Johnny Isakson: “Yesterday was a difficult day for me. I am 74 years old. I was born in 1944. Like many Americans, my youth was during…”

“Yesterday was a difficult day for me. I am 74 years old. I was born in 1944. Like many Americans, my youth was during the Vietnam era. The prime of my youth was the Vietnam era. In fact, my senior year in college, I got a graduation diploma and a draft notice on the same day. They were put in the same book. Everybody was going. Everybody was being called up for the draft. There was a lottery, but so many people were eligible that almost everybody in my age group would have been drafted if they didn't join the service. I joined. I joined the National Guard, which I am very proud of, and I am still a guardsman to this day. It also gave me the chance to serve my country in a way that would not put me at as much risk to go to Vietnam as it would if I were drafted. I consciously did that because I wanted to do everything I could to stay here and get married a few months later to my wife Dianne. I was of the age to be drafted, and I made the decision to find a way to serve that would not put me in a position of being drafted, where I lost control. I was able to do it, and a lot of people were, but a lot of people weren't. I know that. The ones who could know it, and the ones who couldn't know it. The Presiding Officer knows what I am talking about, being a guardswoman herself. I lost my best friend in Vietnam, Jackson Elliott Cox III, Waynesboro GA, Liberty County--Bird Dog Capital of the World. Jack and I graduated from college together.…”