Bob S. on Dr. Bob, Bill W., and the Early Days in Akron

That's I love you in sign language. Aren't these gals great? I'd like to add my thanks to the committee that have put these things on. I know that these things are a lot of hard work, and this one has just run beautifully. And may I just add my Thanks to that. I want to thank my friend Beth. I've moved in on her and her family, and they've taken such good care of me. and Charlie and Randy and his beautiful wife, Cecilia. They've all taken such good care of me and I really do appreciate it. Thanks so much. My name is Bob S. and I'm an enthusiastic member of Al-Anon. I think I got here like most of us Al-Ansons. I love an alcoholic. My wife, Betty, who died three and a half years ago was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, sober for 19 years at the time of her death. So you see, the problem was in our family also, and thank goodness for the long-timers, the program was there and green and viable so that we could take it and need it and use it when our turn came. You know, it's not what we add to the temple past, but how well we keep it green. I think to be an Al-Anon, you're not automatically an Al Anon just because you associate with somebody that's AA. I think it requires some work on our part. For myself, I think I must live the steps. I think i must abide by the traditions. I thinkI must attain the meetings regularly and I thinki must have a sponsor. And I have three sponsors and my service sponsor is here tonight, Ted. And I just love his program so much better than mine. So welcome to it. Also, one part of our triangle, you know, is service. And I would like to tell you that I jumped right into service. But that's not quite the way it happened. My first sponsor was a woman. When I first came into Al-Anon 22 years ago, I looked around and the only guy was a young fellow about this age of my son And I didn't think we had too much going So I selected this lady who is even older than I And she's remained my service sponsor ever since And she goaded me into service I know we don't encourage sponsors of the opposite sex But I think you can tell by looking at me that it's not a very serious problem Now, don't misunderstand me. I love to look at you beautiful ladies. I just can't remember why. Anyway, I've been the GR and I've been the DR and I served three years with the West Texas Assembly and several years ago I got a call from our central office asking me if I'd consider myself to be a candidate for trustee-at-large for all of Al-Anon and I seemed to have the educational qualifications for which they searched and the business experience, and I prayed about it and talked to my group. And I picked up the phone and I said, yes, please consider me to be a candidate for trustee at large for all of Al-Anon. And guess what? I didn't get it. You're looking at a trustee reject. And oh, don't we hate rejection. and my first thought was if they didn't want me why did they bother me but then my program came to my rescue like it always will when I let it it said hey whoever got that job is much more capable of doing what they need at the time and do a better job than you could and maybe our heavenly father has something else for me to do and that's the way it is with my program I'm totally free of that now. Totally free. Three weeks ago today I got a call that my beloved sister Sue had died and we were very, very close and I went on up to Akron, Ohio and attended her funeral. So now I'm the only one that's left who was among that original bunch and I'd like to talk to you, if I may, about that tonight. My dad's Dr. Bob and my mom's Ann, and I rode out with my dad and mom to meet with Bill for the very first time. Mother's Day, Akron, Ohio, 1935. My Dad had come home the day before Mother's Day with a potted plant and set it down. He was potted. They went upstairs and passed out. Henrietta Seiberling was a friend of my mom's, and she called up and said, Ann, there's a man out here that thinks he can help Bob bring him right on out. Well, Mom had to explain to Henrietta that Bob was in no shape to talk to anybody, but she said, I'll get him out there the next day. Well as we rode along, he had a terrible hangover. He said one of the worst ones he'd ever had. And he said, okay, 15 minutes of this bird is all I want. But folks, it wasn't 15 minutes. He and Bill went off in a room by themselves there in Henrietta Seiberling's home and talked for many hours. And as a result of that meeting and at my mom's invitation, Bill came and he lived at our home all that summer. And this is where I think the miracle started. mom didn't say to bill why don't you come over we're going to have soup next tuesday she said bill come live with us maybe you two can work out something miracle and you know bill lived in new york city and we lived in akron ohio i'll tell you another miracle bill said okay so these two guys now remember this is in the middle of the last Great Depression, and we lived in one industry town, Heckerin, Ohio. We made tires. Goodyear, Goodrich, General Firestone, Cyberling, Miller, they were all there. Well, when people stopped buying automobiles, they sure didn't need tires, and the rubber shops went down to two days a week if they had any job at all. There were strong men on the street corner selling apples for five cents apiece to support