Several of us spent the evening drinking and listening as the numbers were called. There were six of us and as it turned out five of us wound up in the first 100 numbers called. By the end of the evening we were all drunk. Despite the fact we were all students we knew some of us would be drafted.
I realized the next morning looking at the numbers that something was wrong with the lottery. The five of our group that got low numbers were born in the last four months of the year. I spent the whole day going over the numbers and before the first news of a possible error I had determined that the draw could not have been random based on statistical analysis. I told my roommates what I had discovered.
Well, the next day all the info I had put together showed up in the college newspaper. I hadn’t given them my numbers–my roommate had taken all of my stats and gone to the newspaper office and all of the calculations wound up being published. By later that day some professor from Michigan had come to the same conclusion and reported it in the news.
So, in May of 1970 I got the notice to report for a physical in Portland. I was 6’2" and weighed 247 at the time. I didn’t even know there was a weight requirement when I went for the physical. They said I was 12 pounds overweight and told me to return in 6 months. I wasn’t interested in spending time in Vietnam or the military and when I realized that weight could keep me out I spent the next 6 months getting fat. By the time of my 2nd physical I weighed over 270. I thought I would be called back but I was classified IV-F after that.
(Ed. note: For an article on the non-random nature of the 1969 drawing see the LINKS page of this site).
