[AT] OT Draft Exemption Exam

[Spencer Yost]

Hey Herb,

Mediterranean? My dad served on the USS Coral Sea (aircraft carrier) in the seventh fleet in the Mediterranean during the Korean war.  Wonder if your paths crossed?

Now onto a family story of luck and timing in regards to the draft:

My dad’s father ran a small tailor shop (Yost and Son) and got a WWII deferment because he was an employer and because his tailor shop had a quota of uniforms they had to provide(doesn’t make sense to draft the folks making some of the uniforms).  I was never clear in the family lore as to what “uniform” meant:   Was it the whole uniform or just specific articles like jackets, which was his specialty.   I still have one of his wool dress overcoats.

Anyways, that quota was also why he sold it.  It was too hard to meet that quota yet still have time for enough time for other customers to make money. Several smaller shops consolidated to get the economy of scale needed to provide retail and military clothing.

He sold it in  1942 to a larger shop and went down to the draft board, signed up and they rejected him because of lesions seen in his lung X-ray believed to be tuberculosis.   He was rejected.  He remained asymptomatic (which is apparently common) or misdiagnosed till his death in 1979.

Antique tractor reference:   I use to have several old wooden boxes of his I stored parts in.


Spencer


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 20, 2020, at 10:42 PM, HERBERT METZ <metz-h.b at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Korean War was still on when I graduated; so I lost my educational deferment. Enrolled in Navy and graduated from a 120 day accelerated orientation with a commission.  Served three years active duty as Repair Officer on a destroyer (East Coast and Mediterranean); then five years in (hopefully) Inactive Reserves. This 'plow jockey from KS' got to see much of Europe. Herb(GA)
> 
> 
>>>> On January 20, 2020 at 9:52 AM James Peck <jamesgpeck at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> James AT List Member (jamesgpeck at hotmail.com);  I knew a man who had been enrolled in a college in the early fifties when the Korean conflict ramped up the draft. His score on the Draft Exemption Exam was not high enough to earn a deferment.
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