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[Originally published in The Fernando Times, Sunday, August
11, 1985.]
Son of children's author recalls 'Golden Days' of father's life
By Jim Sames (Fernando Times Correspondent)
BROOKSVILLE -- Eugene Lee says he doesn't have "any particular
interest in history," even though he's helping to renovate the Stringer
House, the home of the Fernando Historical Museum association, and
owns a collection of 100-year-old magazines.
Lee says he "just having something to do." So he replaces rotten
floors and rebuilds tottering guardrails at the old building. He
says he keeps a collection of Golden Days, a a turn-of-the-century
children's magazine because his father read them as a boy.
Lee's father is Edward Lee, better known by his pen name, Leo Edwards,
who wrote stories for young people in the 1920s and '30s. People
who grew up at that time may remember some of Edwards' characters,
such as Poppy Ott, Jerry Todd and Andy Blake. These fictitious young
lads were always getting involved in big adventures and investigating
strange phenomenons such as whispering mummies and freckled goldfish.
Paul Camp, associate librarian for the University of South Florida's
special collections department, is very familiar with the Brooksville
man's famous father. And he says that writer Leo Edwards learned
well from his Golden Days magazine stories.
Many of the serial stories in Golden Days were later bound into
book form and sold as "dime novels," Camp says.
As a writer, Edwards adopted the style of the dime novels and became
"one" of the most popular writers of his time," according to Camp.
Relaxing recently at his home in the Cloverleaf subdivision, Lee
said that collectors "go absolutely nuts" over his father's writing.
He said that after his father died in 1944, the popularity of the
books "took off."
Now, after more than 40 years, Lee says he still gets calls and
letters from Leo Edwards fans seeking information about the prolific
children's author.
"The sure go overboard, I'll tell you that much." Lee says. Public
interest in his father "go on and on and we just can't understand
it."
Lee and his wife Betty moved to Brooksville in 1982. Since then,
he said he had as much contact as he used to with Edwards fans.
But the couple say that collectors kept them pretty busy when they
lived at the old Lee residence, the house of his father on Lake
Ripley in Wisconsin. The home was called Hi-Lee because it sat on
top of a hill overlooking Lake Ripley.
Back in those days, Lee says, "all kinds of people were constantly
coming by" to ask him questions about his father. he says that he
often invited fans to spend the night in one of their summer cottages,
and "everybody got a free book" from his collection of his father's
writings when they they left.
Mrs. Lee says fans sometimes went overboard in their enthusiasm.
Some would arrive at their home at 5 in the morning in "not one,
but two carloads" and wake the couple up to ask questions about
Lee's father.
Sometimes collectors took advantage of the Lees' hospitality. When
one visited their house, Lee invited him to spend the night in one
of their summer cottages. Because the man was interested in his
father's work, Lee lent him an unpublished manuscript that Edwards
had written before he died.
"When we woke up the next morning, both the man and the manuscript
were gone," Lee says.
But "those kind of things don't bother me too much," he adds.
Lee was able to take everything in stride because he has grown
up amid his father's popularity.
For instance, there were "hundreds of letters which I had to answer"
from people interested in his father's books. The family got so
much mail that the classification of the Lake Ripley post office
was changed.
"We got mail sacks full every day," Lee says he grew accustomed
to strangers showing up at his house when his father was still living.
It was the habit of local residents to "visit the author" at his
lakeside residence.
Some of the visitors weren't just local folks. People like Edgar
Rice Burroughs, a science fiction and adventure writer, and Edward
Stratemeyer, who wrote some of the Nancy Drew novels, stayed at
the house while visiting his father.
After his father died, the fans replaced the writers as visitors
to Hi-Lee. Collectors' interest was especially perked because Edwards
was known to base his characters on real people.
For example, Lee says Poppy Ott, a famous Edwards character, was
really Edwards' sister's son, who was called Poppy because he worked
at his father's popcorn concession.
Lee says that Jerry Todd, the adventurous boy who tracked down
the secret of the whispering mummy in Edwards' first book, was really
himself as a young boy.
As the son of an author of children's stories, Lee retains an interest
in that art form. he says he brought his collection of Golden
Days with him to Brooksville because the stories in the magazine
were a great influence on his father's writing.
From a historical perspective, he says the contents of the magazine
often offer curious parallels to things going on today.
For example, while Lee Iacocca campaigns to repair the Statue of
Liberty today, an advertisement in the back of an 1885 issue of
Golden Days sells miniature copies of the Statue of Liberty.
The advertisement states that proceeds raised from the sale of the
statue would be used by "the committee in charge of the erection
of the pedestal, in order to raise funds for its completion"|
The statuettes were sold for prices that ranged from $1 to $10,
depending on their size. The largest model advertised was 12 inches
high.
Besides interesting advertisements, Golden Days is full
of stories written for young people by the famous writers of the
day.
Golden Days published stories by Horatio Alder, Edward Stratemeyer
and Edward S. Ellis. These authors have become favorites of Juvenile
book collectors, according to Camp, the University of South Florida
librarian.
Camp says writers in these days were "hack writers" who could "sit
down at a typewriter and crank out six yards of prose."
Many writers of the period would have five or six stories running
simultaneously in several different magazines, Camp Says. Writers
also attempted to present the appearance of diversity to their readers
by publishing stories under many pseudonyms.
Edward S. Ellis, for example, used 37 confirmed pen names during
his career, Camp says.
Sometimes writers would use romantic sounding pseudonyms like "An
Old Scout" or "A New York Detective" to give their stories a measure
of authenticity, Camp says.
Lee said his father was an avid reader of the Golden Days stories.
The size of Lee's collection attests to the fact that the late author
subscribed to the magazine for several years.
Even though he has interesting memories, Lee says his father's
popularity didn't follow him to the grave. he says the Depression
severely damaged the publishing industry and the sales of his father's
books suffered in that time.
"The Depression hit, and nobody would pay 50 (cents) for a book
back then," Lee says. After the Depression, Lee says Edwards' health
began to fail and the quality of his writing became sporadic.
"I told him that one of the books I had typed up for him was pure
trash," Lee remembers. But the old master would go back to the story
and sometime "his ability to create a nice story would come back.
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