Alexander Laughlin was born in April 1925. His parents were married in 1923. His father died in 1927 in a dental chair in Pittsburg [Annotator’s Note: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania]. After that, his mother moved them to New York to make a life for herself. She remarried. They moved into a duplex apartment. Laughlin went to kindergarten at Buckley School. He was allowed to walk to school by himself. They had a house on the beach. He went to a camp after Buckley School. They thought he should go out west and spend time with his uncle who was a rancher in Arizona, so he spent a couple of summers there. He did several odd jobs. Laughlin got to fly in a seaplane with his stepfather. He watched polo games. They kept ponies. He learned to ride horses.

Alexander Laughlin went out west in the summer times. His mother thought he had asthma. He went to St. Paul’s for four years and graduated in 1943. For two of those years, he worked in the Canadian Rockies in the summertime. It was hard work and a lot of fun. Their job was to pack horses and lead the guests through the mountains. They had time to go fishing as well. When he graduated, he went into the service. He was in combat engineering when he went to basic training in Virginia. He wanted to be in the Air Force. They transferred him, but then found out that he was color blind. He became a flight radio operator instead of a pilot. He was stationed in Manchester, New Hampshire, and then on the Island of Santa Maria [Annotator’s Note: an island in the eastern group of the Azores archipelago]. While he was there, he did air and sea rescue work. He would substitute on a plane going to Europe or North Africa. They would resupply troops and bring back troops who thought they were going to Japan. They brought back wounded soldiers. At the end of the war, he was in Gulfport, Mississippi. He had flight training in Reno, Nevada before being sent overseas. He got out of the service in 1946. He applied to go to Yale [Annotator’s Note: Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut] in March of 1946. He got out in the spring of 1949.

Alexander Laughlin heard his stepfather, Tommy Hitchcock [Annotator’s Note: Thomas Hitchcock Jr. was an American polo player and aviator who was killed in an air crash during World War II], had died through the newspaper. He was a great man. Laughlin had two sisters. Hitchcock was a great polo player. Laughlin never really played polo. He preferred to play golf and play. His mother was in Canada for the summers. Laughlin was drafted within a month after he graduated from high school. Hitchcock talked about being shot down during World War One [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] and escaping. The only time he saw him during World War Two was when he was stationed in Texas. Laughlin took the train from New Orleans [Annotator’s Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] to Texas. Hitchcock’s superiors did not want him in combat.

Alexander Laughlin remembers Charlie Chaplain [Annotator’s Note: Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of the silent film] who was a frequent guest. This is how Laughlin met him. Chaplain put on a show for them. Laughlin knew what the P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] was and they lost a number of pilots. Tommy Hitchcock [Annotator’s Note: Laughlin’s stepfather, Thomas Hitchcock Jr., was an American polo player and aviator who was killed in an air crash during World War II] volunteered to test the P-51 to see why they were losing pilots. After Hitchcock’s death, Laughlin spent time with his mother while she grieved. Hitchcock gave his life to the P-51 Mustang. Hitchcock wanted to be in combat. Laughlin is a big supporter of the museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. Overall, Hitchcock was a good father to Laughlin.