White Coat Ceremony at new College of Pharmacy will honor pharmacy pioneers

The first students in the new UNT System College of Pharmacy will receive their white coats on Saturday. Classes begin Monday.

What’s unique? This is the first pharmacy school in North Texas and the only in Texas situated on a health science center campus.

Why white coats? Students in health care professions traditionally receive white lab coats at the beginning of their training. The white coat has come to represent professionalism, responsibility and compassion.

Time and place: 10 a.m. Saturday in the Medical Education & Training Building auditorium, 1000 Montgomery St., on the UNT Health Science Center campus in Fort Worth.

Live-streaming: On big screens in MET Rooms 109-111 and in Room 108 of the Carl E. Everett Education & Administration Building; online at http://www.livestream.com/unthsc

Keynote address: Thomas Menighan, BSPharm, MBA, ScD (Hon), Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Pharmacists Association

Special recognition: These pioneering North Texas pharmacists will be named honorary members of the inaugural class:

  • Keith Dunavant co-owned Town and Country Drugs in Fort Worth for more than 20 years before selling the company to Eckerd. He then founded United Provider Services, one of the first pharmacy benefits companies in North Texas.
  • Sanders Alexander Marshall Jr., a pharmacist for Ward’s Cut-Rate Drugs in the early 1960s, broke the color barrier in Fort Worth as one of the first African-American pharmacists to work alongside white pharmacists and dispense prescriptions to white customers.
  • Paul Weinstein Jr. owned and operated a retail and long-term care pharmacy in Fort Worth, servicing more than 1,000 facility beds for many years. He is a past president of the Tarrant County Pharmacy Association and a trustee of the Texas Pharmacy Foundation.
  • The late Paul Perrone and Horace Park purchased a pharmacy in Fort Worth in 1953, which became Perrone Pharmacy in 1975. Paul Perrone celebrated the 50th anniversary of the store in 2002. He passed away in 2004. His daughter, Paula Perrone, CEO of Perrone Rx, LLC., will accept the honor for her father. Perrone Pharmacy is one of the largest independent retail pharmacies in Texas. The endowed Paul Perrone Pharmacy Scholarship will continue his legacy of excellence in pharmacy.

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