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Uh my name is Ralph Rogers. My father had a drugstore downtown on the corner of Manu in Parish Street which he started in about 1911. I worked in that store when, from the time I was, I guess, six years old and, and uh all during high

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school. And then, uh after the war, I went to pharmacy school and was registered in 1949. And my father retired and ended up selling the store in 1962. But I have continued to have interest in the businesses downtown. And uh even though I'm no longer located,

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business wise, downtown, several of us had started a wholesale drug distribution center. And, uh that was the reason for selling the store when I went in to manage that business in 1962. And then I retired in 1988. But I'm still taking pictures. Tell me about DD

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A just briefly DD A. We started in about 1954 and the organization lasted until about 19 71 I guess, as I mentioned earlier, it was made up of a number of business people, interested business people. But we had these surveys made and we found that uh

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Durham in the thirties ranked 2nd and 3rd in most categories such as sales, uh manufacturing activities, sales, tax, receipts, wholesale, sales. And we found that from 1945 to 1955 we had dropped to 5th and 6th place in the state rankings and this was of great concern.

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And then we uh those of us were very interested in trying to do something to find out what the, what was the problem and what could be done to improve that situation. So some progress was made. But in the meantime, shopping centers came along and uh

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the uh retail stores moved out. And when they did that, the customers moved out, there were 48 doctors had their office down on main street, there were eight drug stores and now there's one drug store and no doctors. Uh they all moved when the hospital was

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very active, which was Watts Hospital and then became Durham County Regional Hospital. And the doctors all moved out to that area to have their offices close to the hospital.