re: The Vietnam Draft Lottery

My dad was the only one drafted from the small town in Louisiana. Spent time at fort polk training then off to Vietnam. Never talked much about it but as a kid i found a purple heart medal and a scrapbook he kept with photos of his unit in the jungles of vietnam in our shed .Photo's of him holding gernade laucher , him with south vietnam soldiers. He saw a lot of bad stuff from the one conversation i had with him the one time he spoke about it. Maybe that experience made him the person he is today because we really only speak every few months but can respect that he did what he did when he was called to serve.

We had a draft party my freshman year at Berkeley. Everyone ponied up $5, and we listened on a radio station as they pulled the birthdays. A stoner named Steve was the winner with the 21st date pulled. There were 40 of us in the pool, so he got $200 which was a huge sum for a college kid in 1972.

I was in the top 120, but the draft ended before I got sent any paperwork.