First Draft Lottery Research Paper
goals, however, my Uncle Sam stepped in and made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
On December 1, 1969, the U.S. Selective Service System held a lottery to determine the order in which men who were born between 1944 and 1950 would be drafted into military service. Each day in a leap year was assigned a number from 1 to 366, the numbers were written on pieces of paper which were placed in plastic capsules, and the capsules were drawn from a glass jar.
Every man who had the birth date assigned to the first number drawn in the lottery was drafted first, every man who had the birth date assigned to the second number drawn was drafted second, and so on. No one knew how many men would be drafted in 1970, so no one could predict which lottery number …show more content…
or corresponding birth date would be the cutoff point for the draft. In more practical terms, no American man born between 1944 and 1950 could predict if he would be drafted in 1970 or not.
The first draft lottery was televised, and a few of us got together to have our fortunes told by the Selective Service System. The night started out light with everyone joking how their number would be the first one picked, but the joking was quickly displaced by sober reality as each number was slowly and methodically called.
My lottery number was 204. This wasn't as bad as Nickie's 82, but it wasn't as good as Dave's 279 or Joe's 337. For the four of us, attending medical school in the near future seemed out of the question, but Nickie's 82 and my 204 seemed to guarantee at least two of us of early acceptance into the University of Vietnam's acclaimed program in military science.
To call Nickie Moretti a redneck would be vastly understating the case. Nickie was a 5’6” Italian from Dunmore with slick, black hair, a dark complexion, and black eyes that were all pupils. He looked like something from the road company of West Side Story. No one knew if he was a shark or a jet, and no one was stupid enough to ask.
Before entering college, Nickie had more fights than Progresso had olives, but he still managed to graduate from high school with honors. Nickie joked that all of his high school teachers were too afraid of him to give him anything lower than an A.
In college, Nickie was a solid student. Much like me, he had to work during his spare time in his father's produce warehouse in Scranton. Consequently, would-be A's were turned into B's.
If Nickie had one shortcoming, it was his perception of being honest. Unfortunately, he was as subtle as a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal, and most people weren't ready for Nickie's concept of the truth.
He would routinely go out of his way to let people know they were rubbing him the wrong way and had very little time with which to amend their errant ways. He told every girl he knew who was applying to medical school that women were not meant to walk down the hallowed halls of medical school but intended to walk in their kitchens, barefoot and pregnant. He even offered to help a few of the girls achieve such a goal.
Similarly, he was quick to intervene in the lives of Barry Flecker and various members of his inner circle. Nickie offered to demonstrate to the entire student body how silver spoons could be removed from the mouths of Barry and his playmates, and reinserted into other prominent apertures.
Following one heated encounter in which Nickie and Karl Krebs expressed obvious differences of opinion, the campus bookmakers were giving two-to-one odds Nickie and Karl would tussle before they parted company at graduation, and three-to-one odds Nickie would win the fight.
No one would deny Nickie was blunt, but he was also aware of who he was, and of what he could and couldn't control. He realized his rejections from medical school and his low number in the draft lottery represented a fait accompli.
By the end of the televised lottery, he had already made the decision to enlist in the Army. To know Nickie was to realize his word was history, and Nickie Moretti was about to become a part of the United States Army if the Army was ready for Nickie or not.
With the way my luck had been running, I expected a low number in the lottery. Unlike Nickie, however, I had no idea how I would handle this latest turn of fate.
Based on the projections of the numbers that would be called for the draft, I perceived my lottery number as a one-way ticket to Vietnam and wasn't surprised to discover military recruiters did as …show more content…
well.
During the weeks immediately following the lottery, I started receiving a seemingly endless barrage of phone calls from area recruiters. Each recruiter informed me my draft lottery number would be coming up in the near future, and I could avoid being drafted by enlisting in the service ahead of time. Each recruiter extolled the virtues of his particular branch of the service, and guaranteed an immediate four-year enlistment on my part would allow me to finish college and postpone induction until after graduation.
Some of the recruiters were more innovative than others.
The Navy recruiter, for example, inquired about my career goals. When I told him I planned to become a physician, he guaranteed me training as a hospital corpsman if I enlisted in the Navy. He further guaranteed he would personally help me find a job in a Wilkes-Barre hospital as a nurse's aide when I completed my four-year enlistment.
I asked him if a college degree and four years experience as a hospital corpsman wouldn't over-qualify me for a job as a nurse's aide. In a patronizing tone of voice, he replied the only true motivation for becoming a doctor should be the sincere desire to help people, and as a hospital corpsman, I would be helping people in much the same way I would as a physician.
