Word: drafted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years ago, I was invited to join a group of men who were meeting every other week or so to talk about Vietnam. Three of us had served there. Of the others, one had been a conscientious objector; another had got lucky with the draft; a third had been too old for Vietnam but was active in the antiwar movement. Though our circumstances had placed us in very different, even conflicting positions, nobody was of a mind to find fault with anyone else. Indeed, the other two veterans had both become pacifists some years back...
...politician's war record--or antiwar record--evokes scorn or approbation; the masterfully manipulative Forrest Gump makes adults weep; we fret over quagmires, and still we can hear the air torn by helicopter blades and see that canted, top-heavy map on the evening news and recall precisely our draft-lottery number or that of our brother or son. Some brothers and sons did not return; they are still with us as well...
...months later, no N.F.L. team seemed to want him. The 49ers and Bill Walsh became interested only after they worked him out at UCLA two days before the draft. As Sam Wyche, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who was then the quarterbacks coach for the 49ers, recalls, "What really impressed us was that he could immediately put into practice any coaching suggestion. He would literally eat the words right out of your mouth. Call it what you will--intelligence, intangibles, charisma--that's what we saw in Joe." But even at that, Montana still had to wait behind starting...
...rather fitting that Montana is retiring just as the N.F.L. is gearing up for the draft that begins on Saturday, April 22. This is a particularly good year for quarterbacks, what with Kerry Collins of Penn State, Steve ("Air") McNair of Alcorn State, Rob Johnson of usc and John Walsh of Brigham Young all projected to go in the first round. Maybe one of them is the next Joe Montana. Bill Walsh, who held a special camp for the quarterback prospects two weeks ago, thinks John Walsh "throws much like Joe Montana." According to Wyche, "McNair is a lot like...
...issue's history of the last days of the war--as recalled by its survivors--remembers a personal dilemma. "Originally, I was a strong hawk," he says. "But the 1968 Tet offensive convinced me that we could fight forever and not win--certainly until my son, then six, reached draft age. Let's hope nothing ever tears us apart this way again." The Vietnamese too, Gibney notes, "are beginning to re-evaluate the terrible losses...