Pepsi founder died 87 years ago

Well, not this week. He died 87 years ago on January 19, 1934 which was one of those “meh” years in which not a whole lot happened. I’m looking at some of the events that old Caleb just missed seeing:

On January 7th of that year the first Flash Gordon comic strip appeared. It’s possible he read it, though unlikely. I’m pretty certain the Sun Journal didn’t carry that strip, and even if it did, since Bradham’s death was brought about by “a prolonged illness with hardening of the arteries, with complications” (I quote his obit), I doubt he was feeling up to the task.

Four days before his death, in Nepal, an earthquake put an end to 10,000 lives and a few days after, Fuji Film, the nemesis of Kodak, was begun. Elsewhere during the year? Dillinger robbed a couple of banks and Rudyard Kipling who I didn’t know was still alive won a poetry prize. Bonnie and Clyde bought the farm in a hail of bullets in May – that’s probably the most stand-out event of the year – and Hitler was rapidly establishing his Nazi estate and crossing his fingers behind his back as he signed a nonaggression pact with the Poles.

If you’re reading this and still wondering who Bradham was, I’m guessing you haven’t been in New Bern long. If there’s anything this city is prouder of than Tryon Palace and an army of brightly painted Polyurethane bears, it is Caleb Bradham who invented Pepsi right here in 1898.

Bradham wasn’t born here. He grew up in Duplin County and studied at UNC and the University of Maryland with hopes of becoming a doctor. A bankruptcy in the family ended that dream so he moved to New Bern, taught a while at a private academy, then went to the U of M again to become a pharmacist.

He opened Bradham’s Pharmacy in a building at the corner of Middle and Pollock: that building has since burned down, but the Pepsi Store is on the same spot in the building that replaced it. “Locals loved to frequent (the place) and pay a nickel to be entertained by a jukebox featuring the piano and/or violin playing the latest musical selections,” North Carolina History Project notes.

When he came up with Pepsi-Cola (at first less humbly named “Brad’s Drink”) he didn’t do it to compete with Coca-Cola (a recent—at that time—invention of Atlanta) or to design a sugary soft drink. Rather, he saw it as an aid to digestive health. The drink proved wildly popular and in 1902 he incorporated, hired local photographer and artist Bayard Wootten to design his logo, and started marketing across the land.

He built a plant that stood a block away from where the New Bern library stands today and built special housing for many of his employees. He experimented with celebrity advertising, hauling in racecar driver Barney Oldfield for an ad in 1909. Smiling for an artist, he declared Pepsi to be “A bully drink… refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race.”

He was also an innovator of shipping his products via motor transport, our NC site says.

By 1915 his drink was appearing in seven states, but World War I and sugar would finish him. Rationing forced him to use sugar substitutes, which went over like lead balloons (it’s a cliché, yes, but I really can’t think of many things that would go over more poorly than lead balloons, unless maybe it’s lead sliced bread). After the war, the cost of sugar skyrocketed and Bradham could no longer make a profit selling a bottle at 5 cents—and customers weren’t willing to pay more.

He declared bankruptcy in 1923 and sold the company which (spoiler alert) would ultimately thrive and become the world’s Number Two soft drink.

But Bradham’s career was hardly over. His pharmacy business would thrive, and he would keep an ongoing scholarship for students of pharmacy at UNC. He would act as a county commissioner and serve as president of the people’s Bank of New Bern. And no, he never wanted to call it Brad’s Bank.

He was a paster master of St. John’s Masonic Lodge as well as a past exalted ruler of the Elks Lodge.

He married his bride in 1901 – her name was Charity Credle, a name that just begs to be a character in a Roaring Twenties movie, while his sister (for the sake of a bit of trivia) who lived with him was the first woman in America to become a registered nurse. He lived in the Slover-Bradham House which still stands (unlike his original pharmacy and plant) at 201 Johnson Street. It is a private home today.

Contact Bill at 252-229-4977 or bill.hand@newbernsj.com.

This article originally appeared on Sun Journal: Pepsi founder died 87 years ago