Lunchmeat and Life Lessons

By Doyne Phillips, Managing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

Mary B. Lucas, B.D was one of 10 children born to the Bichelmeyer family. Her mother was Mary and her father John Bichelmeyer was a butcher and owner of Bichelmeyer Meat Company in Kansas City. Mary described her mother as “the only person that can have 10 children and each one have all her love”. Her father, a man with only an 8^th grade education, was a successful business man and full of wisdom which he shared with his family and others.

Although Mary has a B.S. in Journalism and Mass Communication from Kansas State University she feels nothing can compare with the letters, B.D. for Butcher’s Daughter, he father bestowed upon her. She earned her B.D. by spending hours seated at the family’s butcher block table in her mother’s kitchen listening to her father’s life lessons while sharing her father’s lunchmeat. I was fortunate to hear Mary, a self-proclaimed “Intentional Communicator”, share her father’s life lessons with a group at a business meeting in Kansas City recently. Here are some examples you will find in her book.

We all are in the people business. “The People Business is making meaningful relationships with people around you one person at a time.”

“If you don’t like somebody they don’t like you.” Find the like, find something about them to like.

Sell yourself. As a butcher her father felt “The first hunk of meat you have to sell is yourself.”

Make a lasting impression with the “comeback sauce”. Pour some comeback sauce on everyone you meet. Give them a little something extra whether it is a bonus amount of ground beef, exceptional service or showing interest in their family. Keep them coming back.

Mary has done a great job sharing her family life and father’s wisdom with us all. It was from the heart and not only shared the joys of their lives but also the heartbreaks and sorrows. She shares how the family dealt with them as well. I felt fortunate to have heard her and had an opportunity to meet her afterwards.

Mary B. Lucas, B.D. not only shared her family story with us and gave us some valuable life lessons passed on from her father but she also has presented her book as an opportunity to put these lessons into play in your life. “Notes to Readers” provides a space to brainstorm where you may apply these lessons. Mary also has a great list of topics for Neighborhood Book Club discussions and another for Professional Group Discussions.

In Lunchmeat and Life Lessons Mary has indeed connected the rest of the world to her father’s wisdom. In doing so she asked her readers to share their life lessons from their family and how they may have applied the Butcher’s Wisdom in their lives. In doing so you too may be inspired to write about your family’s love and wisdom and share it with the world.