their family. And times were just terrible. But But, again, I think perhaps it was providentially arranged because people had more time for each other. And it's very essential that people that were interested in this program have time to talk and work it out and come up with the ideas which have served us so well all these years. I'd like to tell you about my dad. I think you'd love the guy. You know, the pictures of him look so solemn. Well, he wasn't that way at all. When I brought my bride to be home in the 1940s for the folks to look over, my wife was tall and slender, and Dad looked her over and got me aside and said, she's built for speed and light housekeeping. And I want to tell you a sex and hygiene lecture to me as a teenager. He got me in the bathroom one day, and I thought, hot dog, I'm going to find out all about it now. And he closed the door, and he said to me, fly spread disease, keep yours buttoned. He was just a great good sport. He wanted to go back to Vermont and then up into Canada. And he had some sort of an old car that used a lot of gasoline and it wasn't too reliable. And I bought a Ford Roadster for less than $30. And he said, do you think that Ford will make it to Vermont and then off into Canada? And I said, yeah, I think it will, Dad. It runs pretty good. But the reason I got it so cheap, it doesn't have a top. and I said what are we doing it rains he said we're going to get wet so he and a high school buddy of mine toured all through Vermont and Canada just the best sport in the world he was a tall thin Vermonter with icy blue eyes both he and Bill were over 6 feet tall Dan was a graduate of Dartmouth one of the Ivy League colleges and at that time at least was the Drinker's Ivy League, and he fit right in there. And he had gone out and worked for a couple of years at Filene's department store in Boston and then came back to St. Johnsbury. Are you thirsty, Randy? Thank you. and prevailed upon his dad, who was a probate judge there, to send him out to Chicago and go to medical school. Well, he busted out of the first one because his drinking had become so... because it had just taken over. But he managed to get into another one and graduate and obtained a coveted internship there at City Hospital in Akron. And it was coveted because they had some advanced equipment. Well, he moved to Akron and then married my mom after a whirlwind courtship of only 17 years. Dr. Bob thought things over very carefully. He always went along on a pretty even keel, steady, steady. He was a man of very few words, but what he said was very meaningful. Now Bill on the other hand And some of you may have known Bill Was the exact opposite Bill was garrulous Bill loved to talk Bill was a promoter Bill was visionary I think Bill Wilson could see further up the road Than any human being I've ever known in my life Bill's mood swung He was either high as a Georgia pine Or low as a snake He never seemed to level off But he and my dad fit together perfectly perfectly. They never had an argument. And again, I think that that was providentially arranged because, you know, folks, if any two of us are exactly alike, one of us is unnecessary. Now remember, these two guys couldn't raise 50 bucks between them. So in essence, the program started from nothing. And I think that's very important because there may be somebody here tonight whose life is in that same situation. You're starting over and you're starting again from nothing. And also I think these programs have been a series of nudging miracles that in my lifetime I've seen them grow from two guys to millions of people all over the world. I know that God had a hand in guiding this thing through. And the many, many miracles. So there may be some of you here tonight that are in bad need of a miracle. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk starting from nothing. I wanna talk about miracles and I want to talk recovery. I'm not going to dwell on what it used to be like. I am going on the basic assumption that everybody here already knows how to be miserable. Okay, they stayed up late every night it seemed like in our home there, drank lots of coffee, smoked lots of cigarettes and tried to get a program together that would work. They both had open spiritual minds and they had the idea of being of service to another human being? Well, the first one I remember was a young guy by the name of Eddie R. And Eddie had just been thrown out of his house for non-payment of rent with a cute little blonde wife and two stair-step kids. So they moved the whole family into our home. We still had a home, but just barely. And took Eddie and locked him in the upstairs where he'd be available as they got this knowledge. Hey, folks, you got to remember nothing's written. They're just trying to stay a page ahead of Eddie. But Eddie was an agile young guy and we had downspouts. And Eddie would open the second story window, slide down the downspout and escape. And they had to postpone Eddie's recovery long enough to recapture him. One time, Eddie got as far away as Cleveland, Ohio, called them up on the phone, of course, collect, to let them know that he was going to commit suicide, but that they would give him time to drive up and witness the event. Well, they brought Eddie back one more time, and when Eddie did sober up, he had some other problems that hadn't been immediately