To: add1dda@aol.com <add1dda@aol.com>
Sent: Friday, December 5, 2025 at 12:33:19 PM EST
Subject: A Curious Fact Regarding U.S. Army Recruiting Standards in 1966
The Wikipedia entry on Frankie Lymon, boy soprano of the 1956 doo-wop song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" by the Teenagers contains this nugget of information:
These two facts are juxtaposed casually and without comment, as if there was nothing wrong about their connection. Granted, the Vietnam War was ramping up by 1966, but even so, why on earth would this guy be considered appropriate recruiting material? Lyman was to die of a heroin overdose in February 1968, only a year and a half later.
In an earlier instance of sort of policy, Louis Till, father of Emmett, was given the choice during WWII of going to prison or being drafted--and ended his career as a soldier by murdering and raping two Italian woman, crimes which got him executed by court martial in 1944.
N.S.: It may sound perverse in the current day, but it used to be routine practice for many young criminals to get the option of Yale, er enlistment, or jail. I knew guys like that. And most of them washed out, too! I once had a guy (probation officer tell me, when I tried to get that deal for one of my foster kids in 1989, "You're dating yourself."
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