(See Cover)
The letter bore the nominal heading "The President of the United States." It was addressed to Gary William Wilson, and it arrived at the blue stucco house in Rosemead, Calif., two days before Christmas. Its terms were cold, its message unmistakable. "Greeting: You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States." Gary Wilson, 23, a bright, ordinarily even-tempered student then just six months away from a hard-won geology degree at California State College at Los Angeles, blew up. He crushed the letter into a ball, jammed it into his pocket and stamped out of the house. His mother shouted after him, "Be careful, Gary! Don't do anything rash." Furious, he climbed into his Volkswagen, rocketed the little car around the block a couple of times until he had calmed down slightly, then roared off to his draft board office to spill his spleen. "I was upset," he recalls. "And mad. And depressed."
Symbol of Futility. Gary Wilson's upset and anger and depression sum up the reaction of some 1,657,300 men in the Class of '66 as they face their No. 1 nemesis: Conscription '66. Not since Korea's bleakest days has the draft loomed quite so doomful in the eyes of high school and college graduates. Induction quotas are up threefold over last year; 319,887 men have been called in the past eleven months, another 150,000 are expected to go in the next year. The pool of single 26-, 25-and 24-year-olds is fast being depleted. Local draft boards are digging deeper into their files, searching for 23-, 22-and 21-year-olds. And there stands the Class of '66. Careers dangle in doubt; weddings are postponed; even hard-earned degrees suddenly seem to symbolize futility more than achievement. Add to that the chaotic and confusing situation in Viet Nam, and it is easy to understand the anxiety of Gary Wilson and his classmates across the nation.
Wilson is a stocky (5 ft. 9 in., 170 Ibs.), bespectacled young man—and a true son of the U.S. middle class. His parents have lived in the same six-room house on North Earle Avenue in Rosemead for 25 years. There they raised their three children—Gary; Jimmy, 21, a Navy Reserve seaman aboard the aircraft carrier Oriskany (which left last week for Viet Nam); and Carol Ann, 20, a Cal State junior majoring in art. The father, William Wilson, 48, is a World War II Navy veteran and a partner in a window-shade manufacturing firm. He affords two cars (a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon and a 1961 Rambler) and a color television set, last summer traveled to Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong. His wife Elaine, 45, a plump, outspoken little lady, likes to season her children with such salt-of-the-earth advice as "You'll never get anything you want unless you work for it."