apparent. And he began beating up on this little blonde lady to whom he was married. And then he began chasing my mom around the house with a butcher knife. So we held a group conscience meeting. And it was decided the only thing to do with Eddie was for his wife to take him back to Ann Arbor, Michigan and recommit him in a mental institution. And this was done. And of course, my dad and Bill were crestfallen. Here's their first attempt together to sober up another alcoholic. but i want to tell you folks something at my dad's funeral 15 years later a guy walked up to me and he said do you know me and i looked over and i said yeah i know you you're eddie and he says that's right and he goes i want you to know i'm a member of the youngstown ohio aa group and i've been sober one year so we don't know the result of that 12 step call our part is to take that hand that reaches out for help i don't think we're responsible for the results and i don'T THINK WE HAVE TO BE FULLY QUALIFIED TO GO WE GO WITH WHAT WE HAVE BUT I THINK THE RESULTS DEPEND UPON THE WILL OF OUR HEAVENLY FATHER PERHAPS A ZEAL OF THE MAN RECEIVING THE MESSAGE where did they get these ideas a bill in new york city for six months my dad mom and akron had belonged to an organization called the oxford group now the oxord group was started by a lutheran minister from pennsylvania by the name of frank buckman and the basic tenants of the oxfor group were back to first century spirituality i used to go to some of those meetings with my folks and those they also had some other things they they had meetings they they add prayer they had guidance they had sharing they had a lot of things they had four absolutes absolute honesty absolute unselfishness absolute purity of thought and absolute love there's a part of their program that has been woven into our programs and i like i said i was i've gone to a few of those meetings and i don't know why probably to get out of the doghouse you can't tell by looking at me but i was not a constant source of joy to my parents but those people scared me they were so they were real zealots you know in your face and are you maximum today and I was just barely minimum you know but anyway we owe those people a tremendous debt of gratitude because the things that have been woven into our programs a lot of it came from the oxford group also god's big book you know god has his own big book the holy bible and there is they use the 13th corinthians and the sermon on the mount and as you all know the book of james faith without works is dead so these are the things that were picked up and woven into the programs that we know today AA grew very very slowly and we began taking these alcoholics into our homes the hospital beds were very expensive in those days 16 bucks a day I think they're up a little now but nobody had any money well my sister and I were teenagers and we had lived the first 17 years of our life with active alcoholism and now we got to see recovery. Now you know when you're a teenager how you love action and we had a whole house full of wet drunks and boy was it exciting there was always something going on and we loved it. My dad being the only medical man associated with this fledgling movement would take a new guy upstairs and say okay fella I'm going to give you this shot of whiskey, but I want you to take this medicine first. And it was peraldehyde, a very pungent sedative. And some of you have smelled peraltehyde. You'll never forget it. So when Susie and I came home from school and opened the door, if we smelled peralehyde we knew we'd lost our bed. I went to the attic and Susie went to the couch in the living room. But we loved it. It was fun. And these people weren't just overnight guests arch t who went on and started aa in detroit stayed almost a year so it was a happy happy time we got to see recovery in our parents home well as i said it was just a trickle until the media got a hold of it first the cleveland plain dealer article then jack alexander's article. And the little trickle became an absolute deluge. The word got out that there was a doctor in Akron, Ohio could quote fix drunks. And they showed up on the bus, on the train, dropped off by loving relatives, dropped off by relatives who weren't so loving. And again, I think our Heavenly Father provided the right person at the right time. Sister Ignatia was the admitting nurse at a Catholic hospital there in Akron and she and my dad prevailed upon the Mother Superior to allow them to establish a little ward in that hospital that a person could be admitted with the disease of alcoholism for the first time and what it was was the flower room they had seven cots I believe in the flower room you know that's a room where they trimmed the flowers and put them in pots and I've often thought about what those early AA started when they were thought when they woke up and they're in a room full of flowers but anyway it was a start and you know that facility is still in that hospital. It's not the flower room. It occupies the whole fifth floor. But that was a start where people could be admitted with the disease of alcoholism rather than some guys like gastroenteritis or some excuse that wasn't true. I want to tell you about somebody nobody knows anything about and that's my mom. Mom is a graduate of Wellesley, one of the fine women's colleges back in the