Denial Reinforced by Achievement — the Alcoholic Too Accomplished to Be Sick – Lyle P.

Good evening, my name is Lyle Pross and I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, he was right about the TV stuff. The part that began about twelve and a half years ago was not the real good part. I'll probably talk about that. As a matter of fact, I know I will. One of the things I don't normally do is jokes. I have this dread fear that the joke I'm going to tell that I think is so funny, somebody just told a week ago. Somebody goes, he just told that last week, but since that's the style right now. I was at an event here a while back and they were talking about the suggestions. And the guy said, well, that's good news. The only thing that's good is that you're not going to get a job. That's the only thing that's good. That's the only thing that's good. The only thing we have to offer is suggestions. Bad news is we don't have anything else. And that reminded me of, for some reason or other, about the story about Moses coming down from the mountain. And there's this vast multitude awaiting him as he comes down with these two stone tablets. And he comes down to give these thousands of people a word. And he said, well, he said, the good news is I got him down to ten. And he says, the bad news is adultery is still on the list. My sobriety date is March the 7th of 1990. Well, before I get into that, I want to say thank you for asking me here. It's been a great workshop. I've sat in on some of the meetings and really enjoyed the fellowship. And it truly is something special that we have. And it's always a privilege and honor to be a part of that. I was sitting over here and I thought, you know, I was enjoying the evening much more last night when I was sitting over here. And it was Kevin's turn to come up here. And I found that it was a lot more enjoyable. I always think that the best part of my talk is when I end it and we do the Lord's Prayer. And that's the best part for me. But as I said, my sobriety date is March the 7th of 1990. I have three days that are very intense. March 7th, 8th, and 9th. And on those days, at any given moment, I can look at my watch and I know exactly what was taking place on that particular moment on that particular day. When I got to treatment, they said, you know, if you can't remember your last drunk, maybe you haven't had it. And I had folks like Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather all making note of mine. And so I don't have a lot of trouble remembering it. But I still see, periodically I will see little film clips, usually on A&E Channel or Discovery Channel, when they're talking about transportation industry incidents and alcohol and drug items. And the media has a way of selecting one particular clip and they show it all the time. It's the same clip always. They took, they had cameras all over me and in my face for, I don't know, I don't know how long, but they liked this one clip. And the picture is one of me accompanied by my wife and my attorney as we're walking into a courtroom, followed by the other two co-defendants. And I see that periodically. And I was watching it one time and my wife was there and I commented that it always evoked a certain painful reaction on my part to see that and remember that. And she said that she also... experienced a little bit of that, which kind of surprised me. And I said, really? And she said, yeah. She said, you know, over and over and over they show that. And she said, I'm just sure that everybody in the country is going to think I only have that one dress. And I... . They do think differently than we do. . Yeah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . He said, I'm a friend of L.W.'s and I want you to come up here. I said, okay. I said, is that speakeasy bar still around there? He said, yeah. I said, I'd like to go back to that and just kind of see what it's like. He said, they've got great food in there. He said, we can have a meal in there. I said, hell, I didn't know they had food. No, I didn't. And I was up in Minnesota not too long ago, and one of the guys that came up afterwards, he said, I'm a part owner of the speakeasy. And I said, wow. And he's in the program. On March the 8th at 7 a.m., we began an incident that has never happened or had never happened before and, in fact, really hasn't happened since in spite of some recent publicity and similarities, and that is that an airline crew was arrested as they walked off the airplane. I know we've had some incidents, but there's been different fallout and different consequences and a little different trail of things that have taken place at least up to this point. But I was the entire flight crew had drank heavily, and I was the only one who was able to get out of the plane. And I was the only one who was able to get out of the plane. And we were all arrested as we walked off the airplane. I was the first one off. I was the captain. And, you know, that day I saw my life explode right in front of me. And I've never been able to come up here and adequately describe what that was like. I just can't find the words. Although the big book does have a phrase that I think is very apropos. And I saw it not long ago going through the big book with the sponsor, and it talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. And that probably phrases it up better than any word picture that I could paint. But I walked off the airplane in uniform, and I saw airline airport police there. I saw some FAA officials, and I saw Northwest Airlines company officials. There's a reason I don't leave my airline anonymous. I think you'll probably pick up on it by the time I get through the story. As a caveat, I want to tell you I'm going to race the clock. In spite of the fact that I'm going to do what I can in the time that I have, you're going to hear about 20% of the story. There's an awful lot of really good stuff, and some of it not so good, that I really need to do. I need to talk about, but I just don't have the time. I just simply don't have the time. But at any rate, thus began a 12-hour day there in which I was arrested, detained, and questioned for some 12 hours by both Airline and Pilot Association attorneys, Northwest Airlines attorneys. We were finally deposed. Went to two different medical facilities, gave blood. And this thing went on forever, it felt like, 12 hours. And there were literally parts of the day where I, in my mind, just went to bed. My brain just wasn't working. I just couldn't comprehend what was happening to me. And I really felt I was having out-of-body experiences at times. This thing was so grim, so shocking, so horrible, so traumatic, that I felt like I was watching it happen to someone else. And then I would have these lapses where I would be sitting in the room looking around and think, God Almighty, this is happening to me, and it's happening right now. And I hadn't lived my life in a way I didn't think to come to this kind of an end. And yet it was ending. It was ending right in front of me. At the end of the 12 hours, the three of us were put in a car. It was dark again. It was 7 o'clock that night, and we were driven back from Northwest Airlines corporate headquarters back to the airport. And it was very quiet. No one spoke. There was an assistant chief pilot that was driving us. And I remember looking out at the night and thinking that's very representative of my life. The light in my life is this. It's completely extinguished at this point. It's just gone. And I should tell you that Northwest Airlines at that time was the only major carrier that did not have an alcohol program for its pilots. They had insisted for years that they didn't have any