Ol' Man River: Memoirs of a Ri

The MIGHTY Mississippi, the soul and symbol of Minnesota, has no greater champion than Bill Bowell. Decades before anyone else, he envisioned a thriving St. Paul riverfront and turned his dream of the Padelford Packet Boat Company into reality.

Bill was twenty when he volunteered for the army following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Trained as a paratrooper, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulgeâ€"two of the war’s most decisive campaigns. Following World War II, he came home to St. Paul to get a college education, raise a family, make a small fortune in printing and plastics, and build the enormously successful Padelford Packet Boat Company. His life’s story is a model for how he and others of “the greatest generation” shaped this country.

AUTHOR William D. Bowell, Sr. grew up in the river city of St. Paul, Minnesota, where his Padelford Packet Boat Company has offered excursions on the Mississippi for thirty-five years. Among his many achievements, he is the founder of the Passenger Vessel Association, and the winner of the National Rivers Hall of Fame Achievement Award. His Captain William Bowell River Library opened in 2004 at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa. He summers in Minneapolis and winters in Scottsdale, Arizona.

EDITOR Biloine (Billie) Young has long been fascinated by the Mississippi River. Among her books are Cabokia: The Great Native American Metropolis and River of Conflict, River of Dreams: Three Hundred Years on the Upper Mississippi. She is also the author of A Dream for Gilberto and Obscure Believers: The Mormon Schism of Alpheus Cutler. She lives in St. Paul.

Cartoonist Jerry Fearing is well known to generations of Minnesotans as the legendary editorial cartoonist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch. His Supermayor series of comic strips that ran weekly in the St. Paul Dispatch during the Charles McCarty stint as Mayor brought international attention to the political life of St. Paul. Fearing is also responsible for several book collections of political cartoons and a Sunday comic page series on The Sioux Uprising and The History of Minnesotaâ€"both of which were reprinted in book form. Retired from newspaper work since 1994, he now keeps busy drawing caricatures and book illustrations. He and his wife Dolores live north of the Twin Cities in Scandia.