East, and she went there on a scholarship. Her great-uncle was the president of the Santa Fe Railroad, and in those days the president had his own private railroad car. He could tie onto trains wherever trains went, and it was very opulent. And he liked my mom, and he would take her around the country with him. So she got to see the genteel side of life. Mom was a school teacher. She'd led a very sheltered, protected life and was very easily shocked until AA. Now this is the lady that is making the beds. This is the Lady that's cooking the food. This is a lady that's cleaning up the messes. This is a lady that's on the telephone because we were getting calls, people inquiring, people in trouble. And this is a Lady that had everyone that stayed there have a quiet time in the morning that they might feel near to God. Mom took up smoking when she was 50. I said, Mom, you're not going to start smoking now, are you? And she said, if you wait until you're 50, I won't say anything. Well, it was in the Depression, and my sister and I were helping ourselves to her cigarettes. And she decided it was time for an economy measure. So she bought a machine to make your own cigarettes, a Target machine. I don't know if any of you have ever seen one. But you took the cigarette paper and made a little trough, and you sprinkled the tobacco in it. and you pulled a lever over and back, and you had a cigarette. Well, Susie and I thought that was a little bit beneath our dignity, so we offered to make her some, roll her some cigarettes, but instead of tobacco, we used the shavings out of the pencil sharpener. Well, of course, Mom lit the first one, and the fire didn't go out. And after, you know, we're watching, And after about the second one, she said, you know, these aren't nearly as good as those Lucky Strikes. Mom always sat at the back of the meetings. The first meetings were open meetings and always greeted everybody that came in. And she always wore the same old black dress. And when my dad got back on his feet financially, mom got three new dresses. And somebody said, Ann, are you going to wear one of your new dresses to the meeting tonight? And she said, no, I'm going to wearing the same old black dress. There will be somebody come through those doors that can't afford a new dress. That's the beautiful kind of lady my mom was. Well, Mom, in the early part of 1936 organized a women's group for wives of alcoholics whereby in her loving way she tried to teach them love and patience and tolerance. You see, Mom had also written to Lois that first summer, Bill's wife. And Lois came down and stayed with us as long as she could. But then Lois had to get back to New York City. You've got to remember, Lois is the only one that had a job. But anyway, it was the start of a friendship that lasted until Lois' passing not too many, many years ago now. and you know when lois uh in 1950 lois and ann b not my mom but mom died in 49 wrote around the country to see if there was an interest in a program like our al-anon program she wrote to all the known aa groups and to her surprise she found out there were 64 groups already doing it independent thinking had decided that it was a program that affected the whole family, and that they were doing something about it. So obviously it was something that thinking people realized. Betty and I attended the first international in 1950. And this is the international where they introduced the 12 traditions. And I am so glad that they did. you know, I think the 12 traditions are the things that glue us together. And I'm glad to see you read them at your meetings. Bill had gone around the country in 46, 7, and 8 trying to introduce groups in the 12 traditions and groups were then like they are now. They said, Bill, go on back to New York and run that like you want to. We're going to run this here like we want to, and they wouldn't pay any attention to him. So he and my dad had the six guys get up there at that first international, each read two, and they adopted them unanimously. And what a blessing that is. You know, if you stop and think about it, what a remarkable, remarkable writing that is, the first 11 of those things are damage control, taking care of the things that could possibly just torn the meeting the program apart you know one about money for instance in the early days the liquor industry wanted to give aa money you know like guy laying in a gutter it was bad press but somehow they had enough sense to resist stuff like that and nobody can give a very much money they just still can't but anyway this was a beautiful writing and my dad was terminally ill at the time and Betty and I drove him back to his beloved Vermont one more time. He gave a short talk at this international and it's on tape. And I wouldn't take for the caring and sharing that we had as we rode along, you know, in the car and sitting on the edge of the bed at night with this wonderful guy. But then we brought him back to Akron, Ohio. And I had a flying job out of Dallas at the time. So I had to get back to work and I never saw my dad alive again. But what a beautiful time that was for all of us. Now Bill invited us to the second international in 1955. And this is the one where Bill turned AA over to the AAs. And also this is one where the religious people people who had loved AA when AA wasn't cool church people, got up and