Theodore Langhans Taylor was born June 23, 1921, in Statesville, North Carolina, the fifth child of Edward Riley Taylor, an Irish-American ironworker, and Elnora Langhans Taylor, a German-American with a strong creative drive and interest in drama. In 1934 the family moved to Virginia, where his father worked in the shipyards. Taylor, thirteen, began covering high school sports for a local newspaper, the Portsmouth Evening Star and developing his interest in naval history. At age seventeen he became a copyboy for the Washington Daily News, and two years later began writing sports copy for NBC Radio.

Taylor attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and served in the merchant marine from 1945 to 1946 before returning to journalism. Betweenand 1950 he wrote for the Bluefield News and the Orlando Sentinel and held public relations positions with New York University and the YMCA. During this time period he also studied at...