For some reason, when I was growing up in South Chicago I’d never heard of the By-Smart company. Of course, thirty years ago they had only begun the most phenomenal part of their staggering growth. According to my research, their sales last year had been $183 billion, a number I could hardly comprehend: that many zeroes made my head swim.

I guess when I was a kid, their warehouse had already been here at 103rd and Crandon, but nobody I knew worked here—my dad was a cop, and my uncles worked at the grain elevators or steel mills. Looking around me now, it was hard to believe I hadn’t known about this place.

Of course, you’d have to be a Trappist monk not to know about the company today—their TV commercials are ubiquitous, showing their happy, nurturing sales staff in their red “Be Smart, By-Smart” smocks. All over America, they’ve become the only retail outlet for a lot of small towns.

Old Mr. Bysen had grown up on the South Side, over in Pullman; I knew that from Mary Ann’s telling me he’d gone to Bertha Palmer High. His standard bio didn’t talk about that, instead dwelling on his heroics as a World War II gunner. When he got back from the war, he’d taken over his father’s little convenience store at Ninety-fifth and Exchange. From that tiny seed had sprouted a worldwide empire of discount superstores—to use the overheated imagery of one business writer. Of the sixteen girls I was coaching at Bertha Palmer, four had mothers who worked at the super-store, and now I knew April Czernin’s father drove for them, too.

The South Side had been Bysen’s base and then became his hub, I’d learned from Forbes; he’d bought this warehouse from Ferenzi Tool and Die when they went bankrupt in 1973 and kept it as his Midwest distribution center even after he moved his headquarters out to Rolling Meadows.

William Bysen, known inevitably as Buffalo Bill, was eighty-three now, but he still came into work every day, still controlled everything from the wattage of the lightbulbs in the employee toilets to By-Smart’s contracts with major suppliers. His four sons were all active in management, his wife, May Irene, was a pillar of the community, active in charity and in her church. In fact, May Irene and Buffalo Bill were both evangelical Christians; every day at corporate headquarters began with a prayer session, twice a week a minister came in to preach, and the company supported a number of overseas missions.

Several of the girls on my team were also evangelical Christians. I was hoping the company might see this as a faith-based opportunity to serve South Chicago.