Bio: Krom Harold (Life Story – 1963)

Transcriber: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Krom, Peterson, Abramson

----Source: Greenwood Gleaner (Greenwood, Clark Co., Wis.) 31 Jan 1963

It's 11:30, on a dark cold night. The phone rings, "Mr. Krom, this is …………… I hate to get you out at this time of night, but my baby has a temperature of 103. The doctor gave me a prescription for some medicine; can you fill it for me? I will be down to the store in about twenty minutes." This is one of the services that we take for granted, that a pharmacist is on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Harold Krom has been doing this for twenty-eight years. He graduated from Withee High School during the depression, worked for a year in the drug store there, then went down to the University of Wisconsin. There he earned his degree in Pharmacy. He came back to his home town, set up business in Withee (Clark Co., Wis., and worked there for eighteen years. Then he bought the drug store in Greenwood, and has completed ten years here.

His father came from Lithuania, fleeing his homeland during the days of the Russian occupation under the Czars. He bought and sold livestock at Withee. In the early days, there were Polish, Danish, Norwegian, German and Finnish people among his customers. Ben Krom learned to speak with all of them, in their own languages.

Harold had a housekeeper named Anna Peterson, for many years, so virtually grew up on lutefisk, lefse, fattigmand, and syld.

He went up to Rice Lake and married a kindergarten teacher named Virginia Abramson. They have a daughter, Debby, who is in second grade. Last summer they visited Harold's sister-in-law in Portland, Oregon. Debby visited the zoo there, and came back all excited about the baby elephant, one of the very few born in captivity.

Certainly, there are discouragements in a drug store in a small town. The hours are long, inventories must be high, and turnover of stock is often slow. But there is a satisfaction in knowing that his work is needed, that people depend upon him to be there when he is needed; they depend upon him to put up medicines for man and beast, exactly as order. And they count on service, with a smile, be it day or night, rain or shine.