alcoholic pilots, and if they did, they'd fire them. So consequently, we had a tendency to hide and protect each other. I did, frankly, a lot more hiding than I was hidden. I had seen. I had seen guys get fired there for drinking. Anything that involved alcohol and flying at Northwest was instantly fatal. It was automatically a termination from which there was no appeal, and it was a dead issue. Now, I did see two guys over the years, and I don't know what their circumstances were, that went in and said, I've got a drinking problem. And because of the culture at Northwest at that time, certainly not now, but at that time, one of them went to work in a flight kitchen for two years making box lunches and preparing airplane food. And being paid. He paid those wages. The other guy was a, they put him out grooming airplanes. And being paid those wages, he subsequently went back to flying and then went back to drinking and died. But they were two very, very visible people on the property, and we all saw that. And frankly, no pilot I knew was going to sign up for a program like that. And it was very punitive, and it was very severe. So, when this happened, I knew. I knew that in spite of the delusional fantasy type hopes that I was clinging to, as most of us do in our drinking days, that my deal was done, my career was done. And the other thing that was so grim about that was that every time this happened, the names of the people who were terminated just flew through the airline like wildfire, and they were always, they left in disgrace. And, you know, I had not lived my life. I had not lived that way. I had been the standard bearer in my family for duty, honor, country. You know, I preached character, honesty, integrity. Everything I had ever done, I had done to the best of my ability. I had done it with the idea of reflecting pride and honor and dignity on whatever endeavor I was involved with. And that had been a very staunch part of who I was. And suddenly, I'm very much aware that I had been a part of that. And I'm very much aware that I had been a part of that. And I'm very much aware that I had been a part of that. And I have fallen into the deepest valley of shame and disgrace that I could have imagined. At the end, as we were taken back to the airport, I went in, I went to a commuter apartment. And I was just sick at heart. And I called my wife and had forgotten that I was supposed to be home that night. And they caught up on everything that was going on that day. I hadn't even had a chance to think about it. It had never even occurred to me. me, and she had spent some four hours out of the airport in Atlanta waiting on me, and had not yet gotten home, so I managed to get a message out, and I didn't know what to say, and all I could say is, there's been a disaster, and I'm sure I've lost my job, and I'll be in on the first flight in the morning, and I remembered I just could not stay still anywhere in that apartment that night, that I was just, I just couldn't stay still. I just couldn't believe what had happened, and the shame was overwhelming, overpowering, and yet I must have slept at least a little bit, and I made my way through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport the next morning. I was in uniform, and it was not uncommon that people would turn and look at pilots walking by, and yet when they did it that morning, I just knew, all I felt was just a bath, I was just bathed in shame. I thought, oh God, they know. They know what I did yesterday. They know what's happened, and I got on an airplane, and I got back to Atlanta, made my way very hurriedly through the northwest. I knew everybody that worked there. I knew the ticket agents. I knew the ground people. I used to sit and visit with them and joke and laugh with them, and so I knew everybody, and I didn't want anybody to see me. I didn't want anybody to say anything to me. I didn't want anybody to stop me, so I was able to exit the area, and I got to the front of the airport. My wife was waiting out there for me, and I've never told this story, but what I haven't said, you know, that I literally had to climb up to get over the curb to get into the car, and I could not. I couldn't look at her. I couldn't meet her gaze, and as we pulled away, all I could do was just barely murmur, honey, I'm so sorry, and she said, as we pulled away, she said, who better than I could possibly understand how you feel right now? We drove home, and in silence, as I recall, I just didn't want to talk about anything, and she let me out of the house, and I went in, and she went to work, and it was very quiet, and I picked the phone up, and I called the doctor. I called the doctor. I went in, and I said, I have to declare an emergency, and I've got to see you immediately. He said, come in in an hour, and so he cleared his calendar, and I went in. I walked in, and I told him what had happened, and I remember he was just absolutely shocked. He was this very stunned, surprised look, and he said, God, Lyle, this is just horrible. He said, this is horrible, and then he kind of turned to the side. I remember this clearly. He said, Lyle. This is what had to happen, and I didn't understand that comment. I just didn't get it, and at this point, I'm going to kind of freeze frame this at this point and back up and kind of come back and catch up, if I can, to what brought me to this point. I'll start by telling you that I was born in Wichita, Kansas in September of 1938, so to keep you from tuning out as you do the math, I'll tell you I'm 64. I'm 64. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. Both of my parents were alcoholics. I mean, it seems to me when I sit out there, I hear that more times than not. Both of my parents were alcoholics. Both of them died from this disease. To my knowledge, neither one of them ever got to alcoholic silence, although I don't know that for a fact. I don't remember any conversation about AA or any mention of it, and if, in fact, they got here, they certainly didn't stay. We lived on the outskirts of Wichita in the, what would be called, the U.S.A. referred to as the ghetto part of Wichita, a World War II housing project called Plainview. And we were not very well off. No one out there was. Yet I remember being very happy out there. There was also a Native American community, and I was very active in that. And I am a mix of several different things, notably, I suppose, Comanche and Irish, which I found to be a very interesting drinking combination with a fairly predictable outcome. My parents divorced when I was 14. Within the next few years, each of them were married and divorced two more times. I didn't have a lot of solid family anchoring. I only had two emotions as I looked back at my life. I was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very angry. And I got into a lot of clashes with step-parents and step-siblings, none of whom I remember, don't know at this point in time, even if they're alive or if they are where they might be. And so I would leave and go to the other parent's place, and then I would be there for a while, and then something would happen, and I would back up and go to the other one. And as this would occur, you know, periodically, there'd be a new group of people that would come to me, and I'd be there for a while, and then something would happen, and I would back up and go to the other one. And so I would leave and go to the other one. And as this would occur, you know, periodically, there'd be a new group of family folks there. So I would go through all of the orientation all over again about who was who and all of this, and that's kind of the way I did it. Yet I remember I was a good student in high school when