Is Nixon still President?

Negril Beach, Jamaica, summer 1972

“Is Nixon still President?”  I asked. I was desperate for news and the guy breakfasting at the next table, a new guest we’d not seen before, was reading the New York Times.   

He laughed, and thumped the paper for emphasis: “Still there.”   

Marianne and I were vacationing at a tiny scuba-diving resort in Jamaica and to our dismay, we discovered that our hotel offered no TV, newspapers, or telephone service.  After a few days, I was desperate for something to read other than the book I’d brought, and I hoped I could scrounge the Times from the new guest when he finished with it.  

After a few sentences, we invited him to join us and he introduced himself as Alex Haley.  The name meant nothing to us or anyone else in America, because “Roots,” his blockbuster bestseller and television series, and a Pulitzer Prize were years in the future.  As strangers often do after introductions, we exchanged a few personal details and we learned he was a writer.  Having a life-long urge to write but having done little with it but the usual sorts of things, I was intrigued and asked him about his career. 

He proved an eager conversationalist and told us his adult life began as a steward, a waiter, in the U. S. Coast Guard.  He had wanted some adventure and signed up over his parents’ objections.  “All of my brothers and sisters are lawyers and doctors, which makes me the black sheep of the family,” he said with a chuckle, making light of his race. 

His career as a writer began in WWII in the South Pacific when a fellow black shipmate asked him to write a love letter to his girlfriend—he didn’t have the writing skills necessary to impress her and he wanted a “flowery” love letter that told of his love, of the exotic ports he visited and the sights he’d seen.  Alex wrote the letter, which had the desired effect.  Soon other shipmates made similar requests.  

He told us he enjoyed it so much that he tried his hand at fiction and sent some steamy stories to True Romance and similar pulp magazines, which after many years of rejection slips finally evolved into a regular practice that offered a welcome supplement to his Coast Guard salary.  Before retiring he had worked his way up the ladder to become a Coast Guard Journalist, and after retirement, he became an editor for Readers Digest.  “It was about then,” he said, “that I began to do some long interviews that were published in Playboy magazine.”  It was an impressive list: Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali), Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and other notables. 

“Have you written any books?” I asked. 

“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t sound like I wrote it, but my first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”  I’d finished reading it the week before!

After discussing race relations in America for a while, he said, “Do you have time to come up to my room?  I have something I want to show you.” 

He had rented two rooms for an extended time, one for an office, the other as a bedroom.  In his office were numerous cardboard boxes stuffed with research papers and files containing the draft manuscript of what was to become Roots.  We sat enthralled as he recounted the story: how he had traced his genealogy back to Africa, to a particular slave who had been kidnapped in 1767 and brought to Maryland and sold as a slave. 

The tale was astounding: I’d never heard of any Black American doing such a thing; and if you’d have asked me I’d have said it was impossible.  “Surely,” I said, “somebody is interested in publishing this.” 

He grinned and said, “Yes, I’ve been negotiating with Doubleday, and I think we’ve got a deal.”  Later in the week, he told us he’d received a contract and a check from Doubleday. 

Thus began a memorable few days: we shared meals and bought one another rounds at the bar as we talked about everything from Watergate and Richard Nixon, to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.  Seldom have I enjoyed such an extended series of conversations with a single person.   

In one of those conversations, we were interrupted by one of the teenage Jamaican boys that helped on the scuba boats.  He was a perfect physical specimen, as only youth can be: slim, muscled, glistening black skin, and perfect white teeth that gave him a dazzling smile.  After he departed, I said, “I’d like to see the coronary arteries on that boy; I bet they’re as big around as your pencil,” referring to the pencil and notebook he kept in his shirt pocket.   

“Tell me more,” he said, pulling the notebook and pencil from his pocket.  I explained that the boy looked so healthy and fit I couldn’t imagine him having any of the coronary artery disease that begins in the crib in the U. S.  He encouraged me to say more, and took notes all the while. 

Flattered by his interest, I asked him why.  “It’s just part of my education,” he said. “You can’t write what you don’t know.  And when you write, write what you know best.” 

It has taken decades to learn that lesson.  I tried my hand at fiction, but never found a publisher for my novel after trying for nearly many years. Looking at it now I can see why—the narrative is good but the story is not compeling. But when I wrote about personal experiences and pathology writing was much more absorbing and fun. I immediately found publishing success.  I wrote and published two textbooks, one of pathology and the other of anatomy and physiology, and a memoir.