Longtime pharmacist Morgan Moon, who died at home Saturday of complications of ocular melanoma, is remembered as a man who had compassion for the community. Moon was 60.

Moon was a lifelong resident of Tift County. He completed his education at Norman Park Junior College and the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. He served as a delivery boy for Rainer’s Pharmacy when he was 16 and began his professional career at the same pharmacy on Love Avenue in 1968, working with his partner, the late Buddy Rainer, for 17 years. He then built what is now known as Moon’s Pharmacy.

“I’ve been knowing Morgan since 1975,” said fellow pharmacist Tommy Lindsey, who owns Omega Pharmacy. “He was a personal friend and a great colleague.

“He was dedicated to the profession of pharmacy. He was a very caring individual, both personally and professionally, and always wanted to do the right thing.”

Moon was known by pharmacists around the state through his memberships in the Georgia Pharmacy Association, the Academy of Independent Pharmacy and the National Community Pharmacy Association. Moon was also a member of the Board of Hospice of Tift Area.

Moon advocated for the health and wellbeing of everyone in the community, according to friends, and maintained an independent pharmacy rather than join a national chain because he felt the community needed more of a personal touch. In February, Moon invited U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon) to his pharmacy to talk about how low and slow payment reimbursements for prescription drugs from federal programs, the pharmaceutical companies’ price monopolies and the loss of the neighborhood pharmacists were negatively affecting consumers.

Moon, like others, believed that the Medicare prescription drug program needed repair and was vocal in his efforts to send a message to lawmakers that the program was leaving the elderly and the poor without access to reimbursement for medication. He called the program a ‘bureaucratic mess’ in an article that ran earlier this year in the Tifton Gazette.

“We are the only civilized country in the world that doesn’t negotiate,” Moon said. “That’s why drugs from Canada and England and other places are 50 percent lower.”

Moon’s funeral will be held at 4 p.m. today in the First Baptist Church of Tifton, where he served as a deacon and was a member of the Kurios Christos Sunday School Class.

See Moon’s full obituary on page 2A.



To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.