James A. Haught was born on Feb. 20, 1932, in a small West Virginia farm town that had no electricity or paved streets.  He graduated from a rural high school with 13 students in the senior class.  He came to Charleston, worked as a delivery boy, then became a teen-age apprentice printer at the Charleston Daily Mail in 1951.  Developing a yen to be a reporter, he volunteered to work without pay in the Daily Mail newsroom on his days off to learn the trade.  This arrangement continued several months, until The Charleston Gazette offered a full-time news job in 1953.  He has been at the Gazette ever since - except for a few months in 1959 when he was press aide to Sen. Robert Byrd.

During his six decades in newspaper life, he has been police reporter, religion columnist, feature writer and night city editor - then he was investigative reporter for 13 years, and his work led to several corruption convictions.  In 1983 he was named associate editor, and in 1992 he became editor.  In 2015, as The Gazette combined with the Daily Mail, he assumed the title of editor emeritus, but still works full-time.  He writes nearly 400 Gazette editorials a year, plus personal columns and news articles.

Haught has won two dozen national newswriting awards, and is author of 11 books and 100 magazine essays.  About 60 of his columns have been distributed by national syndicates.  He also is a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine. He is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Contemporary Authors and 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century.  He has four children, 12 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

His books include “Holy Horrors” (1990), “Science in a Nanosecond” (1990), “Holy Hatred” (1995), “2,000 Years of Disbelief” (1996), “Honest Doubt” (2007), “Amazon Moon” (2007), “Fascinating West Virginia” (2008), “Fading Faith” (2010), “Religion is Dying” (2014), “Hurrah for Liberals (2016), plus a 1992 art book featuring lovers depicted by master artists, to refute both bluenose censors and crude pornographers.

For years, he enjoyed hiking with Kanawha Trail Club, participating in a philosophy group, and taking grandchildren swimming off his old sailboat. He is a longtime member of Charleston’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

Haught continues working full-time at 85.