Leona Wachtstetter (born May 1928), nicknamed Mama Lee, is an American author and long-term passenger on cruise ships.
[3] She frequently enjoyed accompanying her parents on their cabin cruiser, a 36-foot (11 m) boat with six beds that they routinely used during weekends including going to Jones Beach Island.
Wachtstetter continued attending classes at Adelphi but several months later, her father asked her to join them and she visited Hollywood during the Easter break in 1946 for two weeks.
She returned to Adelphi, where she completed her spring semester before moving to Florida to enroll in the School of Nursing at University of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital.
[3] Her husband did real estate appraisals and worked as a banker, while she was a registered nurse at South Broward Hospital and Clinic.
[3][8] Her husband cofounded the Hollywood Playhouse,[9] and in the 1960s, she performed in plays including A Majority of One in 1966 and the comedy Dear Me, the Sky is Falling in 1967.
[10][11][12] She and her husband went on a three-week cruise and upon returning chose to have him retire in 1976 from Home Federal Savings and Loan Association, where he had been vice president.
Each evening, she spends two hours dancing on the ship's Palm Court lounge while the Crystal Sextet band performs music.
[18] In a sign of deep respect for her based on their customs, the Filipino crew gave her the nickname Mama Lee.
[16] In 2015, Wachtstetter spent US$164,000 to live in cabin 7080, a one-person window room on the seventh deck of Crystal Serenity that is 276 sq ft (25.6 m2).
After going on cruises, she gained 25 lb (11 kg) and attempted to lose weight through maintaining a liquid diet consisting of fruits and vegetables for four months.
[26][27] Published in 2017,[28] the book discusses her decision to sell her large house after her husband's death and become a full-time cruise ship resident rather than relocating to an assisted living facility.
[29] CNN said her memoir describes "her cruising shenanigans" such as a Thailand auto rickshaw driver's kidnap of her and her encountering a Mediterranean "rogue wave".