At the young age of 19, joining the Army was far from his life plans. He was clueless as to what would be in store for him. His first response to the notice was, \u201cI don\u2019t have to put up with this! I can just move to Canada like everyone else, and avoid all of this,\u201d he said jokingly. On the other hand, his mom, Dorothy Rigby, wasn\u2019t going to allow this to happen. Her exact words to him were, \u201cNo way! You are not a quitter,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do not quit in this family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorothy was scared that her son had to serve, but her daily prayers reassured her that he would come back home safely. With his mother\u2019s advice, Rigby set out on his military journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took my mother\u2019s words and kept on going,\u201d said Rigby. \u201cAfter all, being drafted was the closest I have come to winning the lottery.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, 42 years later it ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MCPO Ret. In TN sends us a link to the story about Chief Warrant Officer 5 … CWO5 Ralph E. Rigby; last draftee retires<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ralph-E.-Rigby.jpg?fit=620%2C413&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Ralph](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Ralph-E.-Rigby.jpg?resize=300%2C199&ssl=1\")
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