gave talks. Dr. Sam Shoemaker of New York and Father Ed Dowling from St. Louis. Fortunately these talks are recorded and they're in the book AA Comes of Age, a chapter religion looks at AA if any of you are interested in it. But at that time, you see, Bill put this structure in place which he had been working on because they realized that these two founders were mortal and so he set up the general service office that could allow these programs to go on after The founders were dead. I didn't go back to another international for a long time. Betty and I were party animals. We loved to drink, and we loved to dance. And I sure as heck wasn't telling anybody my father was Dr. Bob. But sometimes groups would find out about it. and invite us to a meeting. And we would go to a meeting, and we'd have a wonderful time. And as we drove back home, we'd say, oh, good for them. They needed that. Now, all the time, alcoholism is working in our own family. Now, Betty had poured her dad into a dry-and-out place in Denver in 1944. And he and another guy started Alcoholics Anonymous in the state of New Mexico. So if there was ever two people that should have known about alcoholism, it was my wife and me. But we didn't. We thought we were different. We thought мы were different And we didn'T just exactly jump into AA when we realized we had a problem You know, I think as far as alcoholism in our home is concerned Three different parts Fun, fun and problems, problems. And we were well into the problem area at the time. But we didn't say, oh boy, we're going to recognize our life's ambition. We're going get to join AA and Al-Anon. That isn't exactly what we thought. In fact, we just kept trying to adjust it and touch it up so that we wouldn't have to do it. I like to illustrate this with a little story. The two hunters loved to hunt way up in the north wild woods. And they would have an aviation company fly them into a lake and leave them and then pick them up a week later. And so the little plane came in, and one of the hunters said, Oh, we're glad to see you. We've had a wonderful hunt. We've got three moose. And the pilot said, Three moose? You two guys and me in this little airplane? And one ofthe hunters said., Well, don't worry about it. I said, a man came here with a plane exactly like yours last year. And we had three moose. And what he did was he taxied up the river and got a longer takeoff run. And we didn't have any trouble getting in the air. So the pilot thought, well, I'm new with the company. I've got to try it. So anyway, he taxried back. And sure enough, the little plane takes off and it starts back to civilization. But it's so overloaded that the little engine is working so hard begins to overheat and lose power and way out in the middle of the wilderness it crashes. One of the hunters pulls his buddy out from under the plane and dusts him off and his buddy said, oh where in the world are we? The other one said, you know I think we're within 100 yards of where we crashed last year. And that's the way our life was going, trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And I know some of you know about that. When it got bad enough, and it did get bad in our home, my wife's mother said, tell her you want a divorce, that'll shock her. And so I did. And it didn't shock her near as much as I thought it ought to. I was really pretty darn disappointed. Well, what I didn't realize is that alcohol had become the number one priority and the family moves down the line. It's just the nature of the disease. But anyhow, a young pharmacist called up and said, Betty, we're starting a group here in Nocona, Texas for people that have a problem like you and me. Will you come? And she did. She quit cold turkey hanging on by her fingernails, you know. She said, I don't recommend you do it that way, but I'll tell you one thing. You sure won't forget it. But she never took another drink. Well, she began running off and leaving me. I could see it. And I wanted some of the things that she was learning because she was very serious about the program. So it really was a program of attraction for me. And someone said, well, Bob, why don't you join Al-Anon? And I thought, well, why not? I don't mind joining the auxiliary. So I got in my car and I drove 40 miles over to Gainesville, Texas to my first Al-Anon meeting. And I walk in the room and it's a whole room full of women. I'm the only guy. Well, I immediately got mixed emotions about Al-Anon. I like to describe mixed emotions to you this way. It's kind of like the feeling you get when your teenage daughter comes in at four in the morning with a Gideon Bible under her arm. Anyhow, I stayed and I really laid a trip on those gals, you know, I was the rock that We'd been holding the family together, bloody but unbowed. And I left knowing I'd made a wonderful impression on them. You know, these things are revealed to you as you can handle them. I ran into Ann, one of the ladies that was there, and she said, oh, yeah, I remember that meeting, Bob. I said, after you left, we held a meeting. We said, boy, there's one that's not going to make it. But I bless those ladies, and that's my home group ever since. we had a tough time in recovery in our home too we had so much anger on both sides that we had to work through and you know it's not an easy thing to do sometimes it just involves