I was a sophomore at UCLA in 1969 when the first draft lottery was held. I lived with three other guys in an apartment just off campus in an area known as the student ghetto (remember, this is the Westwood Village part of LA, so take ghetto with a grain of salt). I had already looked into alternatives and thought that Australia was right for me. When the day of the lottery came, we huddled around our semi-functional black and white TV. I’ll never forget the feeling when my number came up 364. Can’t do much better than that! Two of the others came in over 300. The remaining guy had diabetes. The partying was intense that night. Had my number been different, I can’t imagine that I would have stayed here and my life would have been changed forever. Win some, lose some, but thankfully that one was a win.
