Frances Berry, 93, of Citrus Heights and her late husband, Edwin, owned the Oak Park Pharmacy from 1935 to 1965. She also coached softball. While gazing out the window of her Citrus Heights home, she said, smiling, “I’d rather be on third base.” Neighbors/Randall Benton

People: Frances Berry

By Cameron Jahn -- Neighbors Staff Writer
Published 5:30 a.m. PST Thursday, March 7, 2002

Frances Berry, 93, remembers opening the doors to Ed Berry's Oak Park Pharmacy in Oak Park as if they were the doors to her own home.

The Berrys, Edwin and Frances, owned the pharmacy for 30 years until 1965. Edwin, a pharmacist who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1928, died in 1986.

Ed Berry's Pharmacy sat at 35th Street and Broadway, next to Azevedo's Dress Shop and the California Theater, she said.

Although the pharmacy sold everything from aspirin to cold medicine, customers came to Edwin's most often for his honest advice, Frances said.

"Ed was their doctor," said Frances, who now lives in Carmichael.

Berry said one of her fondest memories is coaching a summer league softball team in Oak Park on which her sons, Edwin and Jay, played.

All the other coaches in the league were men, she said, but she stepped up to coach the Oak Park team because her husband had to run the pharmacy.

With Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Long at shortstop, Jay, now 63, at third base, and Edwin, now 66, in center field, the team was hard to beat.

"All the boys liked me because I gave them punch and cookies" during the games, Berry said.

---