1961. I had to get a physical before beginning play in a baseball tournament. I was fourteen. 

My mother took me to the appointment. My reactions were fine. I had no problems with my eyes, and when I said, "Ahhhh," the doctor didn't find any reason to take out my tonsils. 

Then, the doctor listened to my heart. 

He cleared me to play in the baseball tournament, but he also said I had something he called a heart murmur. 

"How serious is that?" my mother asked the doctor. 

"Probably nothing to worry about," the doctor answered. "He might even grow out of it." 

I didn't grow out of it. 

What happened next was I enrolled in the University of Georgia. 

Nineteen-sixty-four. I was given a little card saying I was assigned to Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). 

What that meant, I later learned, was I would have to wear a hot uniform to class a couple of days a week, go to ROTC classes and maybe even have to march with a gun on my shoulder. 

I didn't want any of that. In the first place I had two jobs. I was a part-timer at the local newspaper, and I was a sports stringer for the late Atlanta Times. 

In the second place, I didn't like guns. In the third place, I had never flown in an airplane at that point, and I didn't want to fly in one in the future. 

My mother had been flown across the country in 1948 in an Army hospital plane carrying her to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. She was critically ill. 

It had frightened her so badly she instilled in me a fear of flying that carries over even until today. 

I do fly, but I hate it. 

Then, I remembered the heart murmur. That was my out. 

I went to see the campus doctor and he listened to my heart. Only he didn't say "heart murmur" like the other doctor had. 

He said "aortic insufficiency." He also said I would't have to go into Air Force ROTC. 

Vietnam was a billion or so miles away at the time. 

Nineteen-sixty-six. I was married. My wife and I went on a cruise of the Bahamas. We met another couple on the ship. He was just out of college and in the Army. 

He was going to be sent to Vietnam after the cruise. We received a letter several months later from his wife. He had been killed in action. 

Vietnam was on the next block. 

But I've got a student deferment and I'm married. I'm safe. 

Nineteen-sixty-eight. I got an offer to join the sports department of the Atlanta Journal when I'm through with school. 

Before offering me the job, the man had asked, "What's your draft status?" 

I told him about my heart and accepted the job. But I wanted to be absolutely certain nobody was going to send me to a jungle to get killed. I went to see another doctor. 

He listened to my heart and said, "The military won't take you." 

Great news. 

"But one day you'll have to get the problem repaired," he added. 

Bad news. 

"How long before I have to get that problem repaired?" I asked. 

"Oh, when you're 35 or so," was his reply. 

He gave me another note, and I mailed it to my draft board. They gave me a 1-Y status, which meant I was physically unfit for the armed services. 

I was six months into my 35th year, incidentally, when I had my aortic valve replaced. 

But I didn't have to step off a helicopter and take a chance of getting shot between the eyes. 

I just thought I ought to put this story down as a means of keeping myself out of the Bill Clinton-Dan Quayle draft thing.