getting into your car and driving off rather than start a big argument and we learned some little tools that helped like you may be right have you tried that one You know, you're not giving up a darn thing, but you're saying that stops the fight. Or I didn't know you felt that way about it. And these are the tools that kept us, because it takes two to have a fight. And if one of them just comes up with something like that, it stops the fighting. We, I had to peel away the past and the past dies hard. But I realize now how important it is to keep working on your program. You know, one of the most profound statements I've ever heard anybody in the program say was a lady AA from Albuquerque, New Mexico. And she said, the person I was will drink again. Wow. And how true are the Al-Anons too? The person I wasn't will get sick again. we can easily slide back and become that same person. We already know how to do it. We did it for years. So we have to constantly keep moving up in our level, and sometimes these levels are scary, at least they were for me. Sometimes they required a lot of trust on my part, but they always seem to work. And I encourage anybody, if you're in the program and you come through the gates of hell like all of us have and you look around and you settle for the first shack at the side of the road saying, I got here didn't I and never go any further. Not knowing that there's greater vistas there's brighter colors, there's more wonderful life up ahead if you will just keep working. So that's what I have tried to do and the benefits have just been absolutely fantastic everything was going along great we had four kids one of them had his bachelor's degree two had master's degrees one had his doctorate and the dog had finally died and so we were pretty free and we were both working into our programs and I got a phone call my oldest son Scott Scott had a master's degree cum laude from the University of Texas, was a member of MENSA, a people with a genius IQ, was top BMW salesman in Dallas. Gone to work that morning and something had happened and he went out and sat out in his car and took his gun and blew his brains out. Oh, what a terrible shock. You know, no parent wants to outlive their kids. And this beautiful boy, gone. But the reason I'm telling you this is because the group and the program held us in their arms, propped us up until we could stand alone. A beautiful, beautiful benefit. Six months later, my beautiful wife Betty came down with inoperable lung cancer and died at home, in bed. I had taken her all around the country, you know, trying to do everything possible. And finally she said to me, she said, Bob, I'm not afraid to die. I release you, and I know what you've been trying to doing. I said, okay, Betty, I release you, but I'm afraid to do it again. I released you, and she died at home free of pain. But again, the group and the program came to my rescue and sustain me and prop me up until I had the strength to stand up alone again and I tell you these things because if you live long enough some of these things are going to happen to you this is life on life's terms and these are the rough rough parts but if you've got a good program it will prop you up and sustain you and allow you to go on Now, if you're new here, had you ever thought about some of the miracles that have allowed these programs to go on and not self-destruct? You know, AA started to self-distruct in 42 and 45. It really did. People were hanging out their shingles as AA's official representative. They were incorporating AAs in different states and doing things like that. So, and it was just flying apart. And some guy from North Carolina wrote to Bill and said, Bill, we've got to do something. We're going to be like the Washingtonians. Well, the Washingtonian's were six alcoholics from Baltimore who decided they wanted to stop drinking. And they had meetings. They traveled to each other's groups. And they have many, many things that, like we do now. But they didn't respect anonymity. And they also decided if it's good for alcohol, it's good for everything. And they just blew apart. They got into politics. They got in a slavery issue and they just flew apart and disappeared. And I'll tell you how far gone they were. Bill had to go to the library and look up and see who the Argentinians were. So in six years they were gone. So that's one reason that these beautiful traditions are written that hold us together. miracles. You know, Bill and dad were human beings, and boy, were they broke. And they thought, oh, wouldn't it be great if we had some dough? We could start treatment centers, and I'm sure my father could see himself in his white coat, you know, greeting the patients, and maybe Bill out on the street flagging them in, you Know? So they went to New York City and met with people with very, very deep pockets. And Mr. Rockefeller and his group listened very carefully and then they said, no, money will ruin it. Well now just think what would have happened if Mr. Rockefeller and his group had dumped a million bucks on 100 broke drunks. It's just horrible to even think about it, isn't it? I bet we wouldn't be here tonight. Miracle. Well, anonymity. In the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were people with huge egos. Now I know we don't have any of that anymore. But you can't be Mr. A.A. or Ms. Al-Anon if nobody knows what your name is. And it doesn't make any difference if you've been here 40 days or 40 years. We're all exactly the same. And isn't that the way it should be? Miracle. god as we understood him was incorporated into the steps to quite a loud mouth agnostic from california by the name of jimmy b and jimny said this god stuff will ruin it it's going to run them out the door faster than we can drag them in so to quiet jimby down they put god as мы understood him And what that has done, that has made these programs acceptable to religions all over the world. People from the Eastern religions who have an entirely different concept of a higher power, perhaps you and me. Perfectly acceptable. Just those words. God as we understood him. And that's a miracle. