Ben Haas

Benjamin Leopold Haas was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1926. He dropped out of college to support his family. He was self-educated. And then he was drafted, and sent to the Philippines. Ben served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946.

Returning home, Ben went to work, married a Southern belle named Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh in 1950, lived in Charlotte and in Sumter in South Carolina, and then made Raleigh his home in 1959. Ben and his wife had three sons, Joel, Michael and John. Ben held various jobs until 1961, when he was working for a steel company.

He had submitted a manuscript to Beacon Books, and an offer for more came just as he was laid off at the steel company. He became a full-time writer for the rest of his life. Writing nonstop over the next 16 years, Ben Haas would create somewhere around 130 books under his own name and a dozen pen names.