by | Mar 13, 2009 | Stories
I was a senior at UCLA in December 1969 when the first lottery was conducted. I was living in the dorms and the lottery was broadcast over the sound system during dinner. As lottery numbers and birth dates were called the entire...
by | Mar 9, 2009 | Stories
I was born on September 8. On the day of the 1969 draft lottery I sat in my car waiting to hear what my number would be. My birthday was drawn at No. 184. I always thought it would be too low to keep me out of the draft. So, I shrugged and went about my...
by | Mar 4, 2009 | Stories
The draft dominated my life choices. I had already joined the Air Force ROTC before the lottery, so I could go to graduate school at UCLA. After the lottery, where I got a very bad number, I ended up leaving ROTC and going into the Public Health Service as a...
by | Mar 2, 2009 | Stories
My lottery number was 31 and I had to go through some real changes to get out of the draft. I hired a draft attorney named Michael P. His first suggestion, since my dad died in January 1971, was to try to get me out by having my mother declared dependent on her...
by | Mar 2, 2009 | Stories
I started graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1968, with a I-A classification hanging over my head. I spent the year trying to obtain a teaching deferment for being a chemistry teaching assistant. In February of 1969 I had my...
by | Feb 27, 2009 | Stories
My recollection is that my lottery number was 2, corresponding to my birth date of April 24th. By the time the lottery came along, I was already enrolled in ROTC at UCLA and had a I-D deferment anyway. As it turned out, I did not have to go to Vietnam, but spent...
