Charles Walgreen Jr., who helped build the drugstore chain his father had founded into America’s biggest, died last week at his home in Northfield, Ill. He was 100.
Walgreen became president of the Walgreen company in 1939, after his father’s death. He held that office until 1963 and was chairman until 1976. During his tenure, annual sales grew from $72 million to $817 million.
In the 1950s, Walgreen converted his stores from clerk-assisted shopping to self-service, giving rise to the concept of drug superstores.
Born in 1906 in Chicago, Walgreen worked as a delivery boy at his father’s second store and as a waiter at the store’s new lunch counter.
He also worked under his father in personnel, sales and manufacturing, showing a talent in securing Depression-era leases for the stores.
His father, Charles Walgreen Sr., called him “a good negotiator with a million-dollar smile.”
In later years, he spent his retirement sailing the globe on his yacht. At 89, he traveled to Antarctica, where he visited a 1000-mile stretch of shoreline called the Walgreen Coast, named by Adm. Richard Byrd, a family friend, in honor of his father.