McQueary Bros. former president dies at 80

McQueary was chairman of the board at McQueary Bros. Drug Co., 4727 E. Kearney, where he served as president for nearly 20 years before retiring in 2000.

McQueary Bros. is a wholesaler of pharmaceuticals that started in Springfield in 1924.

McQueary joined the company – founded by his father, William, and his uncle, Frederick, in 1949 after graduating first in his class at St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

Bill’s younger brother, Fred McQueary, joined the company five years later. After the two founders died in the 1960s, Bill and Fred ran the company until Bill retired.

Fred McQueary, 75, who succeeded Bill McQueary as president, said his brother didn’t slow down in retirement.

“When you do something for 50 years, it’s hard to walk out the door and just forget about it,” Fred McQueary said. “Any of our board meetings he would attend, and then he was here about three days a week. When we moved in 2000, about the time he was retiring on a full-time basis, he said at the new building he’d need a place to go, because if he stayed around the house too much the honey-do list would get too long.”

Sales Manager Mike Bach said Bill McQueary led by example more than by force.

“He was never a very demanding person in any way, but it was just the way he did business – the honesty, the integrity,” Bach said.

“The goal has been that if you take care of your customers, everything else will take care of itself. That’s the way that Bill did business. He was a wonderful role model. There was no finer person that I know of,” he added.

Despite the loss of one of its patriarchs, the family remains well-represented in the company’s ranks.

Along with Fred McQueary, who retired from his role as president in June, four other McQueary family members work there.

Bill’s son Rick is company president;his grandsons John and Billy both work in the company’s information technology department; and Fred’s son David is the company’s operations manager. Fred McQueary will become chairman of the board.

Bach, who has worked for the company for 35 years, said the company is in good hands with the family’s younger generations, especially when it comes to handling a rapidly changing pharmaceutical industry and the leap into the information age.

“There’s only about two dozen wholesalers left in the country – the rest have been gobbled up,” Bach said.

“The pharmaceutical industry has become very global. We’ve had to really look outside our own little shell here, and (John and Billy) have been extremely important to our expansion,” he added.

All in the company agree, though, that Bill McQueary’s influence will be felt for a long time.

“He was extremely well-admired by the employees and the customers and everybody who knew him,” Fred McQueary said. “He was high-class. I couldn’t have asked for a better brother.”

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