Leo Francis Koch was born in Dickinson, North Dakota on February 8, 1916, the third of nine children born to German farmers Valentine and Barbara Koch. In 1929 the family moved to Petaluma, California where he graduated from Petaluma High School. After attending Santa Rosa Junior College, Koch transferred to the University of California-Berkeley where he earned a B.S. in botany in 1941.
After college, Koch worked for a year in the California defense industry. In 1943 he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer aboard an infantry landing craft in the Pacific Ocean. In 1946 Koch was discharged but retained a commission in the Naval Reserves. He resigned from the Reserves in 1958, however, after a national security investigation of military personnel alleged that he had participated in subversive activities as a college student.
Leo Koch married Edna Brown in 1940, but they soon separated. In 1944 Koch obtained a divorce and married his second wife, Shirley Jane Miller. They had three children; Toni, Terry, and Ted, who were born in 1944, 1947, and 1949, respectively.
Under the G.I. Bill Koch entered graduate school at the University of Michigan in 1947. He received a master's degree in genetics in 1948 and two years later completed a Ph.D. in biology. From 1951 to 1955 he taught, first at Bakersfield College (Bakersfield, California) and then at Tulane University in New Orleans. In 1955 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana as an assistant professor of biology.
During his tenure at the University of Illinois, Koch became active in the American Humanist Association, an organization he first joined in 1953. From 1957 to 1960, he held several posts including secretary of the Committee on Humanist Programs and Intergroup Cooperation, chairman of the Humanist Student Committee, assistant editor of Free Mind, and member of the board of directors. He also lectured and wrote extensively about the philosophy of humanism and was instrumental in organizing new chapters in New Orleans, Denver, and Illinois.
In 1958, Koch joined the School of Living, a nonprofit adult educational organization of approximately 1500 members based in Brookville, Ohio. The school offered its members solutions to the “fourteen major problems of living” and promoted an organic, as opposed to mechanistic, philosophy of life. The school also espoused alternative life styles such as homesteading, communes, and intentional communities. It had no set curriculum or formal classrooms, and it functioned through publications, meetings, and an annual Congress on Balanced Living. Koch served as president of the school, and in 1965 was elected president of the board of trustees. He also edited and contributed to its journal, A Way Out.
In April 1960, Koch was fired from his job at the University of Illinois because of a letter he wrote to the student newspaper condoning sexual intercourse among unmarried college students. The American Association of University Professors and the University Faculty Committee on Academic Freedom urged Koch's reinstatement, but the University trustees supported President D.D. Henry's action. During the ensuing legal debate colleagues and friends formed the Committee for Leo Koch to raise funds for appeals and provide living expenses. The entire incident caught the attention of the national media and Koch undertook a cross-country tour, lecturing extensively about the case and his views on academic freedom and sexual morality. Although the Koch Case came before the U.S. Supreme Court in October 1963, it was not accepted for review, and the Illinois Supreme Court's decision denying Koch's petition for reinstatement was allowed to stand.
After his dismissal from the University of Illinois, Koch tried unsuccessfully to find employment as a college professor, and between 1961 and 1964 he moved several times and held a series of positions. In 1961 he worked as a research technician for a Santa Cruz, California mushroom grower. The following year he served as science consultant to Presidio Hill, a private high school in San Francisco. During the summer of 1963 he was hired to teach at Summerlane Camp, a libertarian, free school near Rosman, North Carolina. This employment ended when white residents of Rosman burned the integrated camp. Koch then moved to New York City, where he completed a manuscript on sex education for youth. Despite strenuous efforts, he was unable to publish the book.
Following his departure from the University of Illinois Leo Koch developed a new set of interests and affiliations. While he continued to serve as president of the School of Living, he withdrew from the AHA, due in part to its failure to support his case against the University of Illinois. In 1962 he formed a liberal discussion group called Active Liberals of Santa Cruz in response to anti-Communist newspaper ads placed by conservatives. In 1963 Koch joined the New York City League for Sexual Freedom, an educational and reform organization concerned with obscenity and censorship, and served on its advisory committee. A year later, Koch founded the New York State Committee for the Adoption of a Revised Penal Code to support legislation abolishing criminal penalties for adultery, homosexuality, and other sexual behavior. Koch also participated in a civil rights demonstration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Leo and Shirley Koch divorced in 1964 and Koch married his third wife, Mary Berman. Together with Mary's daughter from a previous marriage, the Kochs settled in Rockland County, New York. There Koch became director of Collaberg School, a progressive school modelled after Summerhill in England.
In 1964 Koch joined the Rockland County chapter of CORE, initially serving on its executive and publicity committees and later chairing the Committee on Peace. After 1964 Koch's interests and activities shifted from sexual education and reform to opposition to the War in Vietnam. In 1965 he became chairman of the Rockland County Committee to End the War in Vietnam (RCCEWV), and in 1966 he formed Rockland County Veterans for Peace. Koch also spoke at anti-war teach ins on college campuses in 1965 and 1970. In 1967 he organized a contingent of protesters for the March on Washington. Koch also resigned from his post at Collaberg School in that year in order to work as coordinator for Vietnam Summer, a national anti-war canvassing project. In addition, Koch represented RCCEWV and Veterans for Peace in coalitions of peace and veterans groups throughout New York.
Koch believed that opposition to the war in Vietnam should be carried into electoral politics. Because he felt the Democratic Party was insufficiently committed to ending U.S. involvement in the war he joined the Liberal Party of New York. In 1965 he formed a branch in Stony Point and the following year became chairman of the county organization. In 1965 Koch ran for Liberal Party delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention and in 1968 he ran for a seat in the New York Assembly, but he was unsuccessful in both races. In 1969, Koch served as the Liberal Party representative on Rockland County's Charter and Reapportionment Commission, a body responsible for remapping districts and reorganizing county government.
Throughout the 1960s, Koch participated in activities associated with the youth counterculture. He experimented scientifically with hallucinogenic drugs and took LSD as an aid to psychotherapy at Timothy Leary's International Institute for Advanced Study. At various times he lived in communes and cooperatives. He also visited nudist resorts and wrote numerous articles about nudism. In 1969 he attended the Woodstock Music Festival where his wife Mary operated a concession stand.
In 1970 Koch retired from political activism and moved his family to a 113-acre homestead near Boles, Arkansas.