I applied myself. The problem was nobody was watching me, nobody had any interest, and I certainly didn't. And I remember I rose to the extreme academic challenge in my senior year with three study halls and a typing class. And I was a good student in high school when I applied myself. And I remember I rose to the extreme academic challenge in my senior year with three study halls and a typing class. And I remember I Okey about you name a place, I mean, a paper didn't suit me. And, uh, the real kid was just to... I was the first kid ever to appear on the paper and begin the high school special. So it really certains fact or a character will be interesting. At that time, Lear was there and Swallow and Yingling and some other things. But anyway, that seemed to be kind of the career. That was the track. Or we went to the service, and quite a few went to the service. And there seemed to be a fascination coming out of the plains of Kansas for the ocean, so a lot of the guys went to the Navy. I had an Air Force base there. If you went to the Air Force, as I was pondering this, I decided to go into the service. One of my buddies came back from Marine boot camp and was really spiffed out in this nice-looking uniform. And he and I spent the afternoon and evening at a bar. I still see the bar every now and then. I go past it. It's no longer a bar. But I remember sitting in there with him as he regaled me with these stories about Marine boot camp. They were just sadomasochistic stories. And, I mean, I was just enthralled with this. And by the time we were done... I was thinking, God, I just can't wait to go down and do some of that. And it was probably an early indication of really skewed thinking. So I did. Frankly, I wasn't sure that I could do it. You know, I listened very closely to what he was telling me. So I went down, and I signed up with a Marine recruiter. And on December the 5th of 1956 off, I went to Marine boot camp. Some 34 years later, December the 5th, 1990, I would walk into a federal prison. I went in. I was an 18-year-old private. I had extremely high entry scores, which mystify me to this day. I don't know where they came from or how they got there. But I had been enlisted for about four, four and a half years. And I came walking in and was told that there was an opportunity to go to a flight training program and that I was the only one in the unit that was qualified score-wise and with other factors to attempt this program. I'd always wanted to fly. And I knew that that was for college folks. You had to have a college education to do those sorts of things. And that wasn't me. And I went and I took it. I spent a whole day testing. And I passed all the tests. And I was told that I could enter this program if I so chose. I pondered that a little bit because I knew that I was getting some special testing because I was entering through sort of the back doors and enlisted Marine. And that the guys coming in off of the streets were going to have to have two years college minimum. And many of them were going to have their degrees or somewhere in between. And those were the folks that I was going to have to compete with. I had a lot of fear about that. I did not believe I was going to be able to keep up with them. And I don't like to fail. I don't like to fail at all. I had decided to go and went home to Wichita. And they were having a powwow there. And during the powwow, they honored me with what they call a special, which is not a big deal. But I had a dance for me because I was going away. And I remember thinking about that all the way down to Pensacola when I was driving down to Pensacola. And I was very heavily involved in the realization that, you know, I had a rare opportunity, a golden opportunity. And if I was successful with this 18-month program, I was going to get a pair of gold wings and a pair of gold bars. I couldn't imagine being a Marine pilot. And it was even farther a stretch for me to imagine being a commissioned officer because I had tremendous respect for the officers that I had seen. So I went down and I checked into Pensacola. And I worked extremely hard through. There were four different phases of flight training. And they had told us at one point when we were checking in, look to your left, look to your right. One of the guys won't be there when you guys complete. I remember going through the program and not daily, but certainly weekly or close to it. We were watching guys pack up and leave, always with that look of shame and disgrace and disappointment on their faces. They said goodbye to us and off they went. Throughout all four phases of flight training, I was placed right up at the top and could never understand why or how that was. I always believed that I had just been lucky. I never believed that I really believed in the future. I never believed that I was going to be successful. I never believed that I belonged there. I was certainly willing to accept it, but I really did not believe that I truly had done what they were saying I had done. I completed flight training. Well, I left the Pensacola area to go to advanced jet training in a little town called Beeville, Texas. And I got there and a bunch of us reunited. We had gotten spread out along the way. And this was pre-Vietnam, so they weren't flying on the weekends. And when I got in there on a Friday, I was flying. And I was flying Friday afternoon. A whole bunch of my buddies and I went to the officer's club. And, well, we partied and had a good time and laughed and giggled and then decided, they said, well, let's go into town. I'd never been into the little small town of Beeville. But the weekend sport was going in and chasing local girls. And there's some pretty good-looking Texas girls around the area. And so I went in with them. I was never real gutsy or aggressive around the gals. But I thought, well, I've had enough to drink. Maybe I can do this. And so we went in. And I was watching these guys talk to this carload of girls. And I was hanging back. And the driver was not talking with anyone or having anything to do with them. And finally I thought, well, I've had enough. I think I can wander up there. And I went up there. And I thought I had some neat things to say. And she turned and looked at me. And the only thing I could think of was I remember her looking at me just being blown away. And I said, God, you've got the prettiest brown eyes I've ever seen. And she's just kind of looking at me with this look of expectation that maybe I've got something more to offer than that. And I didn't have. And I'm thinking, God, I feel like a real ass now because I'm kind of there. And I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be back there. And the expression on her face seemed to kind of mirror the fact she thought I was an ass, too. And so I turned around and walked off. And the next day I was in town with a cadet buddy of mine and saw her and her girlfriend going to the restaurant I was at. I was in town doing some pre-check-in chores. I swung in there and feigned surprise and did it well. And I was sober and I was nice and asked if we could buy them a cup of coffee. And they said, yeah. And we sat down and talked. And she gave me her name and we began to date. And we dated all through my advanced jet training career. And I took her home to Kansas on February 25, 1963, which happened to be her 20th birthday. And I was there. And I was in Kansas on February 25, 1963, which happened to be her 20th birthday. She pinned my gold wings and gold bars on me. And it was an amazing day, just an incredible day to get all of that at one time with this little gal that I had really come to love. We went home to Wichita. And she and I ran down to