The True Heart of a Pharmacist

Jimmy Barnes, BSPhar ’69, exemplified commitment to people and to community

Story by Ryan McDaniel | photos courtesy of Patricia Barnes | Published June 18, 2024

Each morning, Jimmy Barnes, BSPhar ’69, MPH ’96, stopped by his local Greensboro newsstand for a variety of national and local papers. While there, he would wave to Patricia Miles, whose office window faced the newsstand. After a chance encounter and a chat at that newsstand, Jimmy sent Patricia a half-dozen roses; his way of asking her out on a date.

Patricia & Jimmy at his 50 Year Reunion, 2019

“Our first date was at an Italian restaurant,” Patricia recalls. “I was really timid and didn’t want to order spaghetti – it can be messy to eat – but Jimmy talked about the spaghetti being so good there.” The date must have gone well – it led to a more-than-30-year marriage, kids, and grandkids.

Patricia reflects on Jimmy’s life as one of giving and service. He was always looking to help people, whether it was through his volunteer work as a Deacon for his congregation at Union Baptist, his professional work as a pharmacist, or his time at National Pharmaceutical Association (NPhA) conventions networking with and mentoring the next generation of pharmacists.

Jimmy grew up in Greenville, NC. His father worked multiple jobs in sales and in maintenance work. His mother owned a beauty parlor, cutting hair for members of the community including Jimmy’s teachers and counselors. From her, Jimmy learned how to run a business – as well as how important a strong connection to community is.

Jimmy went to segregated schools from grade school through high school. In a 2015 interview, he recalled meeting students from all-white schools during standardized tests and swapping stories of what it was like at each school: “We come to discover, of course, that the resources at their institutions were a lot different – and of course more – than what we had available to us at our institutions,” Jimmy said. “Books, equipment, sports equipment, and exposure to traveling places, seeing things.”

Jimmy’s parents encouraged him to work from a young age. This was what led to his interest in becoming a pharmacist, as he found a job as a clerk at Warren’s Drugstore. His reasons for choosing to work there at first may have had nothing to do with pharmacy. “They had the best orange-aid drinks,” Patricia reveals with a chuckle. “And he would always want to go there to get those orange-aid drinks . . . I think that’s what drove him there!”

It may have been the soda fountain that drew Jimmy to the pharmacy, but it was the work of the pharmacist that inspired him to pursue it as a career. “People came in and they were just talking [with the pharmacist] and everybody was so friendly, and the pharmacist always had a smile on his face,” Patricia recalls Jimmy expressing. “He said, ‘Oh, this is where I need to be.’”

In 1964, Jimmy enrolled at the UNC School of Pharmacy. His first year at UNC, he was one of only about a dozen Black students at the University. While the atmosphere on the recently-integrated campus was not outright hostile, Jimmy found creating any social life to be difficult. In his 2015 interview, Jimmy shared, “There was no such thing as a social life. Like getting your haircut, you’d have to go down to Carrboro. Unless you belonged to one of the, say, Black churches or something like that – got involved with the Black community down that way – you weren’t going to have a social life.”

Jimmy described his first two years at the School as being singled out and excluded from things like group study sessions. In fact, he may have quit had his dad not talked him out of it. Things became a bit easier for Jimmy in his third year at the School. He credited this, in part, to the mentorship of two professors: Fred Eckel and Steve Caiola.

In 1969, when Jimmy graduated with his pharmacy degree, he became the first Black male to graduate from the UNC School of Pharmacy. Immediately, however, he faced more discriminatory hurdles. At the time, graduates needed to get 12 months of experience as an intern outside of school to qualify to take their pharmacist licensure exams. “Not a single white drugstore would hire me as an intern. Not even for free,” Jimmy explained. “So I had to go to Greensboro and Winston-Salem to work for Sampson’s Pharmacy and Winston-Salem Model Pharmacy.”

Jimmy passed his licensure exams and was hired by Sampson’s Pharmacy. He then worked at Revco Drug Stores starting in 1975. After he and Patricia married, they moved to Durham. Jimmy shifted from retail pharmacy to hospital pharmacy, taking a job at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital. In 1994, Jimmy returned to UNC to pursue his Masters in Public Health (MPH).

Jimmy at his MPH graduation

“You help people – that was his thing – you’re helping people when you’re a pharmacist,” Patricia explains. “You’re talking about their medicine, telling them how to do it, what to take. He enjoyed that, but he thought, ‘well maybe I can get into administration if I get an advanced degree.’” So for two years, Jimmy commuted to Wilmington for the program. In 1996, he earned his MPH. Shortly thereafter, he was recruited by Fred Eckel and Steve Caiola to work in hospital system administration with UNC.

That desire for helping people, something all pharmacists share, extended beyond Jimmy’s professional life. For about 25 years he served as a Deacon for Union Baptist Church in Durham. “He was asked to be a Deacon because of his character – you have to be prayerful, a good listener, get along with the congregation,” Patricia explains. “Jimmy was the type of person who wanted to meet people . . . when you see a problem you have to fix that problem. And that was Jimmy. That was his personality.”

Jimmy also traveled with Patricia to NPhA conferences all over the country. Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, Atlanta. Jimmy loved meeting students at these conferences and seeing the talent of the next generation of pharmacists. “He enjoyed it, talking to those students,” Patricia reflects. “They were looking at Jimmy as a mentor, advising the students. He loved it. He was in his element there . . . everywhere we went, they always wanted to hear his story.” In 2009, Jimmy was honored with the NPhA Health Systems Practitioner of the Year award.

Jimmy’s influence as a people-first healer is also playing out on a small scale. His granddaughter, Anika, now in high school, has shown great interest in following in her grandfather’s footsteps. Patricia recalls the moment when this interest may have first begun. “At the age of three . . . she broke her arm. And, of course, Nana and Grandpa had to go immediately,” Patricia shares. “Of course, they had a cast on it and we had to sign it and grandpa made it feel so much better. And that little girl then, ‘I wanna do what Grandpa does because he makes you feel better.’ And I think it really grew from that.”

Sadly, Jimmy passed in 2022. His life reflects the ideals of the profession of pharmacy: put people and community first, create genuine connections with those people, and help them in whatever way you can. When asked how Jimmy managed to handle a full-time job in hospital pharmacy administration, caring for a family, and caring for a congregation, Patricia recalls something Jimmy said after he retired: “’A lot of times I may not have felt up to it myself, but I can’t complain because I enjoyed doing it’ . . . that was Jimmy.”