Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. was a United States Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He also served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the second-highest ranking officer in the Army, and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe commanding all US and NATO forces in Europe. A veteran of the Korean War and Vietnam War, Haig was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, and the Purple Heart. Haig was born in Bala Cynwyd,... Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. He was the middle of three children of Alexander Meigs Haig, Sr., a Republican lawyer, and his wife Regina Anne Murphy. When Haig was 10, his father, aged 38, died of cancer, and his Irish American mother raised her children in the Catholic church. He attended Saint Joseph's Preparatory School in North Philadelphia. He then studied at the University of Notre Dame for two years, before transferring to the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1947.
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