New Kirk, Oklahoma and got married on March 9. That's one of the three days that comes into play in all of this. And I was speaking one time. And I'd heard countless speakers. And a lot of times because of the nature of the disease. And how it kills relationships out here. Something like. Then after my third wife, this happened. And after my fourth husband, then this happened. And so I had decided that I wanted to say something that was humorous. And I was, instead of just going up and telling this horribly morose story. So I said in front of a group one night, I said, I'm one of those rare alcoholics who doesn't speak of marriage in multiples. And the reaction was about this way. And it went kind of flat. And I was like, God, I thought that was kind of witty. Anyway, after this thing was on, Barbara was in the audience. And after we left, she said, you know when you said that? And I said, yep. And she said, I just want you to know that it was not your fault that it worked out that way. And then she said. I didn't respond. I just kind of looked at her. And she says, as a matter of fact, the only reason I stayed with you is because I couldn't stand to admit I'd made a mistake. And I didn't respond to that either. At any rate, this next March the 9th will mark 40 years for us. And she's been a godsend, just a godsend. And there's so much more about her that I never knew. I remember the night I saw her. When I had walked to the back and was hanging back there, she got out to go inside. And I thought, God almighty. She's got those brown eyes. She had turquoise shorts on, a cute butt and nice legs. And I had a very short shopping list at that point. But, you know, I've had a lot of time over the years to rethink a lot of this. And I thought, man, I had no idea what I was getting at the time. She's just been a sweetheart. The end. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. I had a great Marine Corps career. Barbara and I immediately had two kids, eight days less than a year apart. And people used to say, are you guys Catholic? And I'd say, no, we're just real, real careless Protestants. And Barbara was getting kind of tired, so I went overseas. And I left my two boys were six months and 18 months. And I went to Vietnam with this squadron. I'm a Marine Jet Squadron. One of the finest squadrons I think the Marine Corps ever put together. And we went over there and we did a lot of, we were flying off a combat expeditionary airfield. It was a very short interlocking Marston-Madding aluminum plank thing. All the landings were carrier landings. Takeoffs usually loaded down with ordnance. So we're just as takeoff. It was a very challenging flying. I forgot I was in it with this group of just terrific guys. And we did some great flying over there. And I came back with a number of missions and a few medals and ribbons and stuff like that. And I was a lifer. I had gotten a regular commission when I was over there. I didn't think they'd give that to a guy with a high school education. And they were very competitive back then. And I was instructing in advanced jet. And I began to look at the family situation. And my whole thing had always been that I said, my family will never be like the one I grew up in, never. And so I went. I wanted my family centered and safe and secure and stable. I wanted it surrounded by love. And I began to look at this. And I said, you know what? If I pursue this career, I'm going to be gone between four and six years from my family. And I couldn't have that. And very painfully, it was a very anguished decision. I sat down and wrote my letter of resignation. And a year later, I got out of the Marine Corps on July 15th of 68. And August the 5th of 68, I was sitting in the military. I was sitting in class at Northwest Airlines. I had a lot of neat things that I had done in the Marine Corps. A lot of neat accomplishments that I was very, very proud of. I spent almost 22 years at Northwest before the wheels all of a sudden came off. I mean, they came off with a vengeance and a fury. And they did it all at once. I don't know when I became an alcoholic. I've looked back on that. I can't put my finger on it. I've decided it's not all that important. And I never thought I was alcoholic. I had a million reasons why I couldn't be. I didn't drink every night. I would vary my drinking patterns. But I didn't drink every night. Rarely ever drank in the mornings. And I heard alcoholics did that. And I didn't get drunk every weekend. Never beat or abused my family. I was at the top of my game professionally. Now, there was some verbal abuse that went on. And I pled guilty to that. And I think sometimes that's even worse than the physical part. But I did. I had a lot of reasons why I couldn't be an alcoholic. You know, I'd heard alcoholics would stay drunk for three days to three weeks. I couldn't do that. I'd get drunk really bad one night. And I didn't want to drink the next day. Until maybe about five o'clock when I thought I was feeling pretty good. But... And I wasn't going to let it. You know, this time I was just going to be real careful. And so I had a lot of reasons. I would get a physical every six months. And I'd quit drinking for a month before the physical. And I said, I know no alcoholic can do that. And so I was setting goals. I was setting up and devising all these tests. I was watching this. I had seen my parents. And I said, I'll never be like that. I did not ever want to drink like they did or behave like they did. Throughout my growing up days, I had to pile out all over Kansas and Oklahoma mostly in the summertime. And I remember seeing drunk Indians on the streets of these small towns that I was at. And they made me very ashamed and very embarrassed. I said, I'll never be like that either. And so in my mind, I was like, I'm going to be like that. I'm going to be like that. I was very much different from all of them, which meant I was not an alcoholic because I labeled them as alcoholics. I knew a lot about alcoholic behavior because I'd grown up in it and watched a lot of it. But I didn't know a single thing about the disease of alcoholism, not one thing. And until I got to treatment. And as I've looked back on this and all of the angst that went into this, was I, was I not, could I pass this test? I mean, to the degree that I asked the question was to answer the question. You know, normal drinkers don't have to go through this process and this examination and this long, prolonged. Am I, am I not? No, I'm not. It just never comes up. It's not a big deal. It's not an issue. But it was with me. And so I had a great reputation at Northwest Airlines. And I had done some really neat things there, too, until the morning of this incident. And that was one of the reasons why I was suffering so horribly with the shock. And so two years before this incident occurred, however, Barbara and I had had these two boys. And when we got to Minneapolis-St. Paul with the airline, she and I had talked about adopting a child even before we got married. And I said, let's either do it or quit talking about it. So we adopted this little Chippewa Indian girl. And it took us 14 months, a hell of a lot of work, trouble, a lot of fighting. And we were right on the edge of when, if you had your own biological kids, they didn't want to place a child in your home. And, boy, we fought, kicked, and screamed. And we did this thing for 14 months. And finally, they called us with this little girl. And she was 17 days old when we brought her home to live with us. And she was gorgeous, just beautiful. And she always was. And she grew up in my home. And she was every father's dream. And, you know, I thought it would be neat for Barbara to have