Karig, Walter

Karig, Walter
naval officer, writer, journalist
(November 13, 1898 - September 30, 1956)
When the Navy summoned me to Washington, D. C., in 1942 to join a crew of writers in producing training manuals for enlisted personnel, Walter Karig, a very smooth naval officer, in his early forties, urbane, kindly, and hospitable, played an important role in helping journalists to cover the Navy Department. For a time, until Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox took him out of the press room, then set up in a temporary building on the Mall, to write books on various aspects of naval operations, he arranged for the interviews I held with naval officers for articles in Our Navy Magazine, one of the most popular publications of the war-torn 1940's. In the coming years, his articles and mine would appear in the Proceedings of the U. S. Naval Institute.
Little is known of his early life. Contrary to the first Who's Who in Polish America, which listed him as a soldier of the Polish Army during the First World War [see below], he was born and raised in his grandfather's home at Brooklyn, N. Y., the son of a designer and his wife, Edmund and Elsie Karig. When he was 20 years old, he married Eleanor K. Freye of Terre Haute, Indiana, and moved to Alexandria, Virginia. He was a journalist in 1932 when he replaced Mildred A. Wirt Benson, a ghost writer of mystery novels for a New York syndicate, and wrote best-selling novels of Nancy Drew, Doris Force, and Peter Pierce for young readers around the country. Nancy Drew was one of the most sucessful children's series of all time. The first one Karig wrote under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene, but the eighth volume in the series, was called Nancy's Mysterious Letter. Two were done in 1933, The Sign of the Twisted Candles and The Password to Larkspur Lane.
When he claimed authorship of the three books with the Library of Congress, he was fired for not keeping that he wrote them a secret. Simon and Schuster bought out the publishing rights to the series in 1979 and is keeping Nancy Drew alive. Of course, she is not the same girl that made her so popular in Karig's time.
During his lifetime he turned out a steady stream of magazine articles, novels, reports of sea battles, submarine warfare, the war in Korea. In 1946 he wrote a fictional account of a future nuclear war. After the Second World War he contributed his knowledge of the Navy to a television series, Victory At Sea, and swapped stories with other authors.
Very few readers will remember the day of October 18, 1953, when members of the Polish Club in Washington, D. C., traveled to Jamestown, Virginia, to observe the 345 anniversary of the landing of the first Polish immigrants of America. Leo J. Michaloski, who came from New Britain, Connecticut, to study law at Georgetown University and then go to work in the Justice Department, was then president of the Polish Club. He called upon Admiral Karig to mingle the soil of Jamestown, where the first Poles landed on October 1, 1608, with soil brought from Czestochowa, where Poland's holiest shrine stands, and one wonders now who cares. The Polish Club is no longer in existence.
Walter Karig died September 30, 1956, and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. His wife of 36 years died in July of 1982. After his death Hollywood released a movie version of his novel, Zotz, in 1962.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2008)

Karig, Walter
Editor, foreign correspondent. Born in Poland. Came to U.S. at an early age. Veteran of Polish Army. Co-editor of "Newark Evening News." Dean of Press Staff in Washington, D. C. In 1941 elected Executive Secretary of Polish Information Bureau of Pulaski Foundation, Washington, D. C. Address: Investment Bldg., Room 1100, Connecticut Ave., Washington, D. C.
From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943