Highland Park High School Class of 1963

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Highland Park High School Class of 1963 - No Vietnam casualties?

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Body:	<i>Many of our class served honorably. You dishonor those who went and returned George. HPHS has many great men who served from General Wainwright to Stansfield Turner and the Viet alums who went and returned. I am glad we lost none. Indeed. George forgets that Bobby Kennedy was ragging the heck out of Nixon with that same stale 'Rich Man's War' line. Ultimately it forced Nixon to introduce the draft lottery. I had gone through college with a 2-S student deferment but regularly been called up for physicals. When I was about to graduate (1968) I was called for another one and the handwriting was on the wall. I had planned to take a little vacation before starting my job at IBM in Minnesota, but contacted them and asked if I could start immediately after graduation. On my first day I asked the Personnel department to write a letter to the draft board requesting a Critical Skills deferment, which was granted. About a year-and-a-half later thefirst lottery was instituted, in 1968. I remember the day well. I was washing dishes in my apartment not paying attention to the TV which was on when I heard my birthday. (You know how you can be ignoring a nearby conversation and all of a sudden you decode your name being enunciated? It works the same with your birthday.) My head swiveled around and I heard 'June 13. 69.' (Well, somebody had to get that number.) There was no fax in those days, nor email. It took a while for the draft board to mail and a while for the response to be returned, just inside the deadline. I repeated my request for a deferment, they requested employer confirmation, IBM stated that they only made a deferment request once and I had used mine, but they would verify my employment. I carried this on for about a year, then finally ran out of excuses. I was living about 300 miles from Waukegan and about 300 miles from Winnipeg. What to do? I thought about it for a few minutes and decided I had to serve. I closed down my job, my wife and I moved all the furniture to storage and I reported for service. Fortunately the Army decided to take advantage of my civilian-acquired skills and after basic combat training I was assigned to White Sands Missile Range where I served two years as an Electrical Engineering Assistant, MOS 01B. Funny thing about this: My mother and stepfather were very active in Lake County politics, as was my stepfather's family. I was drafted at the same time as my stepcousin, Rusty Scheskie (I think he went to Deerfield High School.) and we went through basic training together. We always assumed that there were members of the opposing party on the draft board.</i> *
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