Joe Schwarz - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Schwarz was born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan, after his family moved there in 1935 so his father could work as a physician in the Veterans Administration Hospital. He has two older siblings, Frank and Janet. He attended Fremont Elementary School, W.K. Kellogg Junior High School, and graduated from Battle Creek Central High School. He played on the baseball, swimming and football teams at B.C. Central. In 1959, he received a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he played on the football team as a center. He earned an M.D. from Wayne State University, Detroit, in 1964, completed his medical residency in Los Angeles and subsequently joined the United States Navy, where he served as a combat surgeon for a Marine battalion in Vietnam. He was then assigned to the U.S. Embassy at Jakarta, Indonesia, where he first met his future wife, Anne. From 1968 to 1970, he worked as a Central Intelligence Agency operative in Southeast Asia. After resigning from the CIA in 1970, he completed his surgical training in otolaryngology at the Harvard Medical School, where he married his wife and had a daughter, Brennan.

He returned, with his new family, to Battle Creek in 1974, and has been a practicing physician in Battle Creek since that time. He currently sees patients at the Family Health Center in Battle Creek, a federally qualified health center. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. His first wife, Anne, died in 1990, and he is divorced from his second wife. He has one daughter from his first marriage.