Early Life
Schwab was born in Bend, Oregon, on October 3, 1917. His family moved to Minnesota two years later with the young Les in tow. The family moved back to Central Oregon in 1929, where Schwab was schooled in a railroad boxcar at the Brooks Scanlon logging camp, with his mother as schoolteacher. While in high school in Bend at age 15, Schwab and his three siblings became orphans in 1933 when both parents died within months (mother died of pneumonia, alcoholic father found dead in front of a moonshine joint). An aunt and uncle offered to take him in, instead he rented a room in a boarding house for $15 a month and began delivering the Oregon Journal newspaper. At the paper he would eventually cover all the routes in Bend, nine in all. He completed his high school education and graduated from Bend High School in 1935. He married his high school sweetheart in 1936 and they became parents in 1940. Schwab became circulation manager for the Bend newspaper, The Bulletin, in 1942 and served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
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