Pharmacist rewarded after hellish year

'All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole' GEORGINA STYLIANOU

DEAN KOZANIC/Fairfax NZ

NO TIME TO GRIEVE: Warwick Kerr had to cope with the death of a son, the destruction of one pharmacy and the revival of another.

A Christchurch pharmacy owner had to put aside his grief for his dead son to avoid bankruptcy.

Warwick Kerr owns pharmacies in Waltham and St Martins, and four days before he was to take over the Parklands Unichem Pharmacy, his 13-year-old son, Joel, died in a swimming pool accident.

Three weeks later, the February 2011 earthquake hit, and the family's main source of income, the St Martins Pharmacy, was destroyed.

This week, Kerr won best community pharmacy in the national pharmacy awards for his Parklands business.

"It's a great privilege, but when you lose a child, nothing really matters any more," he said.

Kerr, wife Sarah and his four other children had lived "through hell" in the past 18 months.

On January 27 last year, Kerr found Joel unconscious in the family's pool and his other children "watched as I tried to make him keep living".

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Pharmacist rewarded after hellish year