a daughter. I just had no idea what daughters do to their dads. And she really did. And she really did. And she became the center of my universe. And, you know, she couldn't walk past me without me saying, come over here and give me a hug. And she'd come over and give me a hug. And I'd look at her and I'd say, thanks for being my girl. And she'd say, thanks for being my dad. And this went on for years and years and years. However, two years before all of this arrest incident took place, she was a senior in high school. And I had passed up becoming a captain because I wanted to be there for her instead of being a junior captain and being a connoisseur. And later formed the basis for an awful lot of self-pity and martyrdom on my part. But at any rate, she was coming up to graduate. And I said, it's time for me to go be a captain. So I went to Chicago to take a special written test that had to be completed before I could make the move into the left seat. And unbeknownst to me or Barbara, she had planned with the help of one or more of her friends to run away on the afternoon that Barbara took me to the airport for this flight. Barbara wasn't aware, so she went in, she took what she wanted, and she left. Barbara wasn't aware of that until sometime later that night, when dawn didn't come home, and she went in and found a note along with a lot of items that were missing. I called home the next day, ready to come home. And all Barbara did was say hello, and I already knew something was wrong. And I insisted and demanded that she tell me what it was. And when she did, I panicked and I blurted out all of these instructions about who she should call, where she should go, where to look. And I said, I'll be back in a minute. And we went to Lisbon, and we talked, and we sat down with a balance of one Chinese student and went back to school. I yourself know what business I take on, and if I am a college student and I have time, and if I'm reading a book. All the time, I'm writing books a mile and a half by myself as if I were a father and a I love what I learned, all the time. Extreme, rest objections, all of that. And I said, Barbara,... because if I could get angry, I didn't feel the pain. And so I needed to conjure up a lot of anger, and I hated her beyond words. And so I told Barbara immediately when I walked out and got in the car, I said, I don't care anything about her. She'll never come home again. And I never want to hear her name mentioned again, ever, not by any member of this family. And I made sure that everybody knew that. And within two days of my getting home, all of her furniture was gone. I'd given it all away to Goodwill. I'd cleaned everything out of the house that she'd ever touched. I had found some things that she had made for me over the years, little school projects that I had deeply treasured and cherished, and I smashed them and broke them, threw them away. I went down to the bank, the safety deposit box where the adoption papers were. I ripped those up. I immediately went to a lawyer, gave him $500 and disowned her. I tried to annul the adoption and could not. And as I was doing all of this, of course, I was looking around at the family situation, and I decided that Barbara probably needed some help. Because she was struggling, I was really just doing okay. So I called a family therapist and just pulled one out of the phone book and fortunately got a good one. And so we went to see him and told him what the issue was, and we agreed that we would. And we did that for about two years. And I remember on the first visit we went, which was just kind of as we were explaining why we were going to be coming, we were leaving, and he said, by the way, as long as you come to see me, he said, I don't want either of you drinking. And we'd not even talked about drinking. As far as I knew, he didn't even know if we did. And I said, okay. And we left, and as far as I got in the car, I said, what do you think he meant by that? And I thought it was a very, very puzzling statement. It was very short and to the point, but I thought it was very puzzling. And she said, I don't know. And I said, well, you know, to be an airline pilot, you've got to be able to cut through all of the chaff and get right to the heart of things. And a very quick-minded decision-making process here. And so I said, well, I think he means on the day we're coming. And that's how I analyzed it all. So on the day we were coming, we never drank and never had a problem with that. You know, throughout the course of the time, we never talked about my drinking. And I got to tell you, it wasn't because I was hiding it. I truly, honestly, genuinely, sincerely didn't think it was an issue. I thought it was totally irrelevant. So I didn't need to hide it. Just didn't talk about it. And we spent a lot of time with that man. And I remember one time he was talking to me about my daughter, and I had never formed this thought before, but the words flew out of my mouth. And I looked at him and I said, I'm going to tell you something, Doc. I'd rather hate than hurt. And I had never forgotten that statement. And I thought, God, that summarized exactly who I was and what I was about. And he was sitting very close to me. He looked at me and he said, Lyle, you survived a childhood doing that, but he said, if you continue to do that, it'll destroy you. And I didn't respond to him. I remember looking directly at him, and I didn't respond to him. But I was thinking, well, you may be a Ph.D. family therapist, but I'm an airline pilot. And I'm never short on ego or grandiosity. And so I didn't respond to him. But he was absolutely right. Everything he told us was right. Everything he told us was right. And he was the man that I called on the morning of the arrest. He was the only man I knew to call. And he left the office that morning after he had made this comment about, well, maybe this is what had to happen. He came back and he said, I've got an appointment set up for you to go see another doctor on the other side of Atlanta at 6 o'clock tonight. This was a Friday. And the fact that I was going to see a very prominent doctor, this doctor was himself a recovering alcoholic and cocaine, and was very prominent. And the idea of me seeing him at 6 o'clock on Friday told me that they thought this was very serious. I didn't know of any doctors who saw patients at 6 on Friday evenings. And so Barbara and I drove across Atlanta, and I went into this doctor's office. I can't tell you if I was in there 30 minutes or an hour. I can't tell you one single thing he said to me or he asked me. All I know is that I was totally shredded. I was dead. I was done. I had nothing left. Nothing left. And I think I tried to answer his questions as honestly as I could, or I had the capacity to do at that time. I do remember him looking at me and saying, well, you're an alcoholic, and you need to go into treatment tonight. And I remember the fact that I had hated that word ever since I had first learned what it meant. I hated it. I hated it, and I hated the people it applied to, because to me they were weak. They were losers. They were narrow-dwells. They were the drug. They were the people in the alleys. That's what alcoholics were. And yet when he told me that, I remember consciously having no reaction to it, because in the brief period of time that I'd had, all I could fathom, all I could reason out was my whole life is destroyed, and it's because I was in a bar drinking alcohol when I wasn't supposed to be. So I saw the linkage there. And so when he told me that, I said, well, I thought you were probably going to tell me that. And I said, I don't have any problem about going into treatment. But I said, how