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BN: And then I also want to circle a little bit back to your dad. Because you mentioned he had enlisted right prior to the war. And then what do you know about his time with the, I assume, the army?

DA: Right. He was in the army, and my understanding is he was stationed somewhere in the Mideast, and part of a supply, keeping track of shipping, I think, or something. From my understanding, never got to see any live action. So after the war, he just came back, it sounds like. He's another guy, didn't talk a whole lot about what he experienced other than he wanted me to go into the army to learn discipline and structure and learn how to take orders, that kind of thing. We had some talks about that. I said, "Dad, the army is not what it used to be back in your day." And this is during the '60s, right, late '60s, and Vietnam, and the war is going on and nobody wants that war. Then there's that whole lottery system that was set up because they weren't getting enough people to enlist. I was kind of lucky, my number was sort of on the higher side. And when it came to the year that they pulled numbers, they didn't get as high, so I didn't have to worry. So that was kind of lucky.

BN: Seems so crazy that so much of your life is determined by this random thing.

DA: Right. And yeah, for a while, that lottery was... well, finally they ended it, right?

BN: Anyway, we'll get back to that. The other thing I wanted to ask about your dad was, was he, like many of the returning GIs were able to attend college on the GI Bill and so forth.

DA: It sounded like he went to junior college for a few years, didn't like it, got into insurance, I guess, fairly quickly, and never went back. Same with my mom, she went to a couple years at a community college and never finished.

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