Millard D. Robinson (Robbie), R.Ph.
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Millard D. Robinson (Robbie), R.Ph.
worked for Morton Pharmacy for 45 years
and was a highly valued and much loved
member of the Morton family. |
Millard D. Robinson, or Robbie as most knew him, was as close as they come to being an honorary member of the Morton family.
He was the youngest of eight children whose family grew up in Brodhead, Wisconsin, and he had a twin sister. Robbie was always proud of the fact that he was the only one of the five boys in his family to graduate from college. His introduction to his lifelong career was as a pharmacy mate in the U.S. Navy, in which he enlisted right after high school.
In the Navy, Robbie crossed the Pacific Ocean 11 times while transporting troops and their spouses home from the Korean War. He liked to tell of the time he helped deliver a baby on board, and about the time that his ship was too big for the Panama Canal, so he sailed around the tip of South America to reach the east coast.
After his military service, Robbie entered pharmacy school only to interrupt his studies to help care for his ailing father. When he returned a semester later in 1958, he struck up a friendship with the young Peter Morton, also a pharmacy student at the University of Wisconsin. Shortly thereafter, Charles Morton was looking for a pharmacist to staff his downtown Neenah store, and in 1961, Peter sent Robbie to Neenah to meet his dad. As Robbie’s wife Sue recalls it, she spent all her time during Robbie’s interview in the yarn shop in downtown Neenah, and that helped her fall in love with the city! Even though Robbie had two more interviews scheduled in southern Wisconsin that same day, he cancelled them and accepted a position with Morton’s that same day. Sue remembers that her husband was happy that his new job brought him closer to the Green Bay Packers, too.
The rest is history. Robbie worked for the Morton family for 45 years right up until his death in 2006. He was instrumental in staffing the early Neenah stores and developing the pharmacy’s nursing home business alongside his lifelong friend Peter Morton.
He also played an integral role in establishing Morton Medical, an expansion of the IV drug compounding business that contracted with Valley VNA and other customers to provide durable medical equipment, oxygen services, and home nursing services until its sale in 1998.
Sue and Robbie raised their family in Neenah, and Sue says the Mortons treated them like family, too. The Robinsons had Holly, Mark and Marty who grew up to be a preschool teacher, lawyer and professor of jazz music, respectively. Although their children originally had negative feelings about their dad being a pharmacist – back then, Robbie worked every other weekend and every other night until the pharmacy closed at 10 p.m. – they were “flabbergasted” at the number of friends at his funeral and the depth of feeling they had for their dad, Sue said.
When Sue started her 26-year career as a preschool director after Holly was born, Robbie would often take one or more of the kids with him to Vallhaven a couple of mornings a week to check meds. (No doubt a cute little Robinson did more for the nursing home residents than the drugs Robbie was doling out.)
Robbie’s work ethic was well known and respected. In fact, no one recalls a single sick day during his lifetime of service at Morton. His dedication as a hospice volunteer, professional and friend lives on as model for the future of Morton Pharmacy.