about if I go into treatment on Monday? I said, you know, right. I said, I just... Well, you know what he told me. But I told him, I said, I just really, I'd just like to go home and just have Barbara pull the drapes and just kind of hang on to me. I said, please, just let me let my mind uncoil and let me, just let me absorb what's happened. And he said, you need to go into treatment tonight. And I looked at that, and I guess that was my first lesson in willingness because I thought, I remember having the thoughts thinking, why would I come all the way over here and see this man and then not do what he's telling me to do? So I said, okay. So we drove back across Atlanta to Anchor Hospital that I'd never heard of. And I remember it was dark again, of course. And I remember the headlights hitting the sign, which is not there now, but was at the time. And it said, Anchor Hospital, the Hospital for Alcoholism, and other chemical dependencies. And there's something about either writing down stuff when we're doing our step work or seeing it that really makes it vivid. And when the headlights hit that sign, it was just like I got hit in the stomach. And I thought, my God, 51 years old, and my life ends in a treatment center for alcoholics. You know, how can this be? And there was a quick flash, I remember thinking, just a very brief flash, back of all of these accomplishments that I had, most of which were really kind of, I think, against the odds. As a matter of fact, as a family therapist, I didn't see this until some years later. But I saw a report he had written, and I don't remember what the event was, but I had all of this paperwork, and I had never seen this report. And he summarized it at the end of it. He said, given the background and history of this man, it was unlikely to believe he would ever be a productive member of society. I remember looking at that, thinking, geez, that's pretty dismal. And then I read it. I remember thinking, but I'm the one that gave him all the information. But as I kind of recounted all of these things that I've been so terribly proud of, it was just like somebody took a giant eraser and wiped them out. You know, I had zero self-worth. The sum total of my life was nothing. It was absolutely nothing. I drove down a hill towards Anchor, and I'm trying to fathom or picture what this place is like. And the only thing I can envision is that movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But it wasn't like that at all. And that was a nice place, and I walked in there. And, of course, not real happy to be there. But the next morning was a Saturday, and I walked outside fairly early. And I didn't know that Anchor was only five minutes south of the Atlanta airport. I'd never heard of this place. And an airplane took off, a Boeing 727, the same airplane I'd been flying. And instinctively, like I always do, I turned and looked at it. And I said, well, I'm going to fly to Atlanta. And I said, well, I'm going to fly to Atlanta. And I said, well, I'm going to fly to Atlanta. And I said, well, I'm going to fly to Atlanta. And I just looked at it for a few moments. And that realization just washed over me. You'll never fly again. You'll never see the inside of a cockpit ever again. And I felt it coming up. I started to get sick. And I swallowed, and I turned my back and walked away. And I walked over. There were some chairs. I was out near the wreck area. And I walked over, and I sat in one of them. They were spaced a foot and a half or so apart. I didn't want anybody in there to know who I was or what I was. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want anybody to know me. I didn't want to know them. And I sat by myself. And there was a guy sitting in a chair to my left. I didn't even look at him. I knew he was there. And he makes a statement. I don't know if he's talking to me or anyone. He says, you know, if I only had a month to live, this is where I'd want to be. And I kind of looked like this. And I'm thinking, Christ, I've only been here one night. But, you know, I'm having a little trouble with this. And I'm thinking, well, I'm going to die. And I'm going to die. And I'm going to die. And I'm going to die. And I'm going to die. And I'm going to die. So I didn't know whether I should respond or not. But I just kind of said, oh, really? And I didn't look at him. And he said, yeah, because every goddamn day here seems like a year. I hadn't been introduced to one day at a time yet. But apparently that was his twist on it. But I had a very intense treatment experience for 20 years. And I was in the hospital. I had a very intense treatment experience for 20 years. And I had a very intense treatment experience for 20 years. Very shortly after I got there, the media had the story. And I was the lead story every segment here in Atlanta, every segment. The hospital had two TV sets. And I wouldn't go near either one of them. I remember several times when I would go out the side door of the hospital and walk around and come in another door simply because I did not want to go past that television set. It was just simply too painful. So everybody knew who I was. And even though I was in the hospital, I was in the hospital. And I was in the hospital. And I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. And even though I was trying to avoid it all, there's always a patient or two who thinks that it's somehow or other he's designated duty to relay all this information to them. Show me the magazines with my picture in them and all of that. So at any rate, I worked. I had a gift when I went in there. And that was that I was totally destroyed. Absolutely, totally destroyed. And in the first few days, I became suicidal. Something I didn't even think I had the capacity for. And something that clear up to this day, a lot of the people who knew me still don't really believe. that I was as close to it as I tell them I was. I was beyond the point of romancing or just flirting with the idea. I hurt so badly that I never thought human beings could hurt that badly. I was way beyond any threshold that I'd ever thought was possible. And I wanted it to end. And I was willing to kill myself to do it. And someplace in the midst of planning that or thinking through it, there was one of these God-given moments of clarity where I thought, you know what? Your family will not survive that. That's the only thing that could happen right now that's worse than what's already happened. And I'll scar them and stigmatize them, and they'll never get over that. So I gave up on that idea. And not sure where in the process I began to think more about living than dying. And I've looked back a lot, and I just can't figure out where that was. I guess it's not important. Nonetheless, when I thought it couldn't be any worse, suddenly I began to get whisperings of legal problems. Now, not even the airline, pilot association attorneys knew anything at all about legal problems when they talked to us that day. No one knew anything about it. I knew there were going to be FAA sanctions, and I knew I was probably going to get fired. And to me, that was about as bad as it could get. A week to the day that I'd gone into treatment, people on TV announced that I had been fired by Northwest Airlines, and it was fair. I should have been fired. They also announced that the FAA had very publicly revoked all my licenses, something they rarely do. And that was a fair deal, too. That was a fair deal. I earned it. So I had lost all of that. But here came legal stuff. And the first time they called me in and told me about it, Minnesota was going to indict me. I was looking at 90 days in jail in Minnesota on a misdemeanor charge, and I didn't think I could