Masontown Mainstay to Head WV Pharmacy Board

Lydia Main, an institution as a pharmacist and the mayor of Masontown, has been chosen president of the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy (WVBOP). She will take office July 1.  Dave Potters, executive director of the WVB0P, said Main will be the first woman to hold the position.

Main also is celebrating 55 years as a pharmacist. The owner of Main Pharmacy — where her nameplate reads “pharmacist and mayor — started business there on April 1, 1957, after graduating from the WVU School of Pharmacy.

She’s also served as Masontown’s mayor for 40 years. “There’s never any doubt as to what Lydia thinks,” said George Karos, current president of the Board of Pharmacy (and Mayor of Martinsburg), of the outspoken Main. “I always tell her at board meetings, you hear her before you see her,” he said.

Karos said he’s known Main for “at least 15 to 20 years” and she’s “a very dedicated individual— to Masontown, to the drug store and the whole state. I know she’s always been a good supporter of me. She’s concerned about people, she’s honest and she’s forthright.”

Main was appointed to the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy in 1990 and elected secretary in 2004; she has served as vice president of the board since August of 2000, according to B.J. Knoth, Licensing, Verifications and Testing Coordinator for the Board of Pharmacy.

The Board of Pharmacy’s purpose, Karos said, “is to protect the public and the pharmacy profession from illegal drugs, unscrupulous drug manufacturers and pharmacists who don’t do things by the book..  Karos couldn’t say exactly how long Main has served on the board, only that it had been “a good many years.” Board members are appointed by the governor; the board chooses its president, vice president, secretary and treasurer.

Potters said Main was honored by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s (NABP) Executive Committee in 2009, when she was named its honorary president “in recognition of her commitment to the Association’s mission and goals,” according to the NABP website.  The designation was “for her service to the public health, for her commitment to NABP and the boards of pharmacy, and for her diligence and dedication to the pharmacy profession and patient care.