Seaside Series: Steve Hindy

Steve Hindy will present from his book based on the life of his grandfather, The Ali Hindy Story: A Muslim Immigrant in 20th Century America, published in 2025.

About The Ali Hindy Story

This is the story of a 12-year-old Syrian Muslim boy who left his troubled homeland in 1894 with two other boys and traveled to Europe and then America in search of two goals: to marry and start a business. The vast majority of immigrants from Syria at that time were Christian. Less than 5 percent were Muslim. Ali Hindy ended up in southern West Virginia, marrying a young Christian woman who had been shunned by her family, starting a general store, movie theater and bathhouse for coal miners. They raised her two illegitimate daughters and had six children, including my father. Ali Hindy befriended Devilance Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan of the famous Hatfield and McCoy’s feud. He also survived an attack by Ku Klux Klanmen who demanded he leave town and forbid the town’s only doctor from delivering his sixth child.

Author Bio

Steve Hindy was a journalist for the first 15 years of his working life. He started with small newspapers in Upstate New York, joined The Associated Press in Newark, New Jersey, and then spent nearly 6 years with The AP in Beirut and Cairo. He covered the hostage crisis in Iran, the Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in Lebanon and the 1982 Israeli invasion and massacres of Palestinians in Beirut’s refugee camps. He was sitting behind President Anwar Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated in 1981. While in Cairo, Hindy met American diplomats who had been posted to Saudi Arabia, where alcoholic beverages are forbidden. The diplomats were avid homebrewers. Returning to New York in 1984, Hindy went to work for Newsday and started making beer at home. With his downstairs neighbor in Brooklyn, Tom Potter, he started Brooklyn Brewery. Hindy is co-author of “BEER SCHOOL” and author of “The Craft Beer Revolution.” He resides in Brooklin, Maine, with his wife, educator Ellen Foote.