For nearly two decades, 90-year-old Jim Arndt has dedicated his time and expertise as a volunteer pharmacist at the Community Free Clinic of Decatur-Morgan County. Born at the height of the Great Depression on a farm in Cullman, he was the youngest of nine children. Money was tight.
He became a pharmacist out of pure practicality. “When I was a child, my parents were always talking about how difficult it was to make ends meet,” he said. Becoming a pharmacist seemed like the way to go because, he figured, people would always get sick and they would always need medicine to cope with illness.
Before retiring, he owned Medical Arts Pharmacy off Somerville Road for 35 years. Arndt’s friends Ray Norris and Bess Newsom helped open the free clinic for the community to help keep people out of the emergency room. Offering stable, ongoing care for patients with conditions like diabetes or emphysema keeps them from needing repeated emergency room visits, Arndt said.
In addition to very low-cost prescriptions, the free clinic pharmacy carefully monitors patient drug use to make sure they are taking it correctly, Arndt said. For example, if a diabetic has a 30-day supply of insulin and he is refilling every 60 days, they know he is skipping days and can counsel him about the importance of taking his daily insulin. “This keeps people out of the emergency room,” he said.
“It’s a lot less cost and trouble than trying to provide primary care for a patient from a hospital emergency room such as Decatur (Morgan Hospital).” Jessica Payne, executive director of the Community Free Clinic, said the clinic has been in operation for 20 years. “We provide absolutely free medical care, dental care and prescription medication for people of Morgan County,” Payne said.
“You don’t have to have insurance, but you do have to qualify for our services. We are not an emergency clinic or a walk-in clinic.” People complete an interview over the phone and then bring the necessary documents to an appointment, she said.
“Once they get qualified, we become their primary care physician's office and we can coordinate all of their health care for them,” she said. The clinic works because of the many volunteers. “A lot of our workforce is volunteer.
That’s how we can provide all these services for a very low cost,” Payne said. “We are well-supported by the medical community here in Decatur because they see the benefit of providing primary care for people, so they don’t have to use the ER.” Arndt has been a special volunteer.
"Through the years we have had many dedicated volunteers — Jim is one of the very best," Payne said. "He is truly caring and wants the absolute best for people. He brings his years of experience to help educate people on the use of their medications.
He gets to know the patients and offers sound advice to keep them healthy and using their medications properly. He is using his experience to give back to the community in a very important way. We just love him and look forward to seeing him each week.
I know our patients feel the same way." --- The sick In the days before most people obtained their annual flu vaccines and few people thought to wear masks, being a pharmacist was hard work, Arndt said. “Everyone was sick, and you were trying not to get sick,” he recalled.
Pharmacists did a lot more compounding of drugs back then, which is when they mix, combine or alter ingredients to create a medication that meets a patient's needs. That kept pharmacists busy, too. As a medical professional and the survivor of a dangerous childhood illness, Arndt cannot understand the people today who won’t get their COVID vaccines.
“They don’t understand what vaccines are made from,” he said. “Without vaccines, you would have polio and all kinds of other things.” As a child, Arndt nearly died from diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial disease.
However, an uncle who was a doctor saved his life. The uncle came to the house and was going to give Arndt a shot with a hypodermic needle into the abdomen. He told me Arndt if he didn’t cry, he could have the syringe for a water gun, the pharmacist recalled.
Diphtheria was so dangerous those households who had someone inside who had it were quarantined, Arndt said. “They put a yellow flag at the driveway. If you went inside the home, you couldn’t come back out,” he said.
This prevented the spread of the disease to the community. “Diphtheria killed a lot of people,” Arndt said. The disease is now extremely rare in the United States and other developing countries because of widespread vaccination against the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although Arndt is older, he likes being a modern man. He welcomed the computer age and its effect on pharmacies. “We used to have to keep hand-written records of everything,” he said.
“Now you can go on a computer, bring up a patient’s profile and it shows their entire drug history.” Another change Arndt has seen over the years is that most pharmacists no longer do drug compounding. Some patients prefer a compounded drug because they have trouble swallowing pills and a drug compounded by a pharmacist can be taken as a liquid.
Arndt said pharmacy schools are getting so they don’t even teach this skill anymore. He attributed the lack of compounding in part to the sheer number of medicines available today. --- Good old days Arndt grew up on a 160-acre, mule-powered farm in Cullman.
Life changed for the better when his father bought a Farmall Super A tractor, he said. But farming wasn’t easy and it wasn’t an easy life for the kids who grew up on one. Arndt recalls with a chuckle how other kids were thrilled when school let out for the summer.
Not Arndt — he was upset. As a farm boy, summer meant hard work sharpening the hoes and cutting the weeds out of cotton and sweet potato fields. No frolicking all day and swimming at the Cullman pool, he said.
Despite the hard work, growing up on the farm was the happiest time of his life, he said, though he is hard pressed to single out his happiest time in life because there are so many. For example, he will never forget the day he first crossed paths with Shirley Springfield of Hartselle, who would become his wife. “There was a little restaurant on Sixth Avenue that barely held 30 people,” he said.
“One day she was in there and she had this beautiful head of coal black hair. She was awesome.” When Arndt walked by her, she smiled at him.
That was all it took. Arndt learned her name was Shirley Springfield but he couldn’t find a listing for Springfield in the Hartselle directory. So, he found her through the pharmacy.
“I found a number and called it,” he said. “I asked if Shirley Springfield lived there and the person on the phone said yes and asked if I wanted to talk to her." The two spoke on the phone, and she agreed to a first date — a trip to the movie house.
Arndt can’t recall just which title because he was too focused on Shirley to notice what was playing on the big screen. “I was awestruck,” Arndt said. “After the date, after I got home, I didn’t sleep all night just thinking about her.
She’s gone now.” Since his wife died, he is on his own. But the couple have three children who are a comfort to Arndt — two boys, Matt, a state auditor, and John, from Las Vegas, and a girl, Angie Arndt Schoel, who is a CPA in Decatur and serves on the clinic board of directors.
--- His mom While many people influenced Arndt during his 90 years, he credits his mother, Clara, as being the most influential. “She was kind to everybody,” he said. “She would give anything she had, really.
She never complained. She died at 92 or 93. When I was 15, my dad, Joe, died of congestive heart failure.
Back then there were no drugs or procedures to really treat it like there are now.” Arndt recently celebrated his birthday with colleagues at the clinic. They not only marked the milestone in his life but also honored his commitment to the community.
Today, he lives in a lakeside home in Cullman where the water is so pure he would drink it, he said. There is no swimming, boating or jet skiing to muck up the place. “It’s a hidden treasure,” he said.
Like his mother before him, Arndt has also served as a role model. He has two grandchildren who followed in his footsteps by entering medical professions. His grandson, Daniel Arndt, became a pharmacist, and his granddaughter, Anna Harris, is into genetic counseling, he said.
Arndt said volunteering once a week is rewarding, and it also keeps him young. “I did think I could do something to be of use, but I also want to keep my mind sharp,” he said..