Accepting this premise as true for both of us, he asked, "If you’re interested in health care and really want to help people, what’s the difference if you become a doctor or a nurse’s aide?”
The economic considerations of Medicine were never high on my list of reasons for wanting to become a physician, but in a desperate attempt to end the conversation, I replied, "About $100,000 a
year.”
Although much less innovative, the Army recruiter demonstrated greater skill in investigating the backgrounds of each of his potential recruits. He initiated our conversation by congratulating me on my fine academic record at King’s and expressing admiration for me as a skilled craftsman who knew how to repair shoes.
He further informed me he was personally responsible for recruiting a cousin of one of the inventors of the vinyl uppers in men’s shoes. I thanked the recruiter for his compliments, congratulated him on his ability to recruit the relatives of the rich and famous, and informed him my career goals did not include a four-year hitch in the Army.
The Air Force recruiter tried using a technique more befitting a college man. He informed me he was cognizant of my career goals and assured me enlistment in the Air Force would involve highly specialized training tailored to my career objectives. He further informed me the particulars of such training were so classified he was not at liberty to discuss them over the phone.
Hearing this, I felt like I was being offered training that was tailored to my career objectives, and only taught on Sundays by some little old general from Pasadena. I was also certain the recruiter's mother had been scared by a used car salesman while she was carrying her son in utero, and sharing this observation with the recruiter, I set him free to search for other pigeons that were capable of flying with the Air Force.
Freud once said a search for intelligent life on other planets should only be undertaken after an exhaustive search for intelligent life on earth. Even though my dealings with the various recruiters helped reinforce this philosophy, I still had to deal with the reality of the Vietnam War and possibility of military service in my future.
I didn't believe in the Vietnam War, but I did believe in my father. In him, I saw a man who left his own homeland to come to America in search of freedom. I saw a man whose contribution to the preservation of freedom was World War II.
Although my father didn’t understand all the complicated socioeconomic elements upon which the Vietnam War was based, he understood what it meant to be free. In many ways, the choice my father had to make when his generation was going to war was easier than the choice I would have to make. World War II was as easy as “us or them.” The Vietnam War wasn't quite as easy.
On December 1, 1969, the U.S. Selective Service System held a lottery to determine the order in which men who were born between 1944 and 1950 would be drafted into military service. Each day in a leap year was assigned a number from 1 to 366, the numbers were written on pieces of paper which were placed in plastic capsules, and the capsules were drawn from a glass jar.
Every man who had the birth date assigned to the first number drawn in the lottery was drafted first, every man who had the birth date assigned to the second number drawn was drafted second, and so on. No one knew how many men would be drafted in 1970, so no one could predict which lottery number …show more content…
or corresponding birth date would be the cutoff point for the draft. In more practical terms, no American man born between 1944 and 1950 could predict if he would be drafted in 1970 or not.
The first draft lottery was televised, and a few of us got together to have our fortunes told by the Selective Service System. The night started out light with everyone joking how their number would be the first one picked, but the joking was quickly displaced by sober reality as each number was slowly and methodically called.
My lottery number was 204. This wasn't as bad as Nickie's 82, but it wasn't as good as Dave's 279 or Joe's 337. For the four of us, attending medical school in the near future seemed out of the question, but Nickie's 82 and my 204 seemed to guarantee at least two of us of early acceptance into the University of Vietnam's acclaimed program in military science.
To call Nickie Moretti a redneck would be vastly understating the case. Nickie was a 5’6” Italian from Dunmore with slick, black hair, a dark complexion, and black eyes that were all pupils. He looked like something from the road company of West Side Story. No one knew if he was a shark or a jet, and no one was stupid enough to ask.
Before entering college, Nickie had more fights than Progresso had olives, but he still managed to graduate from high school with honors. Nickie joked that all of his high school teachers were too afraid of him to give him anything lower than an A.
In college, Nickie was a solid student. Much like me, he had to work during his spare time in his father's produce warehouse in Scranton. Consequently, would-be A's were turned into B's.
If Nickie had one shortcoming, it was his perception of being honest. Unfortunately, he was as subtle as a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal, and most people weren't ready for Nickie's concept of the truth.
He would routinely go out of his way to let people know they were rubbing him the wrong way and had very little time with which to amend their errant ways. He told every girl he knew who was applying to medical school that women were not meant to walk down the hallowed halls of medical school but intended to walk in their kitchens, barefoot and pregnant. He even offered to help a few of the girls achieve such a goal.
