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THRESHOLD YEARS

He was born on June 23, 1936, in New Haven, Connecticut, the second of twins to Alfred Carlton Baldwin II and Veronica (Vera) Traub Baldwin. His father’s family was English and Protestant, his mother’s German and Catholic.

His paternal grandmother was a Clemons, a sister to Samuel Clemons who wrote as Mark Twain. His paternal great-uncle was Raymond Baldwin who had the distinction of being the only man in Connecticut history who held the three positions of governor, U.S. senator, and State Supreme Court justice. However, Al Baldwin never touted his prominent kinsman’s name as there had been a rift between that branch of the family and his own, the cause of which his father never revealed. His grandfather Baldwin had no formal education but worked in a factory at night and a law office in the daytime. On the latter job, he learned the law and, eventually, became a Supreme Court judge with the character of a venerable Connecticut Yankee. One of his cousins was Victor Clarke, a prominent officer in the Connecticut State Police, and Clarke would play a significant role in a traumatic event that occurred in young Al’s childhood as relatedhereinafter.

His mother, Veronica, had nine siblings. She and one sister were the only two born in the United States. Al’s maternal grandfather, Adolph Traub, brought his family out of Germany in the 1890s, anxious to avoid service in the Kaiser’s war. Adolph’s machinist skills made New Haven, already a thriving industrial center, a good choice to settle his family. In World War II, the location became a hub of corporations like Pratt& Whitney, Winchester Arms, and Sikorsky producing armaments, aircraft, and other war materials.

Al’s father, Alfred Baldwin II, his father’s brother Ralph, and his father’s sister, Harriet, never attended a formal K through 12 school but were homeschooled. Baldwin II passed the competitive examination for West Point and entered the United States Military Academy; Ralph passed the competitive examination for Annapolis and entered the United States Naval Academy. Alfred II served in the artillery branch of the Army in World War I. He was wounded in France when his horse-drawn caisson was blown up while moving to a new firing position. After hospitalization in France, he was shipped back to the United States where he was discharged due to his wounds. Ralph, after graduating from Annapolis, had a thirty-year career in the Navy. He was so severely wounded in the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific that he spent almost a year in Bethesda Hospital and the rest of his life paralyzed on his right side. Al III said that Army–Navy games were the occasion of lively competition between his father and uncle when he was aboy.

Baldwin II, barred from an Army career by his wounds, entered George Washington University Law School, completing what should have been a three-year course in one year.

Baldwin III wondered about the influence of his formidable family on his character. “What makes a man?” he once mused. “What basic causes set a man on a certain path when he begins his life’s journey? Is it his color? Is it his religion? His schooling? His time in the military? His family? What forms the spirit and soul that becomes a man’s personality andcharacter?”

His father’s character was forged in homeschooling and West Point, and his creed was “honor, duty, country.” His father despised a liar. It was as if all evil began with a lie. That the peril of lying was the gravest of sins was a lesson learned early on by the Baldwin twins. Al declared: “That stuck with me my entire life. It’s important to me when I’m dealing with somebody that they’re being truthful. If I find somebody’s lying to me, I lose respect. I may not say anything, but I then avoid thatindividual.”

Puzzled by the many stories the loquacious Al Baldwin III told of various exploits when he used an alias or worked undercover living a lie or pretending to have evidence against a suspect he was interr