Les AuCoin - Early Life

Early Life

AuCoin was born in Portland, Oregon on October 21, 1942 to Francis Edgar AuCoin, a short order cook from Portland, Maine, and Alice Audrey Darrar, a waitress from Madras, Oregon. When he was four, his father abandoned the family. Les and his brother Leland moved with their mother to Redmond, Oregon, then a small Central Oregon sawmill and farming town, living on her restaurant wages and tips. AuCoin attended Redmond High School, where he was elected most valuable player on the school's basketball team. He also joined the staff of the school newspaper, where he discovered an aptitude for writing—a skill that would help propel him into journalism, Congress and, in political retirement, life as a writer. In 1960, he became the first male in his extended family to graduate from high school.

AuCoin enrolled at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, then transferred to Portland State University. In 1961, he enlisted in the United States Army. He was assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division where he served as a public information specialist, writing dispatches to The Nashville Banner, the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Nashville Tennessean, Stars and Stripes, and Army Times, among other publications. AuCoin's Army postings included Fort Ord, California; Fort Slocum, New York; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Sullivan Barracks, West Germany. While stationed in the segregated South, AuCoin was caught up in a near race riot in reaction to a sit in by blacks at an all-white lunch counter, an event that crystallized his zeal for progressive politics.

Following his Army career, AuCoin worked at The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, then returned to Pacific University, where he was hired as the director of the school's public information department and simultaneously completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1969.