Greetings from the president ...

My father was a big influence in my facing up to military service during the Vietnam War. That's him in his Navy uniform in June of 1943, on leave in Richmond before shipping out to the South Pacific in World War II. (Family photo)

The first half of the 1960s was a heady time for me as I pushed ahead in my radio career. But not so much for the nation. JFK's assassination had rattled the country's psyche as few things short of war can. And then there was the actual war -- the one that was escalating in Vietnam. People that I knew were being drafted, but sentiment among my generation was generally anti-war. Some young men were burning draft cards. I heard the term "draft dodger" used for the first time. Occasionally, hardhats (working class) actually battled longhairs ("hippies") in public confrontations. People in uniform were being called "baby-killers" and were often shunned. There was as yet no all-out generational conflict on the home front, but the times were ripe.

I remember hearing the radio news reports in 1964 that made it clear that Lyndon Baines Johnson was determined to widen the scale of the war. The USS Maddox, an American spy ship, was in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam on August 2 when it was attacked. Later, both the Maddox and the destroyer Turner Joy reported a second attack. The North Vietnamese insisted there was no second attack. The U.S. Naval Communication Center in the Philippines reviewed the ships' messages and questioned whether any second attack had actually occurred.

Nevertheless, LBJ rammed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution through Congress: It gave him the authorization, without a formal declaration of war, to use military force in Southeast Asia. A large-scale troop buildup began immediately.

As young men in the 1960s, we were all aware that we were eligible for the draft. I had registered, as had my contemporaries, with the local Selective Service Board -- the draft board, as it was known -- when I turned 18. There were exemptions, and as a college student I was enjoying mine. I was safe as long as I was enrolled full-time. But the draft was always there in the back of my mind, and I definitely did not want to go to Vietnam.

I made it safely through 1964 and 1965, enjoying college in the morning and loving being an afternoon deejay. But in early 1966, things changed: I awakened one night with an excruciating pain in my gut. I woke my parents, and my mom gave me some sort of pain reliever and called A.I. Weinstein, our family doctor. As dawn broke, we were in the car on the way to his office on Colonial Avenue. He took a good look at me, poked my stomach, did a urine test and sent me off to Stuart Circle Hospital.

I spent two days at the hospital on nothing but clear liquids and undergoing all manner of X-rays and other tests. Still puzzled about a diagnosis, the surgeon decided to slice me open and see what was inside. What he discovered was a gall bladder with a congenitally deficient blood supply. My pain was because the dying tissue could no longer deliver stored bile, which helps digest fats: I had indigestion in a major way.

The surgeon removed the near-dead gall bladder -- the procedure is called a cholecystectomy -- and a week later I was at home healing at the rapid rate that only the young enjoy.

But ... I had to drop out of the University of Richmond for the semester. There went my draft exemption. I was no longer a full-time student. I went back to work at WMBG and waited to see what would happen. There was no draft lottery -- that wouldn't begin until 1969 -- and we didn't know how the draft board made its decisions. We only knew that some of us would be drafted, and some wouldn't.

In late April, a letter from the draft board arrived. I was to report for a physical. I went to the Federal Building downtown on the appointed date. They bused about 50 of us out to the Defense General Supply Center at Bellwood in Chesterfield County, where we all stripped to our underwear, turned our heads and coughed, had our blood pressure and temperature taken, and filled out reams of forms. Then we were individually interviewed by a physician.

There were old-wives' tales about how to not pass the physical. One way I heard a lot about was putting bars of soap in your armpits for hours on end before reporting for your physical. It was said to increase blood pressure dramatically. I don't know anybody who ever did that. Another way to avoid the draft -- a more certain way, and much more serious -- was to "check the box" on one of the forms we filled out while undergoing our physicals. "Are you a homosexual? Check yes or no." A few checked "yes," a very few. I checked "no."

My decision to lie when filling out the form was based on many factors. My father, my brother Jimmy Jr., and my Uncle Joe had all served during World War II. My brother Bobby was in the Navy during the Korean War. I admired that. I saw serving as a test of manhood, and I wanted to pass the test. I wanted to stand up and do my duty, even though the prospect frightened me deeply. I felt that I had to face that fear and deal with the reality of it, and not cop out by "checking the box."

Call me naïve. I'll disagree with you, but I won't argue the point. In other ways I really was naïve, even for the times, but the decision I made when I filled out the form was for sound reasons. I believed that then. I believe it today.

The next weeks were difficult. I got a letter saying I had passed the physical. And I waited.

"Greetings from the President of the United States," the next letter began. It went on to order me to report to the Federal Building on such-and-such a date for induction into the armed forces of the United States of America. I read the letter twice standing in the living room. Then I showed it to my parents. My mom cried. My dad looked grim.

The vast majority of those drafted in 1966 were ordered into the Army. The active-duty commitment was for two years. But I was no fool. I knew that the Army infantry gobbled up most inductees, and I knew that being in the infantry exposed you to the high odds of spending a year in the jungles of Vietnam -- completely in harm's way.

The Air Force, on the other hand, had no infantry. Those who volunteered for the Air Force had to commit to four years of active duty, but I believed that the odds of an enlisted man dying in the jungle were almost negligible. Two days after receiving my "Greetings" letter, I went back to the Federal Building and joined the Air Force. I had already passed the physical, so the process was fairly streamlined. I was ordered to report back in late June and be shipped off to learn how to march, fire an M14 rifle, and make a bed with the top blanket stretched so tight that you could bounce a quarter on it.

On June 24, 1966 -- a Friday -- I kissed my mom goodbye, shook my father's hand, and was off to take the oath at the Federal Building. When that was done, we new enlistees boarded a bus for Byrd Airport. There we caught our flight on a commercial airliner to Texas. (It was the first time I had ever flown commercial, although I had been on a joyride in a small, single-engine plane in my senior year in high school with my classmate Bill Souder, who had his pilot's license.)

On the morning of June 25, 1966, I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio to begin basic training. I was officially an Airman Basic, the lowest of the low.

I was scared, but I was determined.