Peggy Joyce Lucero
May 9, 1948 - July 14, 2013
Inducted as Life Time Member on June 7, 2014
Our mom (mine and Dean’s) came into this world on May 9th, 1948, the youngest daughter of CW and Bessie Bundick—a diesel mechanic and a homemaker who managed to raise ten kids in a little wood-plank country house. Peggy was baby number eight. She grew up fiercely independent despite having such a big support system, and the word “spunky” doesn’t begin to describe her: An athlete who was intentionally walked during softball games because she would usually jack it out of the park—that was our mom. The woman whose CB handle was “Shake and Bake” when she drove an eighteen-wheeler—that was our mom. A kind and compassionate lady who worked cattle in such rough country, sometimes she had to carry a sawed-off brush-gun, (not to mention the .32 automatic she carried when she rode her bike down country roads). That was also our mom. Peggy loved to go to honky-tonks for the music and the socializing, but ironically she never smoked or drank. If she had any vice at all, it was an extra helping of dessert sometimes, but that’s not to say she didn’t work it off. She wore the tires off a great many bicycles in her day. In fact, it would be difficult to say whether she logged more miles on a bike or on horseback during her abbreviated lifetime.
But the toughest woman I ever saw was the one who never complained while she lost half her body weight in two years. The fiercest person I ever met was the woman who constantly tried to wean herself off the morphine the doctor prescribed her, even though an aggressive cancer was consuming her bones. That was our mom too. Why that damned disease picked her is anyone’s guess; Lord knows she kept up a clean and healthy lifestyle. And in spite of all the pain and chemotherapy, she still lived every day to the very end, finding the small blessings in each moment that are hidden to so many others. And we want to thank all of you, her family and friends, who shared that full life and helper her to live it while she was here with us. And I know her spirit is somewhere out there now, on wings instead of wheels, riding freer than she ever could have down here on earth.