Yesterday and today marks the 40th anniversary of the last U.S Military withdrawal from Vietnam. A confusing times – personally and nationally! The Kennedy’s had been shot, the War was not going well. The USA never lost before – It wasn’t part of our self-image! Hollywood and John Wayne had never allowed that to happened! We had never thought about that option! The thing that I recall the most was – “The Draft”!  Hey You? –You’re IN! I was a senior at FSU and about to graduate, when I got a letter from Uncle Sam – Be at the Tallahassee Trail-a-ways” bus station at 6:00 AM for a trip to the Jacksonville Naval station.  As our bus pulled in to the Naval station, carrying we – “draftees” as the Fellow dressed in Military fatigues called us – FSU + FAMU students + Locals young guys from Tallahassee and the smaller towns surrounding it. I remember the excitement of the Locals after seeing others in the fields, as we were driven to our drop-off point!  “Look at that guy…Look at his rifle  -  WOW!” “There another Rifle…. Like young men at a strip show! There’s another---some more…. Really excited!  I didn’t get that excited – I though –“sorry clowns -  the other side, maybe shorter and Asian but they had guns too! Having been the beneficiary of a Student Deferment, which was about to run out! I was SCARED! They had me! Well not that fast!. Eventually after being the beneficiary of additional deferments: Married, Fatherhood, Teacher exemptions – I never served!  Many went to fight in a war to which they didn’t volunteer and may not have understood for a country that was conflicted with it and many did come back! While the fall of Saigon two years later, with its indelible images of frantic helicopter evacuations, is remembered as the final day of the Vietnam War, March 29 in many ways marks an anniversary that holds greater meaning for many who fought, chickened out, protested but  otherwise lived it. God bless the fallen and damaged and Eric Tucker, a student of mine from Miami Central H.S.