I was in my last senior semester, in the fall of 1969, and was sweating bullets as I had a I-A classification. There were several of us (seniors in CE) in the same circumstances. On the night of the first draft lottery announcement we all were on pins and needles. I was one of the lucky ones and got a 239 number.

Within a few weeks, maybe only a week after the first drawing, I heard of two fellow engineering students that had dropped out of school, not because they had low numbers, but just the opposite. They’d gotten high numbers and dropped out of school because they were no longer under the threat of being drafted and no longer needed a student deferment. One of the guys was to graduate in December, ’69 or the following spring. It seemed to me like a real waste, after going that far in engineering, to quit at the very end.