do 90 days. I'd never been in a jail before. I couldn't go live with those people for 90 days. The vision of living in a jail just about did me in. I'm going, I can't do that. And then suddenly, two or three days later, they're coming and telling me, every two or three days, and this went on for six times to the point where when I'm sitting in a group, I'm flinching. When the door opens and a staff member starts looking around, I'm thinking, oh, please not. Please. And they'd get me and they'd motion me out like this, and I just didn't want to go. Six times this went on, and the penalties were ever escalating. And every time they did it, I've said this, and it's the most vivid description I can use, is it felt like they just sucked the air right out of the room. I just felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was smothering. And it would take me a day or two or three to just settle in, to begin to accept what was going on, and it would occur again. And finally, they called me out, and I stepped out, and there was a doctor outside with my counselor, and I'd never seen a doctor standing by before, and I thought, oh, man. And so we go down to his office, and he made me sit down. He said, Lyle, I have to tell you, a federal grand jury has just announced that you've been indicted, and you're looking at 15 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, and there's an attorney coming in Sunday and wants $50,000, which I didn't even remotely have. And I just went numb. And he said, I have to ask you if you're going to do anything to hurt yourself. And I said, no. I want to pause here and tell you that somewhere in my second week, I think one of the greatest gifts I had was this total destruction that I was experiencing. I didn't have any will left to argue, debate, question, challenge, none of that. I knew that my answers weren't working. It hadn't worked. They had taken me there. So when they're trying to give me the concepts and some of the ideas behind recovery, which were so very simple, I was accepting them. I didn't always understand them. I had a lot of problems reacquiring a new vocabulary with words like powerlessness, surrender. I'd been a Marine for 11 and a half years. I didn't even like the word, much less understand that concept. So I was having to do a lot of work. And I was doing the work. I was doing the work as hard as I could. Someplace in the second week, I think I was in a group, and they closed the door. And there were eight or 10 of us. And for whatever reason, I began to talk about my daughter. And I broke down and cried. I sobbed. I mean, it's like somebody had ripped the heart right out of my chest. And I didn't think that was okay. I felt very naked. I felt very vulnerable. I didn't want them to open the door and go back out in the rest of the population out there. And I hadn't even cried at my parents' funerals. I didn't think it was okay to cry. And yet I view that as probably one of the most important things that happened to me in treatment. And it was like somebody lanced this incredible cancerous boil that I had inside of me and I began to start healing. I was able to write to my wife and said, get a hold of Dawn and tell her I want to see her again. Barbara knew where she was. And the hospital, even though I had a no visitor, no phone call policy, thought it was so incredible they would allow that to occur. So Dawn came up from Florida. And I remember seeing her for the first time in two years. I met her in the day room of the hospital, the treatment center for alcoholics. And I had forgotten that she was so little. I just didn't remember that. and she had a little five-month-old baby. I didn't know her last name. She'd gotten married, and my little five-month-old granddaughter stole my heart as fast as my daughter had when I saw her. And the two doctors, the family therapist and the guy that had diagnosed me, heard about this, and they wanted to know if they could come watch. They said, we never get to see this. Later, the family therapist said, I had written in my notes that there was no way this family was ever going to come back together again. He said, you were absolutely, totally unyielding. And he said, I'd written it off as impossible. And he said, I don't know what happened to you. And I said, treatment happened to me. The gift of those counselors and those people who held on to me and helped me learn to see things differently and helped me see what was going on. And so we had that reunion, and the two doctors stood off to the side and watched this occur. It was Barbara's greatest day. We were in the midst of this firestorm. I mean, and she stood to the side. I remember looking off to the side here, and she's a beautiful woman, and she has this very soft Texas voice. And she had her hands out like this. And I had told the kids, I said, okay, you need to get ready to see me being let off into jail on TV in handcuffs. That's probably going to happen. And Barbara made a statement. I turned to look at her, and she said, you know, she said, I feel like the sky is just falling in all around us, but I'm getting to catch the stars. And I just looked at her, and I thought, wow, where did that come from? So good things were happening in the midst of this firestorm that we were enduring. I got out of treatment at the end of 28 days. I went to Minnesota and was arraigned. And we were quickly in court. We went through a three-week, very public trial. Everywhere I went, cameras, reporters, people, and it was an incredible experience. And I would see these throngs of reporters, and I would just start mantraing, being serenity prayer to myself over and over and over and over as I walked into the middle of them until it began to have some effect. And unlike the other two guys, I had a little bit of sobriety, and I had the support of you folks in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I began to go to AA meetings. As a matter of fact, I was just up in Minnesota not too long ago. Two guys came up and said, we were at those meetings when you were coming during your trial. And I said, holy cow. I said, I wondered if I'd ever run into any of you again. And I wasn't, doing any sharing. I was just going in there and taking in the energy. Just, just, just being where I needed to be with other alcoholics so that I could do one more day in a courtroom where the prosecutor was telling the entire world and it was being printed that I had no socially redeeming values. I had no worth as a human being. I never had, have, never had, had, never would have. And that's very painful. But I could, I could go to a meeting at night and charge back up and the other two guys couldn't do that. They quickly came back with a, uh, a verdict of guilty. And, um, I have a, a story I'd love to tell you about my attorney. Um, he was an incredible man and we had an unbelievable experience together, um, that no one that I know of has ever had with an attorney. And I can't, I, I, well, I was, you know, I used to say, you know, I was the only inmate in prison still like his lawyer. And, uh, the rest of the guys were just in there because they had bad attorneys. And, um, uh, but anything they did, uh, at any rate, I had, uh, a tremendous experience with this man. And, and it was later to, uh, to repeat itself. But, um, we were, we went back some months later for sentencing. And, um, uh, the judge, the minute I walked into the attorney's office, um, I knew something was wrong. I could tell. And he said, I got to show you a letter just came an hour ago. And it was from the judge. And he said, I'm going to depart upward from the sentencing guidelines. Guidelines were 12 months minimum, 18 months maximum, mandatory