Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This April 1985 Classic article that starts as a former student’s confession of not liking Dr Pepper turns into a deep-dive on the soda’s history.
Dr Pepper. I feel like a traitor. Here I am, a student at Baylor University, and I don’t like Dr Pepper. Even bears like DP, and it was listed in Lisa Birnbach’s College Handbook as Baylor’s favorite drink.
I remember the first time that I confessed my sin to a fellow student. She stared at me and said incredulously, “You don’t like Dr Pepper, and you’re at Baylor? You Benedict Arnold!
Year after year I have endured this ridicule, but this year seems to be worse. Dr Pepper fanatics from around Waco and the world have banded together to celebrate the founding of their effervescent nectar and to attempt to convert those of us who find it hard to swallow.
It is Dr Pepper’s one hundredth birthday.
The story began in 1882 in a sleepy little town in Texas called Waco when an enterprising young man, Wade B. Morrison, moved there from Round Rock, Texas. In Waco he met John W. Castles and joined him as co-owner of an establishment at Fourth Street and Austin Avenue known as Castles and Morrison Drugs. Shortly thereafter, however, Castles left the business, leaving the young Morrison as sole owner of the drug store, which he renamed Morrison’s Old Corner Drug.
In 1884, Morrison employed a pharmacist, Charles C. Alderton, to work in the drug store. As Alderton worked at the soda fountain, he noticed the wonderful mingling of aromas from the cherry, lemon, vanilla, and other syrups. Alderton, who had a rather inventive nature, began experimenting with these traditional flavors he was serving at the fountain until he happened on a blend that was particularly delicious. Soon Older Corner Drug patrons were infatuated with this special fruity concoction.
One day in 1885 a frequent customer of the drug store, R. S. Lazenbury, a local authority as a beverage chemist and owner of a small bottling works in Waco, sipped the new drink and was instantly hooked. In 1891 Morrison and Lazenbury formed a new bottling company, “The Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Works,” with Morrison as president and Lazenby as superintendent of works Lazenby refined the drink’s formula for bottling, and so well did he perfect it that the formula for the second oldest soft drink still being produced today has remained basically unchanged in one hundred years.
By the way, Dr Pepper was named after a real person. Before Morrison came to Texas, he worked as a clerk in a Rural Retreat, Virginia, drug store owned by Dr. Charles Pepper, known to everyone in those parts as Dr. Pepper.
Morrison became enamored with the doctor’s daughter; but Dr. Pepper, feeling that the two were too young to fall in love, called off the romance. A disappointed Morrison left for Texas and eventually named the new soft drink in honor of his lost love’s father, perhaps in hopes of winning the doctor’s favor.
According to Dr Pepper fans, the beverage is much more than an ordinary soft drink— it is the “King of Beverages,” “Liquid Sunshine,” “Good for Life,” the “Friendly Pepper-Upper,” and, of course, “Original.” Dr Pepper has had many advertising slogans over the years, but none has been quite so successful as “The Liquid Bite” campaign.
During World War II, the United States government tightly rationed sugar because of the critical need for it in ammunition manufacturing. This, of course, jeopardized the soft drink industry, which was a heavy sugar user. In order to keep the business alive, J. B. O’Hara, who was then president of the Dr Pepper Co., knew that he would have to convince the government that soft drinks were necessary to renew the energy of workers spending long hours in the factories that were running twenty hours a day.
To help him in the fight, O’Hara commissioned Dr. Walter Eddy, a professor of physiological chemistry at Columbia University and a national authority on vitamins and nutrition. After weeks of testing and research, Eddy wrote a booklet titled “The Liquid Bite,” which stated that soft drinks could restore energy and fight industrial fatigue. O’Hara then presented Eddy’s findings to the War Rationing Board, and after reviewing the booklet the Board granted sugar quotas to the soft drinks industry and allowed production to continue.
O’Hara coupled “The Liquid Bite” information with research that showed human energy dropped to its lowest points at 10:30 A.M. and 2:30 and 4:30 P.M., and invented Dr Pepper’s famous slogan, “Drink a Bite to Eat at 10, 2 and 4 O’Clock.”
Dr Pepper has often claimed that it is the most understood soft drink. The slogan “10-2-4” started a myth that Dr Pepper had laxative properties. Hundreds of grandmothers swore that the drinking times of 10, 2 and 4 o’clock were meant to achieve regularity.
