Well I sure remember those formative days of my life as well. I too was eligible for the 69 draft lottery. I got a middle third number 174. I knew my chances were good of getting taken against my will, being humiliated and dehumanized and inducted into a military force and sent to kill, or be killed by, someone for whom I had no animosity. I wasn’t going, so my choices were either Canada or jail, and Canada sounded much better to me. I was looking forward to the funny accent and some really cold weather. Well I still had the one semester before I graduated and I was somewhat active in the antiwar protests. I ran into an old boy scout friend from my hometown who had gotten into Divinity school. He told me that was a deferment from the military as well as medical school. I had not known that. I had already received a letter from the draft board letting me know they had me on their mind. It was quite late in the spring to be applying to graduate school but I did it anyway. My main motivation to stay in college had been the draft hanging over my head. I was not a very good student, I did enough to get by but I didn’t excel. What, to my dismay. I was accepted at two schools. I attended Divinity school. When I first got to Div. school I met with a faculty advisor who asked why I was there. I told him I was there for the deferment. He said I wasn’t the only one. I stayed in the program and graduated in three years. By then the situation had changed and I was free from the draft. I have since spent my working career in the residential construction business as a carpenter. The seven years of university life were somewhat squandered on me, but I have probably been a more confident person from it. As the years have gone by among the people I have met have been several Viet Nam Vets. They have all said I did the right thing and were in total agreement with the way I responded to the draft. Also I have met people who thought I took the cowardly route in avoiding the draft. None of them had actually experienced the war although they were quick to judge me. Most people however have been tepid to the whole situation which is as I prefer it. As much as I hated that war and disagreed with the policy makers who got us into it I hate the present war even more and vehemently disagree with the policy makers in power for bringing violence on innocent people, based on a lie. I had hoped back then would be the end of the idiotic use of military force to try to interfere with the basic human rights of other nations who have meant us no harm. It hasn’t ended even today almost forty years removed. I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed to live in a country that openly discusses torture and it’s use, and brings death, misery, and destruction on a whole people. I am embarrassed and ashamed every time I pay taxes that support this idiotic episode of our nations history.
