Charles “Frank” Shipman III spoke with a steady voice Wednesday as he reflected on his family’s 50 years running an independent pharmacy in downtown Palmerton.

But with less than a week until Shipman’s Pharmacy’s doors close for good on Tuesday, his emotion broke through when describing the relationship with the customers who he said were “the backbone of the business.”

“We have known multiple generations and they have really become part of our own family,” Shipman said. “As kids, our parents moved and opened up here 50 years ago and we’ve grown up with the customers. We know about their joys in life and their sorrows. I think it’s part of what makes Palmerton so special and unique. It’s an unbreakable bond.”

That connection between business owner and local customer is also what made the decision to close the store so difficult, Shipman said. Frank’s brother David passed way Feb. 10 after a lengthy battle with cancer, and another sibling, Pamela, passed away 16 years ago.

“That left just one other sister, who is a pharmacist in Florida, and myself,” Frank said. “I had been helping David manage both his health care and the business for a year. He was very committed to this business. It was his life and he had hoped to come back. It wasn’t until he accepted hospice care that this decision on the business was made.”

A sign in the Shipman’s Pharmacy pays tribute to the business’s 50th anniversary. It was then that Charles “Frank” Shipman Jr. opened the store on Delaware Avenue. He and his wife, Mary Lou, were enticed to come to town based on a friendship they had developed with the Campton family, which ran a funeral home that still bears its name.

Shipman Jr., his son said, gave up quite a career to move to Palmerton.

“He had been a rather recognized executive with Eli Lilly and Company, a major pharmaceutical company,” Shipman III said. “He was a fast-tracked young executive. He made the decision with four young children to make more time for his family and returned to his roots of independent pharmacy. It was great having a present father. It also gave my parents time to work together. They were attached at the hip.”

Shipman’s opened at the location of the former Teeter’s Drug Store, where fellow local independent pharmacist Joseph Bechtel had gotten his start before opening his own store in Slatington.

“I think it was nice that this location stayed a pharmacy at that point,” Shipman III said. “Teeter’s had also been family-owned and had the soda fountain and such back then. I remember when my dad first opened up he had all his antiques out. There have been a lot of good memories here.”

That type of déjà vu has struck Shipman multiple times over the past few weeks, he said, as people come in to see the store one last time.

“Jeanne Stemler was in,” Shipman said. “Of course Milton passed not too long ago. Each time I have come in, I’ve been given this incredible gift of serendipity. It has brought a lot of healing for me that this was the right decision.”

Customers who have been using Shipman’s will see their prescription renewals transferred to Rite Aid, several blocks away.

“It was important to David that things stay close for the customers,” Shipman III said. “A large portion of this community and the customer base is older and he wanted to ensure a transition for them that didn’t take them too far away. My family was very committed to this community and we wanted to go out that way as well.”