A Post Script
In October 1968, I finally received a Notice of Classification Card
that reflected my failing the physical at Fort Hamilton. I was I-Y,
which was far enough down the list to let me apply for a real job.
More than three years later, I received the card shown above.
The upshot of my "lost summer of 1968" was a Plan B. I began an interim career in Information Technology, which (I thought) ended a few years later, so that I could study full-time for a second degree, as I had originally intended. Once I had earned it, however, I realized that it made more sense for me to return to IT, which then became my career.
If pressed, I suppose that I could feel resentment about being subjected to my lost summer of 1968, which need not have happened. Roughly 25% of the Selective Service's physicals in that era resulted in rejections. Had all early Boomers been given physicals in 1964, perhaps 100,000 men would have been filtered out at that time, and processing the remainder in 1968 would have been easier and quicker. I would have been one of the 100,000, and I would not have been languishing that summer. I would have been following my plan.
But I can't think that way for more than a split second, because I had had things too easy. I knew men who went to Vietnam and did not return; I knew others who were forever changed by the experience. I have since met more of the latter. I feel grateful to have known such people and, frankly, I also am grateful that I am not one of them. I was lucky in 1968.
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