Similarly, he was quick to intervene in the lives of Barry Flecker and various members of his inner circle. Nickie offered to demonstrate to the entire student body how silver spoons could be removed from the mouths of Barry and his playmates, and reinserted into other prominent apertures.
Following one heated encounter in which Nickie and Karl Krebs expressed obvious differences of opinion, the campus bookmakers were giving two-to-one odds Nickie and Karl would tussle before they parted company at graduation, and three-to-one odds Nickie would win the fight.
No one would deny Nickie was blunt, but he was also aware of who he was, and of what he could and couldn't control. He realized his rejections from medical school and his low number in the draft lottery represented a fait accompli.
By the end of the televised lottery, he had already made the decision to enlist in the Army. To know Nickie was to realize his word was history, and Nickie Moretti was about to become a part of the United States Army if the Army was ready for Nickie or not.
With the way my luck had been running, I expected a low number in the lottery. Unlike Nickie, however, I had no idea how I would handle this latest turn of fate.
Based on the projections of the numbers that would be called for the draft, I perceived my lottery number as a one-way ticket to Vietnam and wasn't surprised to discover military recruiters did as …show more content…
well.
During the weeks immediately following the lottery, I started receiving a seemingly endless barrage of phone calls from area recruiters. Each recruiter informed me my draft lottery number would be coming up in the near future, and I could avoid being drafted by enlisting in the service ahead of time. Each recruiter extolled the virtues of his particular branch of the service, and guaranteed an immediate four-year enlistment on my part would allow me to finish college and postpone induction until after graduation.
Some of the recruiters were more innovative than others.
The Navy recruiter, for example, inquired about my career goals. When I told him I planned to become a physician, he guaranteed me training as a hospital corpsman if I enlisted in the Navy. He further guaranteed he would personally help me find a job in a Wilkes-Barre hospital as a nurse's aide when I completed my four-year enlistment.
I asked him if a college degree and four years experience as a hospital corpsman wouldn't over-qualify me for a job as a nurse's aide. In a patronizing tone of voice, he replied the only true motivation for becoming a doctor should be the sincere desire to help people, and as a hospital corpsman, I would be helping people in much the same way I would as a physician.
Accepting this premise as true for both of us, he asked, "If you’re interested in health care and really want to help people, what’s the difference if you become a doctor or a nurse’s aide?”
The economic considerations of Medicine were never high on my list of reasons for wanting to become a physician, but in a desperate attempt to end the conversation, I replied, "About $100,000 a
year.”
Although much less innovative, the Army recruiter demonstrated greater skill in investigating the backgrounds of each of his potential recruits. He initiated our conversation by congratulating me on my fine academic record at King’s and expressing admiration for me as a skilled craftsman who knew how to repair shoes.
He further informed me he was personally responsible for recruiting a cousin of one of the inventors of the vinyl uppers in men’s shoes. I thanked the recruiter for his compliments, congratulated him on his ability to recruit the relatives of the rich and famous, and informed him my career goals did not include a four-year hitch in the Army.
The Air Force recruiter tried using a technique more befitting a college man. He informed me he was cognizant of my career goals and assured me enlistment in the Air Force would involve highly specialized training tailored to my career objectives. He further informed me the particulars of such training were so classified he was not at liberty to discuss them over the phone.
Hearing this, I felt like I was being offered training that was tailored to my career objectives, and only taught on Sundays by some little old general from Pasadena. I was also certain the recruiter's mother had been scared by a used car salesman while she was carrying her son in utero, and sharing this observation with the recruiter, I set him free to search for other pigeons that were capable of flying with the Air Force.
Freud once said a search for intelligent life on other planets should only be undertaken after an exhaustive search for intelligent life on earth. Even though my dealings with the various recruiters helped reinforce this philosophy, I still had to deal with the reality of the Vietnam War and possibility of military service in my future.
I didn't believe in the Vietnam War, but I did believe in my father. In him, I saw a man who left his own homeland to come to America in search of freedom. I saw a man whose contribution to the preservation of freedom was World War II.
Although my father didn’t understand all the complicated socioeconomic elements upon which the Vietnam War was based, he understood what it meant to be free. In many ways, the choice my father had to make when his generation was going to war was easier than the choice I would have to make. World War II was as easy as “us or them.” The Vietnam War wasn't quite as easy.