Kip C. at the MARR Banquet – 2026

Thank you very much. I haven't had a drink in 32 years and three months. And these are the happiest days of my life. I'm completely out of trouble, physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and even financially out of travel. And I know how to stay out of troubles if I want to because they don't sell whiskey at these meetings. I wouldn't lead an AA meeting if I weren't permitted to say I come out of a saloon, and many other things I might have to say you might disagree with. Just put them on a shelf. But if you're an alcoholic, keep coming back to these meetings because this is the only place you're going to hear the answer to your problem. The first time I heard an AA lead say, AA begins at home, I went home. I sat with my wife Betty and she said, aren't you going to that meeting? And I said, no, I'm going to stay home and help you with the kids. And she was shocked. She said, what are you going teach the kids? Barroom jokes? What do you know that you want those kids to know? And she Was right. AA does not begin at home. AA begins at these meetings. And if you go to enough of these meetings, then perhaps you'll have something of value to take home. And I can say something from the bottom of my heart. I did not want to be a drunk. I did NOT want to BE A DRUNK. I was born and raised on the west side of Cleveland in a beautiful neighborhood overlooking a beautiful park. I went to St. Boniface Grade School and St. Bonifice High School, and I worked a year after school in order to buy a camera because I was taking commercial photography and I wanted to get better grades. And I say that only because I believe at that time I had values. And I believe that that time I knew that if I wanted anything out of this world I was going to have to work for it. and if I wanted respect of men I was going to have to earn their respect and I believe I had those values in 1943 when we got out of high school and the entire class went down in Euclid Avenue in Cleveland and joined the Navy and I was a year younger than the class and the Navy turned me down and I went across the street on Eucluid Avenue and joined the Merchant Marine and in three days I was out on the Atlantic Ocean and they put put me down in the engine department of the ship, and for that I'll be forever grateful. I met the type of men I wanted to be like. I met a type of man that to this day I think are the hardest working, most industrious, responsible, intelligent men I've ever met. And those were the marine engineers. And I had all of the qualifications to become a marine engineer. And I embarked on that career with vigor, and I progressed rapidly. leave. And money sure in a foreign country was a part of the crew and we nonchalantly went into a saloon and I nonchalonately had my first drink. And I liked it. I liked that I stayed there all night. When the crew went back to the ship, I thought they were crazy. I slept in a booth and the next day I started drinking with another part of their crew. And when I ran out of money, I pawned that camera for ten bucks. Never seen it again. I slept in a booth that night, and the next day I ran out of money again, and I pawnned a watch my dad had given me when I got out of high school, and a watch that I knew at the time was absolutely priceless to me. Ten bucks. Never seen It Again. A ship finally sailed, and they hauled me on board as they did many times after. They took me up on the bridge and fined me six days' wages. They put me down in a folks' all by myself where I was sitting there trying to think what happened here. And I was scared. I was a kid, and I was shaking outwardly violently, and I couldn't hold a cup of coffee. And it never happened to me before in my life. And I couldn'T put things together, what had taken place here. and it scared me and I believe I took an inventory sitting there all by myself with my legs dangling off that bunk and the only thing that I could see that I got out of that alcohol was that I didn't because I don't believe I was an alcoholic at the time I think you've got to earn that but I believe that my values had changed like that with the first drink the only thing I got out of that alcohol was I didn't have to work or study any longer in order to become a marine engineer. Two or three double-headers and I was an engineer. Two or 3 more double-heads, I was chief engineer. And two or three more double headers, I did anything I wanted to be. I got up in a mess out of that ship the next day. I was absolutely shaking violently and I wasn't physically in good shape. I just couldn't stop these shakes. And a guy came down and he said, listen, buddy, there's a war on. And this ship is at sea. And you get down in that engine room where you belong. And I told him, I can't. I'm not physically well enough. And I had my first decision to make. Because he poured me a drink of whiskey this big in a clear glass. And I got sick to my stomach even looking at it. And he said hold your nose and swallow that. You'll be all right. And I held my nose and I swallowed that whiskey, and 15 minutes later I was an engineer again. And I can say in honesty that from October of 1943 I didn't buy another suit of clothes until I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for three months and my sponsor bought me a suit. And I kan say in honestly that I didn' t buy another pair of shoes until I w as in Alcoholic Anonymous us for nine months. And one night, the Newberg Group in Cleveland, sitting around a table, chipped in to buy me some real shoes because they were sick