Over their 99 combined years of practice, Van Swaim, DPh, and his son Mike Swaim, DPh, built something of a pharmacy empire in Tennessee.
Both graduates of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy, the father and son have been business partners for over three decades, currently operating Van’s Institutional Pharmacy in Martin, Tennessee. Over the years, they have served communities across the state through the drugstores and institutional pharmacies they have owned.
At 85 years old, Dr. Van Swaim is one of the oldest working pharmacists in Tennessee, and he and his stores have filled more than 5 million prescriptions. He first developed an interest in pharmacy as a child in Greenfield, Tennessee, approximately 14 miles south of Martin, where he started learning from a pharmacist who lived next door. He later attended the College of Pharmacy, graduating in 1961 and making valuable connections along the way.
“We had 90-plus students in my class, and we grew close because we were in every class together. The only thing that separated us: I was a Kappa Psi, and the others were Phi Delta Chi,” he said.
After working in hospitals and pharmacies in the Memphis area for a few years, Dr. Swaim moved closer to his hometown to work at a pharmacy in Martin, where his wife was working as a soda jerk at a different drugstore. He bought interest in the pharmacy, eventually buying it out and naming it Van’s Pharmacy in 1974. The store gave his son his first look into his future profession.
“I started out cleaning shelves and being the delivery boy at 15 or 16 years old,” Dr. Mike Swaim said. “I just grew up in pharmacy; I didn’t know any different.”
The younger Dr. Swaim continued to follow in his father’s footsteps, graduating from the College of Pharmacy in 1986. Just like his dad, he formed strong connections, not only with his classmates, but also with his instructors. “We got to be really close friends with our professors,” he said. “We went to their houses and ate, and we went to dinner with them. It was a different atmosphere in professional school than a four-year college.”
Read more at our UTHSC news site.