Frances Pignoloni Foti of Haverford Township, who ran the popular Ardmore neighborhood drugstore County Line Pharmacy long before CVS and Rite Aid, died April 27. She was 97.

 “She tended to hire women,” her son Lawrence Foti said, because, in her words, “‘I wanted to give women a chance.’ She was ahead of our time. She was pretty darn smart.

“She became an inspiration for many of the young girls in the neighborhood who primarily saw women as homemakers,” he said.

Mrs. Foti is a 1945 graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, and the first woman president of the Delaware County Pharmacists’ Association, writes Anthony R. Wood for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Frances and her husband Leonard opened the drugstore in 1947. It was the unofficial neighborhood hub, selling comic books, Whitman Samplers, baseball cards, cigars, ice cream, and inexpensive gifts kids could give their moms, recalls Lawrence.

At County Line Pharmacy, patrons could buy an Il Progreso newspaper or a soda, find a future husband or wife, or earn spending money.

“We gave a whole bunch of kids in the neighborhood their first jobs,” said Lawrence.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer about the life of Frances Pignoloni Foti.