and tired of taking me to all these meetings in the stupid tennis shoes and putter pants and uniform I wore. And they didn't give me the money. They took me to a shoe store and I continued to drink. And Even in 1948, I was physically thrown out of the Merchant Marine, and that's not easy to do. In a merchant marine, you can commit violent crimes and never stand trial. It's up to the captain of that ship. It takes a lot of welching and chiseling and mooching and stealing and missing ships and missing watches that built a reputation around you, and the crew throws you out. We were in the port of New York, and I was on the street. I had no money. I had No Papers. I had NO Clothing. I had NOTHING. And I had a second decision to make, because I knew I could have called my dad in Cleveland and said, Dad, I'm in New York City, and I'm sick, broke, drunk, and hungry, and he'd have been on the first plane up there to get me out of trouble. But I didn't have the guts. I had been writing home all of these years, telling him how great I was doing, kind of chronologically promoting myself in those letters naturally they believed me and I didn't have the guts to go home and tell them I was a failure and so I went on the street and that time I spent two and a half years on the streets, that was my first time and it annoys me in Alcoholics Anonymous when I hear guys speak lightly about the street, I hear guys say you know it's not so bad out there in fact there's something romantic about Skid Row I found nothing romantic at all about pawning your jacket at three in the morning when it's six below zero and then walking the streets and another thing is the crushed careers that are down on Skid Row the doctors and lawyers and engineers and writers and designers that are done on Sked Row and I believe that they're down there only because a big book tells me they're done but in two and a half years I didn't meet a one what? I met a bunch of, I wish I'd have been a doctor. If I'd studied, I'd have been an engineer. I could have been a writer. I would have been a lawyer. I met a bunch of cheap, chiseling drunks trying to find success out of the neck of a bottle just like me. Now, if I were to tell you how often I was arrested, how often I was put in jails or hospitals, you wouldn't believe me. Let me say that in New York, they used to clean the streets every every weekend. And they'd pick another, a different gang and they'd pull them in and they'd send them over to a clinic. And if they needed the police cars washed, they sent them down the tombs. And, if they need the blood, they'd sent them over the Bellevue. And one night they picked us all up in a roundup and they took us over to Hudson Jay Clinic and a doctor got a look at me and he said, you know this guy's sick we better take him in the back room give him a real physical. So, they gave me a real physical and they said, you know, he's real sick. He might not live. And so they sent me out to the Staten Island Marine Hospital. And out there they had no place for drunks. They put me in a basement room. They call it a chain locker. They used to look in on you about once every other day and make sure you were going to live. Uh, and they kept me in that room for six weeks. And then when they decided I was going to leave, they put me up in the contagious ward And they kept me up there for six weeks. And then we decided I was not contagious and I was going to live. Why, they gave me bathrobe and slippers and pajamas and put me down with the decently sick people. And for the first time in three months, I was allowed to walk the halls and I could hear the nurses telling the patients and the doctors telling the nurses and they'd be pointing at me in the hall and they'D be saying that's the biggest drunk they ever brought in this hospital. fiddle. And my values had changed to the point where I used to walk straighter. I used to think, they're talking about me. And then I got a letter from my girl Betty, who's over in that Al-Anon meeting, thank God. She sent me a letter that she was going to come up and visit me on her 21st birthday. I knew Betty from the time she was 15 in high high school, and she knew me as an alder boy who didn't drink, swear, or smoke. She had never been out of Cleveland in her life. My dad was the superintendent down the mill. My brother was a research director of an international corporation, and that was me. And so Betty, I went around that hospital when I found out she was coming, and I changed my tune. And I begged those doctors and and nurses, and Red Cross ministers, and even the Catholic chaplain. Give me a break. Tell her I've got a tropical disease. Tell her anything. Don't tell her how I happen to be here. And those very intelligent people didn't tell Her. And tonight I think it's criminal that they didn't tell Her, and so does she. but nobody has ever helped me in my life that's answered the door or given me a dollar or got me a job or got out of a jam nobody's ever helped me in all my life except the people that stood me up against a wall and exposed me and forced me to look at what was happening and these are the only people I'm going to call friends Betty married me in that hospital and she had no idea she had to buy me clothes they burnt the clothes I went in and then I took her you can live in New York a lifetime on the street and never know more than six streets that's all the cops allow ya and from the Bowery down the west and south street, that's it and so I didn't know where to take her I took er to live over one of the toughest bars in the world a place