ban unconstitutional. Eckerd argued that it hurt the elderly and people on fixed income who could not afford rising costs of lenses.

At school he picked business courses, admitting that he did so because they were easier. He tried for the Wharton School of finance at the University of Pennsylvania but didn't get in.

"I didn't qualify to get in hardly any place," he once said. "Maybe if someone had given me a little counseling at Culver, that would have happened."

He went to the University of Pittsburgh, dropped out after a year and went to aeronautics school in California with thoughts of becoming a pilot. He was among 13 who graduated, but said he was told he would have to wait around until a pilot died to get a job. So he left.

He went to Pennsylvania and worked as a stockboy in the basement of one of his father's 13 drug stores.