Draft deferments
The Jan. 2 letter “Trumping the draft” complains that Donald Trump avoided the Vietnam-era draft along with “thousands of lawyers aged 70 and up.” It says that this was “the No. 1 way able-bodied males of affluence” got a law-school deferment and “thus started the age of litigation.”
However, the graduate school — not just law school — deferment ended by 1969. Speaking from personal experience, I was then drafted during my first year of law school, spent nearly two years in the military (including a year in Vietnam) and returned to complete my legal education. I know others who did the same. I am proud to be both a lawyer and a veteran.
While I don’t mind hearing a lawyer joke from time to time, don’t disparage my honorable profession with false “facts.” The writer sounds like Trump himself.
Norman Segall, Coral Gables
This story was originally published January 4, 2017 at 8:14 PM with the headline "Draft deferments."