called the Dutchman's, and in two weeks I drank up everything she owned and she went home shocked, and I shipped out. I stayed away six or seven months, and when the ship got back to New York, I hitchhiked to Edgewater Park in Cleveland and went looking for Betty. And I couldn't work at that time, or I felt I couldn'T work at THAT time. I couldn' t physically write my name. I couldn't physically sit with anybody and say, I want a job. I would bounce. And I'd have to have five or six doubleheaders, and then I couldn'T do it for sure, or I didn'T want to. And so Betty and I moved out with my folks, and they lived in a beautiful home out in the suburbs, but I didn't belong with decent people any longer. It wasn't long, and my dad said, Dick, you simply can'T come in this house with those stupid tennis shoes and the snow and the ice and the slush on the carpet. Look what's happening to the carpet, and then it wasn't long, and he's saying, Dick, put papers down when you sit. You know, you don't bathe. Look what'S happening to The Furniture, and then It wasn't Long, and He said, Dick, we love Betty, and She can stay, but You've got to go, and I didn't know where to go. And so Betty and I moved out to a place where we wouldn't have to pay rent, A place on the east side of Cleveland, Addison and Superior. And anyone familiar with Cleveland knows that's the worst of the ghetto. And we moved behind a bank building down in a basement where there were two boiler rooms and a laundry room. There were no rooms for people to live. And we lived in that basement for three years. We had three kids in that placement. And when I got real serious trouble around those corners, I ran away. I didn't tell her I was leaving. Even I simply got up on Euclid Avenue, hitchhiked to New York, jumped on a ship and ran away. And I stayed away for six or seven months. And when the ship got back to Newark, I hitchhiked to Edgewater Park and went looking for Betty. And I turned the corner that morning. It was a spring morning. They had broken the doors down, they tell me, two weeks after I ran. They took her home with their folks. And I knew that probably happened. happened and so I went over to where I knew they lived and he lived in a beautiful street with the trees growing over the street and it was a spring day and I turned the corner and she was sitting on the front steps of the house. The three kids were up on the porch, one was still in a buggy and my values had changed to the point where I was certain she was going to be delighted to see me. so much so I went clean around the city block to come at her from a different direction like a kamikaze plane coming out of the sun and when I got right up to her and she hadn't seen me I was actually afraid she was going to hurt herself when she threw her arms around me and she looked up and she saw me and she said, please Dick go away give us a break We got the lights, gas, and telephone on here. Three meals a day like other people eat. Nobody's beating the doors down to get their money. Give us a break. Leave us alone. But at that time, I believe I was an alcoholic, and I believeI knew I wasan alcoholic. But I also believethat I never heardof Alcoholics Anonymous in my life. And I begged her to move in with me, and she moved in with me into a place worse than Addison and Superior. A place that they nicknamed in Cleveland the Lion Hill. And my folks and her folks rebelled at the idea of those three grandkids being down there, and so they moved them up into a nice neighborhood on 86th and Denison, and I moved into the Denison Gardens. They moved up there on a Sunday, and of course the family had nothing nothing to do with me. So I walked up to those corners, and right there by where they were moving, I could see them moving in. I was on Dennis and mooching the people coming home from Mass, and I hit a livey. I asked the guy if he was holding, and he handed me 10 bucks. And I said, boy, that's pretty good. You know, I can get a drink on a Sunday around here. And he took me into a bar right next to where they moved, and uh, he opened a bottle Oh, and he hired me as a bartender. That was a family joke. In the next three years, I couldn't hit the glass. I was a bar rank. I was not a joke. I couldn'T think anymore, and everybody knew that. I used to get jobs on Manpower hanging in circulars on doorways, and sometimes I'd get three days, 24 bucks or something, and I'd go up to Denison Gardens and they'd bet me on yesterday's ball game. Or they'd bet me on a bowling game played the last week, and they'd show me an old newspaper. And they'd take my money, and I'd laugh, but they'd buy. And I think a criteria of that is seven years ago, Betty led a major Al-Anon anniversary down in Akron, Ohio. And there were no men. It was all women. I was sitting, the only man in the place, I was standing up front. and Betty spoke and when she sat down there were to be no comments but a lady jumped right out of the middle of everybody and said what's the biggest thing you got out of your husband's sobriety? And I was going to answer her. all the things that had been given to us over those 25 years and Betty got back up and she said said, they don't laugh at my husband anymore. And I couldn't believe she said it. All the things we had, and that was the biggest thing she felt we had. They didn't laugh at her husband anymore." They used to have meetings around my front room. I mean, someone had to put me away. I was dangerous. Now, I never hit the kids in my life. I never never hit Penny. I just never paid no attention to them, and so they