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. You couldn't give it away when they first put it out. It was in a bonded warehouse, and the guy wouldn't let them have any books until they came with some money. So they came to maybe get 25, you know, and bring them out and sell them, and then go get 35. And now I understand it's the second bestseller of all time. And the first 164 pages, even in the fourth edition, are exactly the same except for one word of the text. You see, Bill had had a spiritual experience. Boom! You did well. But most of us don't get it that way. It comes on us gradually. So they changed the one word, having had a spiritual experience to having had a spiritual what? Awakening. And that's a change. And think of the millions and millions of alcoholics that have tried to find a loophole in those first 164 pages. Somehow they had to plug them all. so I am so convinced that these programs have been God guided these are spiritual programs and the benefits are so great my concept of God has changed entirely as a result of these programs I was raised in the Episcopal Church, that's Catholic light you know all the pageantry without the guilt, yeah But God was used to improve my conduct, you know. He was up there waiting for me to screw up and going to get me. So that wasn't a very acceptable thing as I got older. And then my concept of God changed. I was a bomber pilot World War II, and I flew 46, 45 missions out of Africa on the old four-engine Liberator, and my whole crew was killed. I'm the only survivor of that crew. I was a flight leader, and the squadron commander said, Bob, one of your pilots is having trouble riding with him. He said, I'll take your crew out tonight. And they went out, and they never came back. So I had a little bit different relationship with my God at that time. I had what I call a 9-1-1 relationship. Have any of you ever had? I made deals with God. God, if you'll get me out of this one, I swear I'll never, ever. But that isn't a very good concept. But the Wednesday program has taught me that my God is a loving, heavenly Father. That we're all God's kids. Wants me to do better but loves me just like I am. And I talk to my God. I thank him every night and I pray to him every day. And I can talk to him as I go through my day. You know, even driving down the road, I say, God, did you see that SOB cut I saw? But that's the kind of relationship I have with my God. I've learned the benefits of total honesty. I always was what I call cash register honest. You know, if a girl gave me too much change, I would say, here, you gave me a quarter too much and I feel like I'm really absolutely the true blue honest guy. And then I got into this, the next step I thought was resume honesty. You know, where you basically tell the truth but you gussy it up a little bit. You want people to like you. But our program teaches us absolute total honesty. And when I can let you see me exactly as I am, warts and all, and you do the same for me, we can have an instant intimate relationship. And I know no other programs in the world that can do these things. And what that does for me, folks, it dispels loneliness. Dispels loneliness Well, my life now I have recently been engaged to a lady And Butch and his wife have already met her And, you know, how us Al-Anons, we can home in on an alcoholic at 100 yards. So I homed in on this one. She's 25 years sober. But anyway, it gives us another little lift in our life. You know, my God, when he slams one door, always opens another one. And so I'm engaged to her, and we're both old. And, you know, it gives us companionship and company, and we like each other's company, and she's a super intelligent gal. So this is the way my life's going. Now how about you? If you're new here and you're starting from nothing, so did the program. If you'RE new here AND YOU NEED A MIRACLE, A BAD NEED OF A MIRACLE, all of us sitting here are miracles now talk to us you don't bother us you help us let me quote to you this may come as a surprise to you but this is where we get our happiness Dr. Albert Schweitzer who was a humanist in my era Dr. Schweitzer was a world class organist and went down and got his MD and went out and went on into the darkest Africa and started hospital and did that all the rest of his life. And Dr. Schweitzer said, I know not what your destiny may be, but this one thing I do know, that those among you who will find true happiness are those who have sought and found how to serve. So if you're new here, give us a chance to serve you. Help make us happy. Thank you. You did great.