by | May 14, 2009 | Stories
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...
by | May 12, 2009 | Stories
It changed my life. I had bad eyesight, enough to fail the reserves but not the draft. I decided not to chance the lottery and wanted to get into the reserves but I had no "connections". I had been to Israel in ’67 and volunteered to...
by | May 11, 2009 | Stories
I was a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill when the ‘69 draft lottery was held. Like many of my classmates, I’d made the transition from a clean-cut freshman from Winston-Salem to a long-haired war protester, complete with bellbottom jeans and a peace sign belt...
by | May 8, 2009 | Stories
I entered the US Military Academy on 3 July 1967 and was separated from the Corps on 11 June 1968, after having been admitted to UCLA. I still have a hard time explaining why I left, and it remains one of two significant regrets in my life. It seemed like a good idea...
by | May 8, 2009 | Stories
I’d hired a lawyer the previous summer to fix me up with a dubious but effective medical deferment. He said it could come back to haunt me if I ever went into politics, then as now the least of my ambitions. To this day I don’t even know what...
by | May 6, 2009 | Stories
I was attending UCLA and lived in a frat house in 1969. I had made the decision to not apply for my school deferment after being denied a conscientious objector status. I was subsequently classified I-A. I sat around a radio with my frat brothers...