used to have meetings around my front room, and my mother-in-law, probably my best friend, she used to call me home from the garden. She'd say, Dick, if you come home, I'll give you a fifth, and you can drink the fifth. We want to talk to you, and when the fifth's gone, you can go back. That was the best deal of my life. She called me every week. She said, Dick come home. I'd go home. The whole family would sit around the front room. They'd all holler at me. I'd drink the bottle, and when the bottle went empty, I'd go back. But in her frustration, in her fear for the family, in her charity, she cooked up a story about me running around with some woman down the street, and she called me home from the Denison Gardens that morning, and she gave me my fifth, and the whole family sat there, and he called Betty out of the kitchen, and I didn't say anything. I couldn't talk anymore. I used to mumble and so she knew anything I said they could change and so I was drinking the bottle and she called Betty out of the kitchen and she said, Betty, we want you to hear this from Dick because Dick is running around with Molly down the street, aren't you, Dick? And before I could say anything, Betty busts out laughing and she says, if he is, she's buying. But then she said, don't you understand? He doesn't know whether he's a boy or a girl. And with that I ran out of the house. And three blocks from where we lived is a place they nickname a creek. It's 13 miles long and six and a half miles deep. there's railroad yards and there's trestles and there are railroad tracks and there is old brickyard and there bottle gangs and people that hang down in their live down in there and I went down in there and i wouldn't come up and I stayed down in the in the park therefore months and and when I come out it would be two o'clock in the morning and I'd be freezing and I go in the Denison Gardens and I sit there and call my brother and and call my dad, and call me mother, and call mother, and I'd scream in that phone. I am too running around. What do you think? I'm nobody? I'm somebody. I used to sit in the bar and look in the mirror and scream at that mirror in front of all the drugs. I'm not just nobody. I'm Somebody. And if I could pray tonight the way I prayed then, and if I would do tonight night, one-tenth of what I promised God I would do if he would help me get sober, I'd be the best AA Cleveland ever had. But I didn't get no help. And I stayed down in that park through October and November. I come out on Thanksgiving Day. I went over to our house. Of course, there was no heat, no lights, no nothing. The family was gone. So I went up to my brother's house, and they were all sitting around the table eating a turkey. And i banged on my brother mother's door, and he came to the door and he gave me three bucks and said, beat it, Dick, you'll spoil this. And I went out on his front lawn and I screamed in the world, I don't care, you know, I really don'tcare. But I cared. I stayed in the park through November and December. I come out on Christmas Day dragging a Christmas tree. And Betty was in the house with the kids. There was no heat, there was no tree, and if anything I lost, it was that my kids were Santa Claus age and they didn't know who Santa Claus was. I come up that street dragging a tree and Benny come to the front door and said, if you stole the tree, take it back. And there was a hue in the snow where I turned around and dragged it back down the hill, threw it away and went down in my hole. I stayed down in there November, I mean January, February and early in February one night it dropped to six below zero and all of us down there we had nothing to drink and I was freezing to death and I come out of the park I went up to the Denison Gardens that morning early and I went in the gardens and I said Clem I gotta have a bottle and he gave me a bottle of whiskey and he threw me out in the street and he closed the biggest door ever closed on me in my life he knew I wasn't allowed in any other bar on Denison or Lorraine or anywhere in that area and he told me you know you're losing me, my customers you have no control over anything anything, and I don't want you in my bar anymore. And I went home that morning with the bottle that he gave me, and because it was so bitter cold out, Betty left me in. And I sat down on the couch and was drinking the bottle when the public health officials came over. And this was the first time they caught me in the house drunk with a bottle. And so they told Betty, unless your husband gets out of the household so that we can feed those kids, we're going to take those three kids away from you. And Betty said, Dick, I'm not going to lose my kids. You've got to go. And I said, call the priest. I'll take a pledge. That was a joke at the time. But she went to a neighbor's house and she called a priest, a Father O'Brien, who we had never heard of in our life. She got it out of the phone book at St. Ignatius Parish, where we had ever gone to church in our lives. and she told that complete stranger that unless my husband gets out of the household, they're taking my kids. And he said, if you keep them there for just a few minutes, I'd like to send somebody over. And I was sitting there. I still had a little left in the bottle when a guy walked into my front room. He looked like a drunk. He said he was sober four years and then he started talking about alcohol and alcohol this and alcohol... I thought he wanted my bottle and I jumped up and threatened to hit him in the head with a bottle and that's real important to me