Alex Haley: First U.S. Coast Gua

Alexander Palmer Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1921. He enrolled in college at age 15 to please his father, a professor at Alabama A&M University. He attended Alcorn State University in Mississippi for one year and then transferred to Elizabeth City State College in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

However, Haley was not a great student. He and his father agreed that joining the military might teach him the discipline he needed to earn a college education. So, at 18, Haley enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and started his military career as a mess attendant on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mendota. He was responsible for waiting tables, shining shoes, and performing menial janitorial tasks.

Less than one year later, Haley transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico, and received his first promotion to Petty Officer Third Class and he learned how to cook. After three years he transferred to the USS Murzim, an ammunition supply ship for the Allied Powers in the Pacific Theater.

While aboard the Murzim, Haley improved his writing skills. He started by writing love letters for his shipmates, some who could not write. He received one dollar for every love letter he wrote. However, Haley did not just play Cupid, he also began working on magazine and newspaper articles and contributed to the Murzim’s newsletter, Seafarer.

Haley’s first success came from a piece he wrote for the Seafarer, titled “Mail Call.” When one soldier mailed a copy of the piece home, it was reprinted in his local newspaper, and then in newspapers across the country.

At the end of World War II, Haley had accumulated several years of journalism and writing experience. He transferred to a rating that was nonexistent – journalist. He was assigned to the Third Coast Guard District’s Headquarters building in New York City and achieved the rank of Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer and permanent assistant to the public relations officer. Alex Haley was the first U.S. Coast Guard Journalist. The job was created for him, and it still exists in the Coast Guard today.

Haley retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1959 at the age of 38, after serving 20 years. He once said of his career, “You don’t spend twenty years in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you.”

Haley continued his career as a journalist becoming the senior editor for Readers Digest magazine. Then his first book, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” became an instant bestseller. Haley’s second book, “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” earned him a Pulitzer Prize special award in 1977. The book caused a cultural sensation and within seven months of its release, Roots sold more than 15 million copies. It spent 46 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, including 22 weeks at No. 1. The 1977 television miniseries adaptation of the novel was viewed by an estimated 130 million Americans – more than half the nation’s population at the time.

Haley continued to promote literacy and encourage young people to pursue their education. The Alex Haley Scholarship Fund selects eight students annually to support financially through their entire undergraduate and graduate career.

I met Alex Haley in the summer of 1991 when he came to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. I introduced him to the U.S. Coast Guard Museum and gave him a tour showing his journalist uniform on display. I was a Coast Guard Journalist at the time.  He was a soft-spoken man who was very humble and wise. He truly enjoyed the tour!

Alex Haley passed away in 1992 while visiting in Seattle, Washington. The U.S. Coast Guard continues to honor his contributions today. The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Haley was commissioned in 1999 and is the only ship named after a writer. The Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma, California, named the dining facility Haley Hall. Every year a Coast Guard journalist can earn the Chief Journalist Alex Haley Award to honor journalists who tell the Coast Guard story as Haley did.

Alex Haley is an icon in the U.S. Coast Guard and during the 1989 commencement exercises, the Coast Guard Academy awarded him its first honorary degree. Haley is buried at his boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee.