Harvey J. Schwab is the son of Harvey O. Schwab, another of the 2020 Stivers Hall of Fame inductees. They are the first father/son duo to be inducted. It seems fitting that they are being inducted in the same year.
Harvey played basketball, football and golf at Stivers. He was named an All-City League player in football. Harvey’s father and his father’s twin brother, Harry had sons who were the same age and competed against each other in high school twenty years after their fathers played at Stivers. Both boys were guards, Harvey at Stivers and his cousin Bob, at Oakwood. The cousins looked enough alike to bee mistaken as twins.
After graduation, Harvey join the Army during WWII. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and emerged from training as a second lieutenant. He was trained to fly three different bombers: the B-17 bomber, the B-25 bomber and the B-26 bomber. As a volunteer combat officer, his commanding officer advised that he be a pilot trainer because of his success in flying different bombers. He followed his commanding officer’s advice and spent the remainder of the war training bomber pilots.
After the war, Harvey was a commercial pilot for Flick Airlines. He flew members of Ziegfield Follies and aerial photo pioneer Bill Mayfield. He was also friends with Rosco Turner and Bevo Howard, two barnstorming pilots from the 1930s and 1940s.
Harvey bought Friesinger’s Candy from another cousin after his wife decided flying was taking up too much of his time. He and his family ran Friesinger’s until he retired to Bessemet, Alabama, to be closer to his son. He flew until he was 70 years old when his son asked him to stop flying.
He and his wife, Marg had one son, Harvey J. Jr. and three daughters, Elizabeth, Ruth and Diana. They also had eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Harvey J. Schwab passed away at the age of 88 on May 11, 2011.