Early Life, Military Service, Education
Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse Gravel (born 1896/1897/1898, Sorel, Quebec – died 19??) and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel (born January 26, 1901, Saint-Ours, Quebec – died December 28, 1989). His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed to him the importance of education.
Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled – due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia – and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on behalf of his boss; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office."
Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. Then an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year, and he graduated in 1949. He has a sister, Marguerite, who became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.
Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted, and instead enlisted in the United States Army for a three-year stint so that he could get into the counterintelligence corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he instead was assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. There he had an adventurous time moving around the country, conducting surveillance operations on civilians, and paying off spies. After about a year he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his Quebec-American accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a First Lieutenant.
Following his discharge, Gravel attended Columbia University's School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a B.S. in 1956. He had come to New York "flat broke", and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Catholic faith.
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