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ne Stillwater business owner has had his hand in nearly everything to do with the city, including representing it on the state level. Calvin Anthony came to Oklahoma State University after graduating with a class of 12 from Carney High School. He said Stillwater was “a huge city” in comparison. Anthony had his plans for what he would do with his time in higher education. “I came to OSU and had a baseball scholarship,” he said. “I came up here and I enrolled in pre-dentistry because I thought I maybe wanted to be a dentist ... and I actually worked a little while at Tiger Drug while I was in school here.” He had considered following in his brother’s footsteps and attending medical school. Even dentistry took a backseat because of his experience working at the local pharmacy. Two things drove his decision home. “I was working as a student, sort of as a soda jerk at Tiger at that time and that was intriguing to me,” he said. “I saw kind of what the pharmacists did and the other thing is back in the early 60s, when I was at school at OSU, there wasn’t a dentist program in the state of Oklahoma, so I realized I would have to go out of state to Kansas State or Baylor and I wasn’t particularly enamored with that idea.” After attending OSU for two years, he transferred to the University of Oklahoma for three more years to enroll in its pharmacy school. After graduating, he came back to Stillwater and married in 1968. He took a job as a pharmacist at Humpty Dumpty, an establishment no longer in business. The owner of Tiger Drug called his former employee with a proposition. “He called me one day and said he was going to sell the drug store and thought I might be interested because he thought I’d made a good hand when I was working for him as a student,” he said. “Sure enough, it was pretty scary. I didn’t have any money and had to go into debt, but that’s how I got into the business.” At the age of 23, he purchased the pharmacy in spring 1969. He’s still the owner to this day. “It was a big undertaking and thanks to the support of the community and our long term relationship there, we’ve been successful,” he said. Throughout his years as a business owner, Anthony took on other tasks which included serving as the president of the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, becoming the chairman of the board for Stillwater Savings and Loan and even serving as Stillwater mayor from 198588. He served in the legislature from 1992-96. Calvin Anthony He became friends with former Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry. “We both went into the legislature at the same time,” he said. “He was in the Senate and I was in the House.” From 1996 to 2001, he accepted the role of CEO for the National Pharmacy Association in Washington, D.C. “It was after I came back from there that there was an opening
In this file photo, Calvin Anthony counts pills at his pharmacy, Tiger Drug.
on the (A&M) Board of Regents and Brad, he approached me if I would be interested ... I said I certainly was,” Anthony said. “I viewed it as a way to serve our community and also help the university that I loved.” While his term expires in 2014, he said every time the community or OSU takes a step forward, it’s beneficial to the other. “It’s really a symbiotic relationship and my goal is to be helpful to our leadership of our community as well our university, but as a regent, I want our students, they come first,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, how can we give them the best education for the cost and make this a safe environment for them to go to school in and get a degree that means something and is worthwhile and they have a job waiting for them? At the end of the day, it’s all about the students as far as I’m concerned.” As for how he views the size of the city when compared to his hometown of Carney, Anthony’s answer has changed slightly. “As I’ve lived here and served the community in various capacities, it seems smaller now,” Anthony said. “But the people and the university and really, the progressive attitude that Stillwater has always embodied, is what made it attractive to (me and my wife).” Stillwater Style | Spring 2013
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