One of the first decisions an author has to make when starting a book is the names of the characters. Since my mysteries take place in Italy, most of the characters are, of course, Italian. To state the obvious, they have Italian names. The average reader, on learning that I spent nine years in Italy, assumes that the names I picked were those of friends and acquaintances from that time, but that's not the case. Instead, many of them came from this book.
I love that your character names came from Mt. Vernon, and laughed recalling the real people from high school who had those names! Thanks, David.