because this I believe more than anything else in Alcoholics Anonymous more than anything I've read more than anything I heard anyone say is that once AA has helped a guy up out of that basement or out of gutter maybe back to some decent clothes maybe back to a job, a family or maybe even to his God that then he's going to carry this message or he's going to get drunk and it's as simple as that that whether he's sober 5 years, 15 years or 35 years he's either going to continue to carry this message, or he's going to get drunk. And it's as simple as that. And so when I get a call on that phone, I know how important that call might be. I know that it's important how I answer that call. And yet I don't know what I'm going to do if I go in some guy's front room and he threatens to belt me in the head with a bottle. Not supposed to do that you know, read the book. He's supposed to say, I want sobriety more than anything else in this world. Now if you've had a hundred people grab you on the street and say you You sold my lawnmower, and if I ever catch you sober, I didn't have much chance. But this guy was talking about me getting sober, and he mentioned the hospital, and I said, I'm not going in no hospital. And so the next thing he said was, This is a different place. Here you go through two wooden doors, and once you're back at those doors, you're in free. He said, There's no mother-in-laws, no cops, no kids, no wives, no bill collectors. Nobody allowed back of those two doors but drunks. And they give you four ounces of whiskey every four hours. He didn't say nothing about cutting it off. I don't remember at all going into Rosary Hall. I don'T remember the second day. I know on the third day they had the sides up on my bed yet and they were giving me my whiskey but they were bringing in new people and they would take them the guys that came in with me down to another room and they where cutting them off but they didn't cut me and then the next day and then they brought more new people in and they brought in more people down the end but they kept the sides up on the bed and they kept me on the whiskey and it was quite some time when one night, late at night they had the sides up on my bed I hadn't been out of that bed when a nurse walked in she had my drink like she's supposed to and she reached over the railing and she said, Dick this is your last drink and I would have attacked her but this was a big nurse I mean this was perhaps Perhaps the biggest woman I've ever seen. She had a cigar in her mouth. And I made my first good decision. The next day, the next day they had the sides down on my bed and I was sitting there with my legs dangling and Sister Ignatius sent a patient in for me and I told that patient, you go tell that nun whoever she is because I've never met her that I don't want to talk to her and the next thing that nun came in the room and I have to tell you that you could go to Newburgh on a Sunday night I'll be there and at that group there's old timers that will tell you that it was a long time in AA before I put sentences together and I couldn't remember anything they used to say who led tonight after the meeting and I wouldn't know I couldn' t tell them And I was sober a year or more. And yet I know word for word what that nun said to me that day. And it was nothing spiritual. But perhaps the most important words ever said to be in my life. She said, listen you, this AA is a big business. And the men out in that hall are busy people. Now, if you want to get sober, you go out there and you listen to what they have to say. And if you don't want to get sober you get your clothes and get out of here. And then she said don't waste their time. And she left. And those were the last civil words that none said to me for a year to the day. She seen me three other times. And every time she She'd see me, she said something nasty. You know, she'd wait until 50 AAs are on, and then she'd walk up and say, I seen Betty at the Al-Anon meeting Friday, and she's wearing her high school clothes. I mean, what have you bought her since you got married? She used to... You know I'd be sitting at a meeting and the lead would say that that wonderful starched white nun cured him in six days. I could throw a chair at the guy. I mean, maybe that same day in front of 50 AAs, she'd stop smiling and she'd say, there he is. What are you going to be when you grow up? And when I had a year of sobriety at Jordan Hall in Charity Hospital with 300 AAs there, she ran up in front everybody, she threw her arms around me and she kissed me. and she turned around and said out loud he'll never make two I don't know I don' t know how that nun knew if she'd have smiled at me once I'd have taken that as a license you know Newburgh Elements started while I was in Rosary Hall and so my wife was involved with the old timers wives and they had to take us to meetings that Lois Wilson and Bill Wilson were coming to quite often in Cleveland at the time. And so they had to take two of us and buy us some clothes because we had these stupid street clothes. And they took this one guy down to Higbee's in Cleveland and they bought him a $150 suit. And then they took me out to the women's exchange and they brought me an $8 suit. And I hated them for five years. But somehow they knew, I'm a walk-and-go mind in this suit. I can stay drunk until October in this suit, and I don't wear a watch. In fact, I have to tell you, I'm afraid. I've been through every type of failure. I'm not afraid of failure, I am afraid of becoming so successful in this world that I'll forget where