to the United States in the 1830s and 1840s and settled in Virginia. His family moved to Richmond, Virginia, and he grew up and attended public schools there. At the age of 10, he lost much of the vision in his right eye in a rock fight, which later disqualified him from normal military service. He was valedictorian of his high school class, but typhoid fever in his senior year made him unable to graduate with his class. Strauss had planned to study physics, of which he developed an amateur's knowledge from reading textbooks, at the University of Virginia. By the time he finally graduated from high school, his family's business had experienced a downturn during the Recession of 1913–1914 and they could not afford to send him. Instead Strauss worked as a traveling shoe salesman for his father's company. In his spare time, Strauss studied his Jewish heritage. He was quite successful in his sales efforts; over the next three years, he saved $20,000 (), enough money for college tuition. Career World War I However, Strauss's mother encouraged him to perform public or humanitarian service. It was 1917; World War I was continuing to devastate parts of Europe and Herbert Hoover had become a symbol of humanitarian altruism by way of heading the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Accordingly, Strauss took the train to Washington, D.C., and talked his way into serving without pay as an assistant to Hoover. (Strauss and his biographer differ on whether this happened in February or May 1917, but the latter seems more likely.) Hoover became chief of the United States Food Administration. Strauss worked well and soon was promoted to Hoover's private secretary and confidant. In that position he made powerful contacts that would serve him later on. One such contact he made was with attorney Harvey Hollister Bundy. Another was with Robert A. Taft, a counsel for the Food Administration. Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Hoover became head of the post-war American Relief Administration, headquartered in Paris, and Strauss joined him there once more as his private secretary. Acting on behalf of a nearly destitute diplomatic representative of Finland, Rudolf Holsti, whom he met in Paris, Strauss persuaded Hoover to urge President Woodrow Wilson to recognize Finland's independence from Russia. Besides the U.S. food relief organizations, Strauss worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to relieve the suffering