Haley, Man and Writer, Eulogized : Tributes: 'Roots' author is lauded by family, friends. He'll be buried at his childhood home in Henning, Tenn.

Haley, Man and Writer, Eulogized : Tributes: ‘Roots’ author is lauded by family, friends. He’ll be buried at his childhood home in Henning, Tenn.

L.A. Times Archives

Feb. 16, 1992 12 AM PT

From Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Alex Haley’s widow marveled Saturday at his ability “to take the most mundane subject and turn it into magic” in one of several moving eulogies at the funeral for the author of “Roots.”

Haley was to be buried after the service at his childhood home in Henning, Tenn. The grave site is a few paces from the porch where he listened to family stories, tales that sparked his interest in his roots and broadened the nation’s understanding of family.

At a packed, two-hour service in Greenwood Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which seats 1,600 people, Myran Haley said her husband “had the ability to take the most mundane subject and turn it into magic.”

“Thank you, Alex, you have helped us to know who we truly are,” she said.

Haley died of a heart attack Monday at age 70.

In his eulogy, George W. Haley listed some characters from his brother’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.”

“I pledge to Alex and Kunta Kinte, Kizzee, Chicken George, Momma, Dad and all of our family that I will do my best to carry on in their spirit and to be worthy of their legacy,” he said.

Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, a former two-term governor of Tennessee, said Haley was “God’s instrument . . . he was God’s storyteller” and the most popular person ever to visit the governor’s mansion.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson attended the service but did not speak.

The grave site is on property formerly owned by Haley’s maternal grandparents, Will and Cynthia Palmer. It is now a state museum in recognition of the author’s international fame.

William Haley, the author’s son, said the grave site is just a few feet from the porch where his father listened to his grandmother and aunts talk of family and was inspired to write “Roots.”

“The things that shaped him into the person he was happened there,” he said.

Erma Bratcher, who also grew up in Henning, went to the funeral home Friday to pay her respects. “I learned things from him I did not know. Through his book, he brought families together,” the Memphis woman said.

Haley was born in Ithaca, N. Y., but reared from infancy in Henning by his maternal grandmother. His father, a college professor, was studying in the North, and his mother, a grammar school teacher, died young.

In “Roots,” Haley blended fact and imagination in tracing his family back six generations to Kunta Kinte, a West African slave. His rich descriptions of his ancestors’ lives set off a wave of interest in genealogy, lasting long after the book faded from best-seller lists.

The book sold millions of copies, was translated into at least 37 languages and was adapted into a television miniseries that drew 130 million viewers.

Haley first started writing on Coast Guard ships during World War II.

He retired from military service in 1959 and began full-time free-lance magazine writing. His first book, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” published in 1965, sprang from a series of interviews with the black Muslim leader that Haley conducted for Playboy magazine.

Besides son William and Myran, his third wife, survivors include two daughters, Cynthia Gertrude Haley and Lydia Ann Haley.