A good friend and I were at a Wisconsin basketball game the night of the lottery. As I recall the Badgers won the game, and it wasn’t until we got back to our dorm room in Ogg Hall that we learned the results of the lottery. I entered my dorm room to find my roommate busily working on a laundry basket full of ice and beer. He obviously had been doing a good job and was well lubricated by the time I got home. It turned out his lottery number was 3 and mine was 333. We spent the rest of the night and much of the next morning drinking beer and talking about what the future might hold. My roommate had such a low number I felt guilty mine was so high, but I was also happy that I would likely not have to worry about the draft and could continue my education as planned. I continued on but he eventually dropped out of school to return home to Chicago to await the draft. I graduated in 1972 and went on to graduate school. I never learned what happened to my former roommate and whether or not he was drafted.
