The TV lounge in the basement of Phillips Dormitory at UNC-Greensboro was Standing Room Only with more than two hundred young men and a few co-eds, some of the guys’ girlfriends, on the evening of December 1, 1970. We were anxiously awaiting the broadcast of a new lottery for the military draft which would send some men to war, perhaps to their death in Vietnam, and others most likely would be out of harm’s way for awhile. This was a departure from the former “the oldest go first” lottery.
Three hundred and sixty-six blue capsules, each containing a slip of paper with a date written on it, one for every day of the year, were drawn from a large glass jar and assigned in rank-order to a list reflecting the order in which men would be drafted when needed.
The male students watched and listened rather intently and silently as the first few capsules were drawn. Then, finally, someone’s birthday was pulled from a capsule and announced. Gasps and exclamations… until a few seconds later the young man breathed a sigh of relief and smiled when his birthday was assigned to a slot with a low risk of being drafted.
The lottery continued and seemed endless as I waited and fretted for my upcoming birthday, December 12, to be drawn. Although I had a student deferment for another year or two, I was quite relieved when I heard I my birthday was assigned slot 314. There was little chance I would be drafted.
This was a exceptional lottery which no one wanted to win, but certainly there were some losers that night. Some left the TV room and our lives forever.