I came from and I will forget about the meetings and I'll be drunk. That's what I'm afraid of. You know, I got out of that hospital on a Saturday and it was dusk out And they left me on my front porch And had they leftme on myfront porch I believe, my wife believes, and the family believes That I'd have been drunk on Sunday morning I couldn't have physically or mentally gone to a meeting by myself It scares me when I hear a guy lead and he says Don't carry the alcoholic Now, I'll agree that not all alcoholics need to be carried. And I'll degree that carrying some alcoholics might even hurt them. And I'l agree that when he takes a drink at a Sunday school picnic, he quit AA. But until he takes that drink, how can I know? How can I be the judge of how badly that man might want to stay sober? you look around at church and you'll see a picture in almost every church of the good shepherd Christ bringing the sheep back to the flock take another look at that picture because Christ is not pointing the direction for that sheep he's not marking a map in the sand he's got that sheep wrapped around his neck and he's carrying them back and that Saturday they came over and they picked me up as soon as I got out in the house, and they took me to the ADO5 group in Cleveland. And Sunday to the Newberg group, Monday to Lorraine Monday group, Tuesday to the Smith-Wilson group, Wednesday to the Baxter group, Thursday to the Engel group, Friday to the Charity group, Saturday back to ADO 5. Sunday to Newberg, Monday Lorraine, Monday, Tuesday Smith-Willson, Wednesday to Baxter, Thursday the Engelfire. And when I started screaming at them, they took took me to the Wednesday morning group, the Thursday morning group. I used to walk out of my house at three in the afternoon and check the street and the secretary of the Memphis group in Cleveland used to sit there on a motorcycle and I can hear that and he'd say, get on and I wouldn't have got on that bike for a dollar. He'd give me a quarter, I'd take the bus down and he... You know, Well, thank God, gradually I came to believe I was safe with these guys. That as long as I was with them, I was saved somehow. That I wouldn't drink and they were watching over me. Then they said, you know, we're going to take you to church Sunday. Pick you up at 8 o'clock. I ain't going to no church. And he said, oh yeah, we'll pick you up. I said, no, I ain'T going to the church. Look at the clothes. I can't go like this. And there was an old car come up in front of my house, 8 o'clock Sunday morning. There's 125 years of sobriety in there. And they're blowing a horn. And I came to the front screen door and I said, I ain't going. I told you I ain'T going. And they all got up in my front yard in a beautiful neighborhood and they started yelling at the top of their lungs, Come on out of that house, you drunk! And I woke Betty up. I said they're crazy, but I got in that car. That's no way to treat a guy's anonymity. In fact, it might be illegal today. It might be illegal today, and if it is, the AAs made it so. If it is. I gradually really believed believed that if I could be with these guys around the clock, that I would stay sober. But I couldn't be with them around theclock. And Sister Ignatia gave me a letter down to Republic Steel, and I went down there and I threw a convulsion on the physical. And they decided since I was the first AA that they would waive the physical and see what happened. And so they put me on the job, but it wasn't AAs there. It was a bunch of drunks working there. They had bottles up on the boiler room and the turbine deck and down in the pump room. And wherever I went, they were saying, Dick, come on, have a drink. They didn't know anything about AA. And I was scared. I was thinking, I'm going to have a bad day and something's going to happen. That fifth is right there. But I didn't have to worry about that either because the Thursday morning, they picked me up and they took me to the Thursday Morning Group. And that was the most important day of my life. Not the day I went to Rosary Hall. But that day, because the guy that led that meeting was a 6'4", 260-pound steel worker. And he convinced me that whatever bit me, bit him. I was sitting on the end of my chair listening to my story. And the only place you hear that is at an AA meeting. And I was listening and he said he was sober eight years. and he knew 8,000 alcoholics and he never knew a one that knelt down in the morning and asked God for help to stay sober for a day and then went out and got drunk and I turned to Skid and said he's a liar now the second this giant sat down and before any comment Skidden Johnny took me right up in front of everybody and said this guy called you a liar and I said no Oh, mistaken. And he got me over in a corner by a piano and he asked me why I called him a liar and I said no. But you said all the guy's got to do is pray and he won't drink. And I prayed while I was drinking. I prayed till I was blue and to kiss her I prayed. I prayed with a drink in my hand I prayed and I didn't get no help. And he said, there's a difference in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a main line from the gutter to God. When a drunk kneels down in the guter, God hears him no matter what. And I said, I can't believe that. And so he asked me the most important question that can be asked of a new man. He said, do you believe that I'm an alcoholic? And the only reason I qualify in a league is so that I can ask you tonight, do you believe that I'm an alcoholic? And I said, I believe whatever bit you bit me. And