Another Christmas in South Gate, CA. This time 1971, according to mom's annotation on the back of the photograph. I would have just finished college that month at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Ann was attending Long Beach State College, but she never did graduate though she was not too many units shy of graduating.
Again, there is no way to tell who took this picture. Ann was dating Mark, whom she would eventually marry. I do not believe that it was taken by Kenny Morse, mom's boyfriend of a number of years because they probably broke up before this.
Now that I had graduated, and my draft lottery number was 119, I was going to have to make plans to join a branch of the service rather than be drafted by the army. The Marines had been wrapping up their time in Vietnam and would soon be out if they had not already left.
Initially, I had joined the Marine Corps Reserves and was going to be attending basic training in San Diego that spring. However, before graduation, I became friends with Mark Lombardo who was in one of my classes at Dominguez Hills. He told me that he had been at Marine Corps Officer's Candidate School in Quantico, VA the previous spring. He encouraged me, since I would soon have a degree, to go there instead. It made more sense than being an enlisted Marine. At this point I may have already done so because I was slated to attend Marine OCS starting in March of 1972.
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