I was still thinking that it was a person’s patriotic duty t

I was still thinking that it was a person’s patriotic duty to serve and so I was pretty much opposed to the demonstrators and protesters. In retrospect, this was a really messed up situation and the US involvement in Viet Nam was doomed from the start. I just wish that smarter politicians had been in charge.

Kathy and I were married in November of 1967, unfortunately about a year after the marriage exemption to the draft was terminated.

In 1968 with graduation approaching, someone in the Rice administration had an insight into how to deal with the draft on behalf of the engineering students.

I was in a 5 year professional masters program in which we received a bachelor of arts degree at the completion of 4 years and then the masters at 5. Unfortunately, the draft boards considered this BA to be completion of college and that made us prime cannon fodder. So the administration allowed us to defer our bachelors degree for one year, sent a letter to each of our draft boards describing the deferral and the five year degree and got us all a one year extension of our II-S deferments. Yay!