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September 14

My dad had a low number but luckily had a connection with a local officer from the naval reserve, so he joined up. Then he lucked up during basic by being a pretty solid basketball player, and making friends with an exceptional basketball player who played on the naval traveling team, so he was stationed as a supply clerk on a destroyer that was basically just a goodwill ship that travelled from country to country and played national and Olympic teams. Almost caused an international incident for punching a Turkish player in the face during a game. He had about the most plum experience possible during that time, and he still refers to it as the worst stretch of his overall life. My uncle didn't have the same experience. I can't fathom what it was like for y'all during that time.
 
sailordeac said:
I was in that draft lottery, and my number turned out to be right on the borderline. I got lucky and they did not draft me. I missed out on going to Vietnam. Sometimes you need luck in life.
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so you never were in the navy? huh.
 
bluefish said:
For all you youngbloods, this is a special day. September 14 was the first date pulled from the hopper in the very first draft lottery during the Vietnam War.
I wasn't in it because I was a year too young. If you lost your student exemption by flunking out or being graduated you'd be in the jungle in 6 weeks. Final exams carried a little more emphasis then. So the lottery could provide a respite.

On that night we were all sitting around in the old Lambda Chi house, long before the dean of men buried us for "decades of renegade behavior," although I think he was just pissed because one of my little brothers fucked his daughter. Anyway, at some very late night hour some dude who none of us knew wandered in the front door buck naked wrapped in a giant American flag with a 6-pack stringer still holding two cans of bud in one hand. He stumbled, regained his balance, looked up at us and said, "When you're asleep, I'll be awake." Then he turned, left and disappeared back into the night.

I'm guessing he was a senior and his birthday was September 14.
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Good recall. I was there with you. LXA was always on probation and we earned it repeatedly. The dude you referenced was a PIKA. They were always on suspension. They earned it as well.

Gloomy night. I pulled a 32 and realized my future after graduation was probably determined for me. Changes the way you see the world and your place in it.
 
My dad was in the 69 lottery and drew six.

Got hurt stateside and shipped home.

I never knew the September 14 signifance. Good stories.
 
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My Dad was working on a production line for Alcoa Aluminum in Charlotte when he was drafted in late 1966. He spent a fun filled year in the Mekong Delta in 1968-1969, arriving at Can Tho just in time to enjoy the Tet Offensive. Gotta love that white privilege.
 
Since I started this thread (something I barely ever do), I guess it behooves me to wrap it up.

My older brother, who was graduated from Clemson in Applied Math and Computer Science, was in Advanced ROTC. Upon graduation he was assigned to
Ft. Huachuca in Arizona. He and another young officer were selected to take over the communications installation there. The Army sent him to Ft. Dix in N.J.
for 6 weeks of Advanced Training and he returned to Arizona. His CO told him that he would spend the rest of his time in the Army there. So he and his wife
decided to have a child. About the same time she found out that she was pregnant he and the other guy received orders to go to Vietnam.

His CO went batshit, hopped on a plane and flew to D.C. where he bitched and screamed at everyone he could find, getting absolutely nowhere. So my brother went to Saigon.
He spent a year there running computers where he said they had 6-8 guys to do 2 guys' work. They couldn't leave the compound for fear they'd be shot, so mostly they were just bored to tears. His first child was born while he was there.

When he returned he took me aside and told me that the people we were ostensibly defending were probably worse than the people we were supposed to be fighting.
He told me that if they wanted me to go over there, to go to Canada. I was prepared to do so when I got lucky and drew a straight, 234. I surrendered my student
deferment and became draft eligible for a year. They never got near 234 and I was free. The sun felt a little warmer. The air was a little sweeter.

58,000 of my brothers came home in a box. A whole lot more came home and would never be the same. They weren't so lucky, and it was all for nothing.

Because things are the way they are, it seemed like all the brothers at Lambda Chi who were in Advanced ROTC got numbers in the 300's, while all the hippies got
numbers in the teens. Strange times indeed, my friends, strange times.
 
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I was in that lottery. My number was 7. My brother was a Marine in Vietnam serving as a gunner on a Medi-Vac helicopter. I enrolled in ROTC thinking that if I was going I wanted to go as an officer. Rolled the dice after two years and just got lucky. Many others in my position accepted the commission and had to serve active duty even though the draft had ended.
 
Would like some more details about Bluefish's frat bro plowing Dean Reece's daughter. For starters, was she a Wake student, or was she a high schooler working at The Food King who showed up at the party and "had a lot of catching up to do".
 
My dad had a low number and went ahead and joined the army. He wound up bouncing around bases teaching kids how to shoot M-16s because he was really good at it.

He has good story about when he was at Fort Bragg and LBJ was there unexpectedly to send another company of new soldiers off to war one morning. Well, most of them went out and got wasted the night before and weren't available for a parade so leadership found a group that had just gotten off of a plane from Nam and put them in front of the president without telling them WTF was going on. So Johnson spends twenty minutes talking about courage and thanking them and the dudes are freaking out. Finally the whole thing ended without them breaking ranks and they got to go on with their lives.
 
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Didn't Lambda Chi end up getting kicked off campus for having a live-in prostitute on the halls, or was that just a rumor?
 
I was incorrect; I was part of the 2nd draft that took place in July, 1970 for the birth year of 1951.
I knew I was wrong because while I did draw #106, I remember the birth date before me was #365 and the day after my birthday was #1. Thought that was quite peculiar.
Still shit my knickers thinking my ass was grass and I was heading to Canada.
 
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tigerswood said:
Didn't Lambda Chi end up getting kicked off campus for having a live-in prostitute on the halls, or was that just a rumor?
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I don't know. I also heard that rumor, but some response said that wasn't the Lambda Chi's but the Alpha Sigs or someone else. What I remember hearing was upon the return trip from the Spring Formal at Tanglewood or Bermuda Run, or somewhere out there, there was an accident which unfortunately caused someone's death. I think that seems more likely.

Now one of my brothers did bring home one of the strippers from the Stokes County Fair (AKA King County Fair), but that was just a one night thing, and long before the hammer fell.
 
My understanding of the demise of LXA squares with bluefish's. The awful fatal accident was the final straw. BTW, we weren't just kicked off campus - our chapter lost its charter.

Dean Reece had a long-standing vendetta against our chapter. The "renegade behavior" began in the late 60's, when we were repeatedly on social probation for having parties that Mr. Reece disapproved of. Then a number of brothers embraced marijuana, which was a shock to ultra-conservative Wake Forest (students had to attend mandatory chapel service twice a week until the fall of 1969). Dean Reece actually made a snide remark to me one day about our "drug culture".

The version of heard the hooker story that I heard was that the gal needed a place to stay for a while and wasn't servicing any brothers.
 
I really feel like the olddeacs had a vastly different college experience than the rest of us. It's fascinating.
 
DownEastDeac said:
Would like some more details about Bluefish's frat bro plowing Dean Reece's daughter. For starters, was she a Wake student, or was she a high schooler working at The Food King who showed up at the party and "had a lot of catching up to do".
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To the best of my admittedly faded memory, she was a Wake student, albeit a freshmen.
 
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