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Lu comes from my dad’s name,
Lumir.

Mar comes from my Mom’s name,
Margaret.

Being their first child, my parents added Lee and liked the sound. 

During my school years, I had the nickname of Louie.

AKA Little Louie, Louie the Lip, and other names people used behind my back. 

After graduating from high school, I decided Lee had a better sound.

Like the song Mr Lee that came out in 1957.

I started using LuMarLee as my nom de plume (AKA pen name) when I began publishing stories online.

My Dad's grandfather, Bedrich, came to America in the 1840s during the "Great Migration," between 1820 and 1930. 

He was from Bohemia, the western part of the Czech Republic (now called Czechia).

My Dad was given the name Lumir in 1912. It was a popular name at that time. 

Here is what I learned about the name, as published in Wikipedia.

Lumír was a literary magazine started in the city of Prague in 1851.

The name Lumir was a bard in an ancient Czech legend.

Google's AI Overview provided this information.

The name Margaret was extremely popular in the U.S., peaking around 1918, when it was the #1 girl's name, and she was born in 1918. 

Dad's side of the story: 

The one that I heard and remembered.

On warm summer evenings after supper was done, Dad and I would sit on the porch that he built near the kitchen door.

He told me, "Your Uncle Leonard came to me one Saturday afternoon and asked, "Do you want to meet a good woman?"

I said yes and your Uncle brought me here and I never left.

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Mom's side of the story:

I knew I wanted to marry your Dad, when I saw his name in the newspaper. He got a ticket for riding his bicycle while drunk.

We went on a date Saturday night and Sunday afternoon he proposed to me right here in the kitchen, while drying the dishes that I washed.

I told Mom that I never saw Dad drying dishes.

She smiled and said "That was the only time he did dishes."

Monday morning they packed their bags and drove to Chicago.

On April 30th, 1945, they got married at the courthouse.

She told me that I was lucky because I was born on the 4th of July.

She reminded me that when she was young, the church ladies would start counting on their fingers after the wedding day.

My birth happened 15 months after their wedding day.

I found a copy of his obituary online in The Winona Republican-Herald, published in the Thursday evening edition, on April 3, 1947.

He was born September 13, 1848, in Scott County, IA, where he passed away, a few months before reaching 100. 

He passed eight months after I was born. He never knew me, but I know him now, by searching for his name online. 

Here is what I know.

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His parents moved from Ohio to Iowa before he was born.

When he was old enough, John left for California. He got as far as Texas and decided that he liked Iowa better.

Upon returning to Iowa, he got a job as a stagecoach driver. The job did not last.

When the riverboats provided faster service than the stagecoaches traveling along the upper Mississippi River, stagecoach jobs became scarce, and he switched jobs.

He started working on riverboats that brought logs from Wisconsin to Le Claire, Iowa.

Even back then, jobs did not last forever. The old was replaced by better, cheaper, and faster. 

You always had to be willing to switch careers or move out west for better opportunities.

Trying to picture the life he led, I wondered if he drank green tea during those quiet times as he was rolling down the river, or was he a Mud drinker?

Mud was dark and bitter coffee with coffee grounds that lingered in the bottom of an empty cup, like the dark mud along the banks of the Mississippi River, moist and earthy.

I also wondered if he had a collection of Beadle's Dime Novels in his home library, ones that told the story of the glory, living in the frontier days of the old American West.

If you visit the Buffalo Bill Museum in Le Clair, Iowa, you can read his story and the stories of many others who worked on the upper Mississippi River.

If you ever get a chance to visit, look around and check out the memorabilia and pictures to see if anything looks familiar.

I got to experience a moment of his life, rollin' on the "Ol' Man River." 

And yes, it just keeps rolling along, supporting jobs up and down the river.

In the Summer of 2024, we rolled upstream on the Riverboat Twilight to Davenport, Iowa, and rolled back down again to Le Claire.

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In Le Claire, there is a restaurant called "The Crane & Pelican Cafe"  which opened in 2009 at the Dawley House, built in 1851.

• The link will take you to a video on KWQC, a TV station in Le Claire, Iowa.

It sits on a hill, overlooking the Mississippi River.

The restaurant started life as a mansion built for a riverboat pilot. 

We went there for Supper, and I  ordered the meatloaf dinner, a signature item on their menu

Sitting at the table waiting for Supper, I looked out the window and looked down to the river as the Sun was going down. 

I wondered, "Did John ever work for Mr. Dawley, and did he ever invite John over for Supper?" 

My imagination took me back to their time, watching them sitting by the window, telling the grandest of stories, waiting for Supper to be served.