Ted Plunk has always thrived on competition. It drove him to earn National Pharmacist of the Year while working for Kroger. It led him to the winner’s circle with dozens of race horses and motocross races. It even led to him meeting his wife Jane at a Pittsboro skating rink in the 1950s.
Ted Plunk
“I was showing off, trying to get her attention,” Plunk said with a grin. “It worked.”
Plunk was born in 1938 in the front of the house he currently lives across from Bruce Cemetery on Hwy. 9 .
“Dr. Lantrip delivered me for $15,” he said.
He graduated from Bruce High School in 1956 where he was elected “Most Versatile.” Growing up in a sawmilling family, the son of Theron and Frances Plunk, Ted relied on that versatility to find a different life.
“I was 17-years-old when I was hauling lumber from the Delta to the ‘green chain,’” Plunk said. “It was incredibly hot, hard work. We would leave Monday morning and come back Friday night. We camped out, sleeping on cots in tents with mosquitoes.”
“That turned my head around,” Plunk said. “I knew I wanted to do something else.”
He was at Ole Miss, still unsure of what he wanted to do when he asked his roommate Jack McCormick what he planned on doing.
“He said he was going into pharmacy. That sounded good to me,” Plunk said.
His father’s confidence in the decision would require some convincing.
“When I told him what I was going to do, he said ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’” Plunk said.
He graduated from Ole Miss in 1961 and he and Jane Langston of Calhoun City, whom he first met at that Pittsboro skating rink, were married.
His first pharmacy job was with Wilson Drug in Corinth in 1959.
“I would go over the state line to Shamrock at night,” Plunk said. “I remember them asking me the next day what I did last night and I told them, and they would say ‘don’t go there.’ That was during Buford Pusser’s time and apparently it was a dangerous place.”
After graduation he landed a pharmacist job in Jackson earning $550 a month. His friend Carl Wayne Hamilton, a native of Vardaman, told him the pay was better in Louisiana, so he acquired a license and began practicing there for a while before returning to Calhoun to work for Jimmy Listenbee on the south side of the Calhoun City square.
He soon decided to build his own store. He opened Plunk’s Pharmacy on the ‘City Square in 1965 and operated it until 1986.
“Those were great years in Calhoun City,” Plunk said. “We were very active in the community with all the local civic organizations. We started a saddle club there, and I was elected to the state pharmacy board in 1968.”
It was the first of two separate terms he would serve on the state board.
During that time he also got involved in motocross competing on a regional circuit.
“That was great competition too,” Plunk said. “I had a bad wreck one night right in front of the stands. That didn’t stop me from racing, but I did eventually give it up.”
In 1986 there were three drug stores in Bruce, three in Calhoun City and two in Vardaman.
“I was just burned out by that time,” Plunk said. “I needed to make a change.”
He sold his store and moved to Henderson, Kentucky, to practice there. He found additional opportunities just across the Ohio River into Indiana, so he earned a license to practice there also.
“Those were good times,” Plunk said.
In addition to his pharmacy work, Plunk fell in love with horse racing and instantly began investing in thoroughbreds and training them himself.
“That’s competition at its highest,” Plunk said. “I thrived on it.”
While the Bluegrass state fueled his passion for horse racing, the winters motivated him to seek warmer climates.
“We endured the coldest winter Kentucky had experienced in 100 years. It was negative 15 degrees,” Plunk said.
Looking to escape, they went for a vacation in South Texas and while there he received a job opportunity to work with Kroger in Orange, Texas.
“We went there to get warm and I ended up getting a job,” Plunk said.
He would later get transferred to Benton, La, near Shreveport, also very close to a quarter horse racetrack.
Plunk’s competitive spirit was never more evident than there. While leading the local pharmacy to new heights and earning National Pharmacist of the Year, he was also training dozens of winning horses.
“We would go to the racetrack early in the morning and get out on the track,” Plunk said. “After we finished working out I would go to work at the pharmacy and Jane would stay and take care of the horse. Then I’d go back after work.”
“It required a lot of time everyday, but I loved it,” Plunk said.
He would accumulate more than 50 wins in his years as an owner and trainer.
“When you win it’s an incredible high,” Plunk said. “We won so much we were often being accused of doping the horses because I was a pharmacist, but that just motivated me to win even more. It was incredible competition.”
“It’s that little extra that you do that makes all the difference, whether in horse racing, as a pharmacist, anything,” Plunk said. “I was always willing to do more.”
With ailing parents, the Plunks decided to move closer to home in 1997, and Plunk went to work at the Kroger in Grenada. He would later work briefly in Greenville before joining Fred’s in Calhoun City where he remained until retiring last year after 52 years in the business.
In retirement, Plunk still feels the need for competition. It is perhaps the reason at age 75 he decided to buy a Corvette.
“I can’t really tell you why I bought it. I just wanted it,” he said.
He bought it on a trip to Houston to visit his son Michael and family – one of their three children (Stacy and Wayne).
“I worked hard for 52 years. I could afford it. I just wanted it,” Plunk said.