so he asked the second most important question. If I'm a alcoholic, how can I stay sober eight years? And I can answer that. I can say to you that tonight. If I am an alcoholic, how can i stay sober all these years? And I said, I don't know. And he said, it's magic. Tomorrow morning when you get up, you go out in the front room behind a big chair where no one will catch you doing something decent and you kneel down and you say, whoever helps Pat stay sober, help me. And I guarantee you won't drink. And the next morning I got up and I went out in that front room behind the big chair And I knelt down, and I said just those words. And I didn't drink. And the next morning, and the next week, and the next month, and the next year, and I become fanatic about it. I used to have to go to get to work at Republic. I had to take a bus on Denison, and then a clock bus, and then transfer to a bridge bus, 146 steps down off the bridge. And I go to ring the card, and I say, I forgot that prayer. And I got back up those 146 steps in the bridge bus and the clock behind the chair. That's not what's important. What's important is when I sat down with the guys out in Newburgh, nobody laughed. Nobody said, Dick, you could have looked at the roof of the bus and said the prayer God's there. Nobody said, you know, when you go to ring the card, you could have said the pray God's there too. I went to parochial school. I know God's there. It wouldn't have worked for me. It had How to be behind that chair? Because that's the most important part of my program. If anybody in this room were to tell me that they knelt down in the morning and asked God for help to stay sober for a day and they got drunk that day, I wouldn't believe them. And if Bill Wilson had told me that he knew of a drunk that knelt town and asked god for help so stay sober for a week or a day and they get drunk that way, I would not have believed him. I don't have to put my shoes under the bed to remind me. I would no sooner walk out of my home without asking for God's help than I'd walk out of that house without my trousers on you know and now I was safe real safe these meetings grace of God but I was sober over two years and I was broke I got garnished 23 times at Republic Steel the only reason they kept me because I had 46 judgments against me the only reason they would keep me Kept me is because of Sister Nation's letter, and they wanted to see whether this program would work. And so every week I would get $14 or $10 for 10 days' work, and we couldn't live. Betty was buying the kids used Boy Scout uniforms, and the kids were growing up, and I couldn't feed the family. And I was sober a couple of years. And guys that come in with me are getting new jobs. They're getting promoted. They're buying new cars. They're making speeches. And I got nothing. And I'm sitting in the back of the room shaking all over. And I started thinking, so what? You're sober. Oh, and that was bad. But they were going on a retreat at Newburgh, and I'm not selling retreats. I'm simply saying that they were going on retreat on a Friday. They asked me about dough. I said no. And they went on this retreat out of Jesuit Retreat House in Cleveland. And Sunday night when they came back, I could tell from their comments something had happened out there. And I thought, maybe I should go out there. And so I called up St. Stanislaus Retreat House in Cleveland, and I said, could I come out there? And I don't know what a retreat is. And the Jesuits said, come on out Friday, stay with us for the weekend, you'll love it. And Friday I went out to St. Stanislausretreat House, but it wasn't an AA retreat. It was a John Carroll alumni retreat. tree. And I didn't fret. I sat with those guys, and I got through supper somehow, and then they put a bottle of beer in front of everybody. And they put one in front of me. And, I thought, my gosh, someone's going to open that, and then someone's going to pour it, and what am I going to do? I didn' t have to worry about nothing because the Jesuit come out of nowhere, and he reached in front everybody, grabbed grabbed my beer and he said, you don't get one. And I ran out of the room. Friday, Saturday, I wouldn't come out of room. And finally I had to come out sometime and I didn't know how to get out of retreat house. So I snuck down the back stairs where I didn' t see anybody and I thought what was the exit? It turned out to be the chapel. And i turned this corner and all of and we were kneeling there and they looked around seeing me there so I knelt down. And just as the Jesuits started talking about Christian charity and he said it was very difficult for those men of the John Carroll Alumni Retreat League to really do God's will as God laid it out because when they were asked for help they had to sign a check or hand over some cash because there were organizations for that. He said it was difficult for he as a Jesuit priest to really do God's will as God laid it out because when he was asked for help you know God said feed the hungry clothe the wicked harbor the harblest instruct the ignorant visit the sick comfort the afflicted he said it was difficult for he is a Jesuite priest because usually he had to sign a check or hand over some cash because there were organizations for that he said there was only one group of people that he knew that could actually go down into the gutter or the basement and bring back a derelict drunk maybe back to some decent clothes maybe back to a family or a job maybe even back to his God and he said these very valuable people are the members of Alcoholics