Schmid's closing after 44 years in Glen Ellyn

Schmid's has been a mainstay in downtown Glen Ellyn for 44 years, from its beginnings as a pharmacy to its emergence as a gift shop.

Loyal customers regularly return to sample a piece of fudge while their kids have a seat in the store's miniature Volkswagen Beetle, modeled after the store's former delivery car.

“People come back. I can recognize them having grown up in the community,” said Becky Cook, who has worked at the family store with her four siblings on and off since high school. “They're my age and they now bring their kids in to sit in that car.”

But on March 19, the longtime business will close its doors for the final time.

Cook says her mother, Florence Schmid, decided it was time to close so she could spend more time with her 26 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“It's been wonderful to be here,” Cook said. “It's been very hard and bittersweet for her. She loves the people and employees. They're like family to her.”

Florence and her late husband, Ted, relocated from Chicago to Glen Ellyn in 1967. At the time, Heinz Drug Store on Main Street was up for sale. Ted and his uncle, who operated the Schmid-Lofgren Drug Store in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, decided to move their business to the Heinz store, while keeping that name.

They moved the store to its current location at 486 Pennsylvania Ave. in 1976 when the McChesney and Miller Grocery and Market moved across the street. They named the new store Schmid Pharmacy.

Cook recalls when her father would get calls in the middle of the night from customers needing prescriptions. It didn't matter what time of day it was, he would take the store delivery car and bring people medicine, Cook said.

“He loved the community and would do whatever it took to make sure they were really satisfied,” Cook said.

The location on Pennsylvania Avenue allowed the store to increase its offerings to gifts, cards, stationery — and the store's famous homemade fudge.

Store manager Maureen Kolar, a 20-year employee, said she would make 12 to 15 trays of fudge every week. At Christmas, she would make 30. In total, there were some 20 different varieties of fudge the store offered throughout the year, but chocolate remained the most popular flavor, Kolar said.

The store also took part in the Beanie Babies craze. Even though collectors would come in, Cook said store employees would keep some of the popular ones on the side for local children.

In 2006, the pharmacy portion of the store closed and Schmid's focused exclusively on its gift shop.

“People came in for that just as much or more than for the pharmacy,” Kolar said.

Throughout the years, hundreds of local students have worked at Schmid's, and those who toiled there through their senior year of high school are honored on a Wall of Fame in the back of the store. The oldest picture dates to 1969 — two years after the store's opening.

Schmid's will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on its last day March 19. Kolar and Cook said it'll be business as usual, doing things the way they've always been done for 44 years — at least for one more day.