G. David Schine - Early Years

Early Years

Schine was born in Gloversville, New York to Jewish parents, hotel magnate Junius Myer Schine and Hildegarde Feldman. He attended Phillips Academy and graduated from Harvard University in 1949. He entered Harvard in the summer of 1945, took a leave of absence in the spring of 1946, and returned in the fall of 1947 after a year working as an assistant purser for the Army Transport Service. Though it was a civilian position, he wrote on his application for re-admittance that he was a "lieutenant in the Army," and other students resented him calling himself a veteran. Said one: "We were all veterans and his pretending to be one went over like a lead balloon." At Harvard he conducted the university band and served as its drum major. He lived, according to a later Harvard Crimson portrait, "in a style which went out here with the era of the Gold Coast," the years before World War I when wealthy Harvard students lived apart from their classmates in private accommodations. College administrators denied his requests to use his dormitory room as an office and to allow a female secretary to visit outside of regular visiting hours.