Born August 14, 1923 at Highland Hospital in Shreveport, Alex was the son of Charles Booras, who migrated to America three years earlier as a Greek immigrant from Turkey. His mother was Penny Soteriou, also Greek, who hailed from Constantinople, Turkey. During Alex's boyhood his father and an uncle ran the Belmont Cafe. Alex went to CE Byrd High School where he worked in the cafeteria at noon. In 1938 at age fifteen he began working for a cousin's enterprise, Caddo Coffee Restaurant & Bar Supplies Company, the business in which he has remained his entire life, except for his service years. Knowing he would go into the military, he attended a local radio school to learn a skill which he hoped would keep him from "being a truck driver or a dishwasher" in the service. Alex reported for duty on January 11, 1943, and was later assigned to a Signal Radar Maintenance Team, consisting of four sergeants and an officer. Granted a security clearance, he was sent to Keflavik, Iceland in March of 1944 to service radar units on the north side of the island, near the shipping lanes for supplies from America to Murmansk, Russia. German torpedo boats often preyed on convoys in that area. Once, he watched sixty-two ships of a convoy sunk. Sent home in August of 1945, he was stationed at Robins Field near Macon, Georgia, and at Kelly Field in San Antonio. He was discharged on February 6, 1946.