Another misunderstanding came with the trade character “Old Doc” who was used during the 1920s to help promote the drink. Those people who were already familiar with Dr Pepper understood that “Old Doc” was simply a jovial character promoting the soft drink and never in any medicinal way. In new areas, however, people were inclined to view Dr Pepper as a medicine or tonic because of the name, and “Old Doc” only helped to strengthen that impression and even hindered Dr Pepper’s growth in some areas.
At one point in its history, Dr Pepper was promoted as a hot beverage. Dr Pepper President Wesby R. Parker experimented with hot Dr Pepper in his kitchen during a 1958 blizzard. He heated it to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, poured it over a slice of lemon, and gave the concoction to his associates to try; and they liked it. Dr Pepper was then advertised as the “Winter Warmer” and “Devilishly Different.”
Most people, especially those of us who don’t drink it too often, are not aware that the Dr Pepper logo has no period after the “Dr. ” A period was part of the logo until 1950 when the logo was changed from a signature to a block-lettered “Dr. Pepper.” An advertising executive noticed that the new “Dr.” looked more like a “Di” followed by a colon. Rather than revise the new logo, the period was dropped, never to reappear.
I guess the main reason that I don’t like Dr Pepper is because, to me, it tastes like prune juice. But Harry Ellis, 76, the official historian of the Dr Pepper Co., insists “There is no prune juice in Dr Pepper,” and there never has been. The drink is made from a secret mixture of natural fruit flavors primarily cherry juice. Even though some people think Dr Pepper has a little prune flavor, the soft drink formula really contains no prunes. Honest.
Waco has always been proud to be the birthplace of the nation’s fourth largest soft drink. Even though the company moved its headquarters to Dallas in 1948 from its home on the corner of South Fifth and Mary Streets, Waco still has a special love for Dr Pepper. “Waco has the highest per capita consumption of Dr Pepper in the world,” Robert Chambers, vice president of and general manager of the Waco Dr Pepper Bottling Co., said recently. In 1983. Chambers said, Wacoans consumed 250 cans per capita.
The Dr Pepper Co. has plans to convert the old plant at Fifth and Mary into a museum. “The Home of Dr Pepper,” which was built in 1906, housed the general offices for the company until 1922, and through 1965 the building was used for local bottling production. In 1966, the Dr Pepper Co. donated the old headquarters to Baylor University, which used the property for storage and a place to make Homecoming floats until 1979 when, at the request of Baylor, the Dr Pepper Co. bought the building back to create a museum. The plans are on hold right now, however, because the company was sold to Fortsmann-Little and Co. in February, Chambers said.
Dr Pepper has plans to celebrate its centennial in Waco. On April 25 the Waco Dr Pepper Bottling Co. and the Waco Chamber of Commerce will hold a sit-down dinner celebration at the corner of Fifth Street and Austin Avenue for about 2,000 people, including comedian Bob Hope. “It’s a re-creation of an earlier ‘prosperity banquet’ held on the same location, ” Chambers explained.
Seventy-four years ago on April 11, 1911 the Young Men’s Business League, a predecessor to the Waco Chamber of Commerce, conducted a “glorious, glittering, gorgeous” Prosperity Banquet, as the Waco Daily Times-Herald then reported the gala event.
We plan to re-create, as practically as possible in an outdoor setting, the original affair,” Alton Pearson ‘55, 1985 Chairman of the Waco Chamber of Commerce, said in December. “It seems that the Waco area is on the verge of a significant surge of growth and enthusiasm. We feel it most appropriate to recount another well-documented day in our history when Wacoans were very high on their community.”
Back in 1911 the Baylor band provided the music for the banquet, and Chambers says he hopes that Baylor musicians will play at this celebration. President Herbert H. Reynolds has said that Baylor will help in any way possible with the banquet, Chambers explained.
I suppose, then, that Baylor and Dr Pepper have always been close buddies, growing up in the same town. One would expect that Dr Pepper has contributed $15,000 since 1979 to the endowment fund, provided vending services on campus and cups for Baylor home football games, and produced commemorative bottles. And. of course, Dr Pepper supplies the bear mascots with two cases of their favorite soft drink every week.
But more importantly, I guess, many students consider Dr Pepper as Baylor’s “official soft drink.” The Baylor bear mascot, an avid consumer of Dr Pepper for many years, would definitely agree. The bears tried drinking Seven-Up for a year; but, according to their trainers, the bears just didn’t put their hearts into the tricks without Dr Pepper.
I’m not sure if I will ever learn to like the taste of Dr Pepper, but I have definitely come to appreciate its colorful history and innovative style. I think now I can agree with Ellis when he says, “I think what makes Dr Pepper different is its distinctly different taste. There’s nothing like it, and there never has been.”
Happy Birthday, Dr Pepper.