Anonymous and I darn near jumped up in that pew and said that's me I'm one of those guys and I want to tell you something I haven't lost that for 30 seconds since I'm somebody tonight I'm a normal decent human being tonight. I'm the father and a grandfather and a worker and I even vote tonight and the only thing that can take that away from me is a drink and I ain't going you know it scares me in the last 5 years I'm sorry to say and of course it's strictly my opinion but they're starting to read the denouncement of the lead, Jack C is leading here, Roz P Dick P how do you find Dick P in the phone book you see I've got the most valuable jewel anyone's ever owned I know exactly what I have to do and where I have to be that's not many people that have that tremendous value that we have and I'm not going to hide it I'm not going to sit on it I'm not going to stand back and say I don't want anybody to know I'm in AA I'm tickled beyond your imagination that I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous now I will protect your anonymity to your toenails, but don't you protect mine. That tradition says at the level of the news, and it's highly unlikely that I'm going to become an NBC anchorman. you know one other thing is that Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob said this God gave us this program God will never take it away but we could give it away to the professional professional. We could give it away to the professionals once we decide that we want them to do our 12-step work for us. I'm going to close with a quick story. I got thrown out of that house on Denison when I was sober a couple of years. I hadn't made a payment ever. I didn't know who we owed. The bank come over one day and said, you've got to move. We didn't have no money, and I had no point, no way to move. I didn't drive. I didn't have nothing. And so Betty and I got a chance to move on West 132nd and Cleveland, the most beautiful street I've ever seen in my life. It's a park on one side and beautiful architectural homes on the other. Second block was more beautiful than the first. The third block, most beautiful of all. And right in the middle of the, people cut their grass was shears up in that neighborhood. And on the third block in the middle was a house that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a big nine-room single. It hadn't been painted in many, many years. You could have lost a regiment in the grass. There was no driveway or sidewalk. We were offered the chance to move in there if I would fix it up. And so Betty and I moved into that house on 137th, and I loved it, and so did the kids the first time we've seen it. But we were there a few days and I went out, there was no back door, there was a side door and a front door and porch. And I went off the porch to look in the backyard and when I got to the backyard, I seen the most magnificent sight I've ever seen in my life. There in that backyard was a pile of rubbish, not a little pile of garbage, 45 foot wide about about the width of this room, 60 foot deep, about a depth of this room. And over my head of bottles and boxes and fences and batteries and tires that people had sailed over those fences over 20 years. And out of the middle of that monster grew a Christmas tree. And it had these leech flowers and it picked up the Campbell's soup cans by their jagged edges and the darn thing looked like it was decorated. And I I went in the house and I told Betty, I had better go to a meeting. And as the weeks passed, Betty would call me in the kitchen and say, Dick, you know, we promised to fix the house up. And I said, well, Betty, on painting all the rooms, I'll get the front pretty soon. She said, how about the backyard? And I, I'd better go do a meeting, you now. I used to sometimes pray all night. And in the morning, I look out, I think maybe it was gone. I used to, I couldn't do nothing. I had no way of getting rid of it. I used run up that driveway and run up that driveway. I didn't know what I was going to do when I got back there. I'd kick a can up on the pile and go to a meeting. And along the line, I was listening at these meetings. And gradually it was getting through my head that you can't have 10 years of sobriety in a day, you couldn't handle it. You got to have it a day at a time. You can't solve 20 years of drinking problems overnight. You couldn't have that either. You've got to solve them a day at a times. You cant eat an apple with one bite. You'll choke on it! You gotta eat it a bite at a time. And Skid bought me a $65 Oldsmobile and in the trunk of that old car was two empty solid solid wooden whiskey cases. And I got it in my head that I'm going to back that car up what used to be the driveway, and I'm gonna fill those two cases, those wooden cases with junk. I'm never going to take three cases, I'm not going to miss a day, and so the next day I backed that car Pile up and fill those two boxes. And the next day, and the next week, and the next month, and that monster disappeared. And when all that rubbish was gone, the AAs came in, and we rototilled that backyard. We planted Kroger's grass seed. We trimmed that Christmas tree about eight foot up off the ground, and it looks like Brookside Park back there tonight. And I think that's possible with any problem that any drunk ever brings into this program with a lot of meetings, the grace of God, and one day at a time. I want to thank you for listening. Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar or two a month, visit SoberCast.com and look for the donate links thank you very much