Lou Mund went to work when he was nine years old and hasn’t stopped working for 60 years. He has decided it is time to start retiring, but he is finding that a difficult thing to do.
“I’ve hustled my whole life, 18 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “There were many nights I laid my head on the pillow and didn’t know where the next payment was coming from. Then I made some moves that turned out to be real good ones.
“Is it hard to slow down? Absolutely. It doesn’t seem possible.”
Lou grew up in Dupo, Illinois, a small town a mile or two south of downtown St. Louis, just across the Mississippi River.
The outbreak of World War II brought Lou his first job. With so many men gone off to fight the war or to fill defense-factory jobs, labor was in short supply. Lou was nine years old when he and his sister Jean, three years older, helped a local farmer and his daughters plant, tend and harvest 100 acres of tomatoes for the government.
“We had one tractor and did the rest of the work with horses and mules,” he said. “When I was 10 years old I was driving this 1928 International truck to take the tomatoes to the pickup stations.”
Lou worked his way through Dupo High School doing mechanical jobs that would lead to his first career.
“I started working for the Oliver implement dealer here in Columbia (Illinois), washing parts and stuff. During the war years, you couldn’t buy a piece of equipment. Everything had to be patched together to keep it running,” he said.
During high school he also learned how to weld, well enough to become a certified high-pressure vessel welder. After he graduated in 1949 at the age of 16, his welding skill led him to a job at the big rock quarry in Columbia.
A couple of years later Lou was drafted into the U.S. Army, and did his basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. “They offered me a job to stay there as a welding instructor, but I said I’d really like to go overseas. I ended up in Germany repairing tanks, the hydraulics and motors that ran the turrets.”
After taking care of his two-year commitment to the Army, Lou returned to the quarry. Two years later, he decided he’d like to start his own business.
The quarry company, impressed with Lou’s mechanical and electrical prowess, sent much of its equipment to his Dupo shop for repairs and maintenance. Through the auto repair shop, Mund met many people who kept bringing their cars, trucks and tractors in for honest, quality work. He made a lot of friends, and sometimes those friendships led to business opportunities.
In the 1960s Lou added a 2,000-acre farm to his work schedule.
Both sides of the river around St. Louis were streaked with railroad lines, and Lou got to know some railroad executives. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, trucking took a lot of small-load shipping business away from the trains, and the railroads began disposing of excess real estate in small towns they no longer could serve.
“ The railroads started selling a lot of property to get it off their backs. I ended up buying a lot of land. I guess that was a smart thing to do,” he said.
In 1982 Lou turned his energies away from the auto repair business and into golfing. He bought the Columbia Golf Course and some construction equipment that he then used to expand, improve and maintain the course himself. A chance conversation in a nearby restaurant connected him with Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital and began a relationship that he plans to continue for the rest of his life.
“Richard Dohack Sr. owned a restaurant where I went a lot, and he was a member of the Cardinal Glennon board. He said Cardinal Glennon does so many good things for kids and asked me to make a donation,” Lou said.
“I said, ‘Rich, why don’t I just give you the golf course!’ He said, ‘That sounds like a good idea. Let’s have a golf tournament there.’ ”
So, in 1984, was born the Columbia Golf Classic. Mund provided his golf course, carts, equipment and employees at no charge, and the Glennon Development Board recruited St. Louis Blues hockey legend Bernie Federko as the honorary chairman.
“It’s been a success every year,” Lou said.
Jackie Smith, a former St. Louis Cardinal and member of the professional football Hall of Fame, is now honorary chairman of the annual tournament. The event has been visited by countless sports and entertainment celebrities and raised more than $1 million to provide medical care for children at Cardinal Glennon. In recognition of his generosity, the President’s Conference Room at the hospital has been named “The Mund Room”.
Early in 2001 Lou sold the golf course to developers who plan to surround it with homes. Lou, at age 69, is staying on to construct the last nine holes that will give the development two 18-hole courses. “When I sold the golf course, I negotiated into the sale the extension of this golf event for Cardinal Glennon as long as I’m alive. I’m pretty proud of that tournament,” he said. “It has been a fun thing, it really has.”
Lou doesn’t have to work anymore, but he is having a hard time accepting retirement. Helping the kids who come to Cardinal Glennon has become his cause. He has provided for the continued support of Glennon children in his estate plan.
“I’ve never done any community things or been politically active. I prefer to keep a low profile. But doing something good is important. This is my one thing. I have no children. My wife had five miscarriages. It just seems to me that helping kids is a great cause. Cardinal Glennon does a lot of good things,” he said.
“I’m very thankful for all my employees who helped make me successful. It’s given me some self-satisfaction to know that I can share some of that success.”
