I was a sophomore at UNC in the Spring of 1969. I had been at some campus function the night that the first lottery was held. I got back to my dorm room and started listening to the radio, having missed hearing the first 30 or so birthdates. I listened intently for the next several hundred birthdates, but they never called out June 8, my birthday. I was beginning to panic, thinking mine had been in that first thirty- which would have put me in a rice paddy, toting a rifle in Viet Nam for sure- when the fellow reached in to pull out the VERY LAST BIRTHDATE. I believe the annoucer said something like "guys with this birthdate are definitely going to avoid the war", then read out: "June 8 " (my glorious birthday!!). Needless to say, my heart leapt for joy, and I am pretty sure that I called my mother to thank her profusely for birthing me on that date. I immediately dropped my student deferment, and have always felt so fortunate to have been thus able to avoid serving during that ill-fated war.
