He did not grow up on the Mississippi River, but he did illustrate comic strips, and he wrote produced, and directed films and television series that entertained hundreds of millions of people.
If you fondly remember Leonard Starr's Mary Perkins Onstage, Stan Drake's The Heart of Juliet Jones, Al Capp's Li'l Abner, or Wonder Woman (1978), Chico and the Man (1978), All in the Family (1979), or Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), then you've...