Bud Albers died last week at the age of 91. He was well-known in the local-history community for his support of the East Tennessee History Center. But for 40 years he was president of what was arguably Knoxville’s most durable business, Albers Drug Co., a multi-state pharmaceutical wholesaler. He expanded the company locally, and became an innovative leader in the national pharmaceutical field.

When it faded in the 1990s in a series of buyouts, Albers employed more than 150 in a large modern facility near Tyson Park, and was arguably Knoxville’s oldest business. It had been 130 years since Andrew Jackson Albers co-founded it as Sanford, Chamberlain, and Albers. The Ohio-born son of a German immigrant, A.J. Albers had been a pharmacist mate in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War. Captured, he did some time in the notorious Confederate prison known by the disarming name of Libby.

Generations are long in the Albers family; that Union sailor was Bud Albers’ grandfather.

He found himself in Knoxville, as so many did during wartime, and entered a partnership with two other Union veterans. Sanford, Chamberlain, and Albers—I think Albers was the only one who knew much about drugs—were a going concern, several years later, when they built the building at Gay and Union now known as Tailor Lofts.

We’re lucky it’s still there. It’s the shortest building on its block because it’s the oldest. It’s the oldest because it was, at a critical time, the sturdiest. The Great Fire of 1897 consumed all the other buildings on the block, but stopped at Albers’ place. When the others rebuilt from the charred rubble, they rebuilt much taller, befitting a bigger city and more extravagant architectural fashions.

Although Tailor Lofts’ front facade has been re-skinned with lighter brick in an early 20th-century vogue, it’s basically the old 1870s building, a fossil of an older era. You can see the original building along Union Avenue.

Albers’ company moved down to State Street, where it stayed for a few decades before moving to the easternmost address on Kingston Pike. Albers Drugs was purchased by a bigger, out-of-state company in 1994. As is usually the case, they announced they were going to keep the facility in place. And as is usually the case, they didn’t. The big fish was eaten by an even bigger fish. Now, if there’s any trace of Albers Drugs, it’s in a Pennsylvania-based multinational corporation, a mouthful called AmerisourceBergen.

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Bud, whose more formal name was Edward Sanford Albers, Jr., was a very old friend. When I met him, John Kennedy was president. Bud Albers was the driver of the kindergarten car pool.

That phrase may require some explaining. Car pools have become rare. For parents, car pools were a way to save time and money. For reasons I can’t explain, parents today don’t need to save time and money anymore, and prefer to drive their unique children to every event personally, without sharing rides, one car per child. It wasn’t like that in the ’60s.

Not all car pools were the same. Some parents were friendlier than others. Some gave you snacks, as if you couldn’t make it all the way to the destination without sustenance. Some were funny, and some tried to get you to say something funny. One parent gave me a bucket to barf in. Her son had that problem, and she figured all kids did.

My very first car pool was terrifying. It was so early it was almost still dark. And the car was full of girls.

At age 4, I would have preferred a car load of alligators. Girls dressed strangely, did bizarre things with their hair, and were more talkative and personal than the few male kids of my short acquaintance. I did not understand what girls were up to.

But the driver was a tall, slim man with a big grin. “Sit up front with me, Jack,” Bud Albers said. “It’ll be us fellows.”

I have never forgotten that kindness.

I saw him only occasionally for the next 30 years or so. But as I got interested in local history, I came to understand he was especially interested in local history, too. He was involved in the Chamber, and the public library, and he was one of the driving forces behind the East Tennessee Historical Society, once serving as its president. As they were organizing and financing what became the Museum of East Tennessee History, he was a key figure. He’s responsible for that museum’s healthy representation of artifacts from the pharmaceutical industry, and the “streetscape” scene, including a mock-up of an early Albers drugstore.

Bud had a big grin and a friendly laugh. They’re useful when you have strong opinions about the right and wrong way to do things. He often seemed, to me, the happiest man in town. 

You don’t expect folks his age to surprise you, but he did earlier this year when the History Center displayed dozens of his sunny watercolors of exotic locales around the world.

In recent years he was especially interested in renovating Old Gray Cemetery, where he was buried this week. Not many people get buried in that 1850 Victorian garden cemetery today. A major capital campaign aims to restore some version of the once-famous Albers Fountain, within the Albers Circle, in the center of the cemetery. Most of the statues in Old Gray memorialize women who died young. Ella Albers, A.J.’s wife, was in her 30s when she died in 1889. Her widower installed what was perhaps the most beautiful monument in Knoxville history: large iron monument, adorned with statues of three beautiful women, one standing, two seated contemplatively.

It was there for more than half a century and served as a centerpiece for the cemetery. What became of the memorial is a subject of disagreement. Some say it was donated for a World War II scrap drive; others say it just rusted, about 60 years after it was installed, and was then removed.

Ella Albers died 36 years before her grandson, Bud Albers, was born, but it was important to him to rebuild her memorial. I don’t doubt he’ll make it happen.

Jack Neely

Jack Neely is the director of the Knoxville History Project, a nonprofit devoted to exploring, disseminating, and celebrating Knoxville's cultural heritage. He’s also one of the most popular and influential writers in the area, known for his books and columns. The Scruffy Citizen surveys the city of Knoxville's life and culture in the context of its history, with emphasis on what makes it unique and how its past continues to affect and inform its future.