prison, no probation, no suspended sentences. So I knew I was going to prison. And I had accepted 18 months. And now all of a sudden I see this. And Barbara and I left there. And I just, it was just that cold penetrating fear that had just hit me in the bone marrow so many times. And it was a familiar feeling. And here it came again. We walked out of there. And I said, this is a let go and let God thing. This is a powerlessness issue. This is an acceptance thing. I can't do anything about this except accept it. And I told Barbara about two dreams that I'd had, very vivid, spread over some time, in which I stood there in front of this man expecting 18 months. And he said, fine, five years. And both times I woke up just cold. And they were both identical. And I told her, I said, I think maybe these are visions. This is what's going to occur. We went in for the sentencing. The judge lectured for a lengthy period of time about why he was going to impose this sentence. It had been leaked to the media. I'd been in treatment with the federal judge. He told me, he says, you need to know about the sentencing. That part is a charade. We never, no matter what you say, the sentence stays the same. We never change from the bench, ever. We've already researched it. We've read the letters. We've heard the testimony. We already know. And we'll never give in to an emotional sway from the bench. So I had worked for two days, a day and a half, trying to figure out what I was going to say. I was so scared I couldn't come up with anything. And I didn't even know as I stood to speak. And I was the first one up. But I talked about being grateful to be sober, being grateful for the good things that happened inside my family, accepting responsibility. I couldn't change what had happened yesterday, much less what had happened some months earlier. And to everyone's shock, and surprise, and dismay, the judge announced the sentence of 16 months, two months less under the guidelines than he could have. I had spoken, I said, for several years, I said, I'll probably never know what happened that morning. I met that judge in Washington, D.C. about three months ago or three weeks ago. And he and his wife and me and my wife sat and spent the evening together. And the, he had told my lawyer sometime later, he said I was going to sentence him to four years in prison until he said what he said that morning. He also told us, he said, this is a very, very complex legal case, a first of its kind, only one of its kind, a lot of legal issues here. He said, I'm aware of them. I know they're going to be appeals. He said, I will allow you three gentlemen to remain free until the appeals are exhausted. The other two guys chose to do that. I chose not to. Uh, I had learned in here that we deal with life on life's terms for me to stay outside free was whistling in the dark. It wasn't going to happen. Um, I also remembered some, um, poem way back in high school English. And I can't tell you the name of it, don't know anything about it except one line. And it said, uh, a coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man, only one. I had been through multiple countdowns for events that were coming and I thought I'd handled them pretty well, but I didn't want any more countdown. And so I said, I'm going into prison. Give me a couple of weeks to get things straightened out. And I'll go in the Monday after Thanksgiving. The judge says, even to this day, no defendant has ever done that. That he's known. He knows that he said no defendant ever. Has gone to prison voluntarily with an appeal pending. Not before or since, but I learned that in here, I needed to get on with it. I needed to get it done. And I told my kids who are very scared, I said, I'm scared too, but I can't come out the back door until I go in the front. That's the reality. So I'm going in the front. So I did. And, uh, I served, uh, 424 days, 14 months, uh, with, uh, 62 days, good conduct time, uh, in the Atlanta federal prison system out there. It was, um, you know, I don't, uh, I could talk, uh, for hours about some of the things that went on. I don't because, uh, my feeling is that it has nothing to do with my recovery, but my recovery has an awful lot to do with how I dealt with prison in there. I used to have inmates that would come up to me periodically and say, how can you do what you're doing here? I come, they can't get to you. And I'd say it's too simple for you to understand. Well, it was, it was about acceptance. I tell them, I don't like one single thing that goes on in here. Not from, not from the moment I get up to the time I go to bed, but I can't do anything about it. I accept it. I give them nothing other than, except then compliance. That's all I give them here. I think prison is a very sick, obscene place. And I think the goal of it is to emotionally, uh, castrate and scour you and wait for you to come back. That's my sense of it. I normally say I have two comments that I make about prison and I leave it at that. I'd say two groups of extraordinarily sick people in prison, the sickest group goes home every night. And, uh, then it's invariably, there'll be, uh, a correctional officer out there. And I'll say, look, if you're in this fellowship, obviously I exclude you from that. And if that doesn't, um, uh, help you, then call your sponsor. I had a guy, I had a guy come up to me in park rapids, um, last month and asked me to change my story. I said, I don't think so, but your comments are duly noted. The other thing, was I made 12 cents an hour in there, 96 cents a day. And, uh, the biggest irritant about that was they had no 401k plan. I'll leave it at that. Um, anyway, um, I had a lot of experiences in there. I came out, I was broke. We had been broke from the end of the first month of this thing. Uh, I'd grown up poor. Um, we had joined Northwest. They had an awful lot of strikes. The first, I was out of work six times in the first 10 years for 19 months total time. The last 12 years had been good. We've managed to save and acquire some things, which was kind of nice. And all of that was gone at the end of the first month. It was all gone. And, uh, so I got out of prison. I'd been stripped of my licenses. I had no medical certificate because of my alcoholism. I was the biggest pariah in, um, commercial aviation. Everyone knew my name that was involved in aviation. Um, there was no way I'd ever fly again. The judge had put sanctions on me and made it impossible. I'd ever fly again. My lawyer worked for me for nearly three years. I was a judge for no fee and simply said, I believe in you and I'm staying to the end. And he went to the judge and said, is there any chance you'll lift those sanctions? Judge demanded that I write a letter to him. And I did. I wrote him a very naked open letter. This guy was probably the toughest judge in Minnesota. He told the Minnesota TV station, he said, I sat at my desk reading that letter and I wept and I couldn't believe that this man that it would affect him that way. I don't think that was me writing the letter. I think I had an awful lot of spiritual health that day because I don't write that well. Um, nonetheless, he lifted the sanctions, which just barely, barely, barely took, uh, impossible. It made it absolutely impossible. It just took absolutely away from it. There was no one I knew that believed it was impossible to go back and get my licenses. I had thought that the FAA would require me to go back and get the, I had held the highest license they issued. And I thought that in and of itself is impossible. But if I can get that one, certainly they will waive all the lower licenses since I have to perform to the highest tolerance they have. The FAA said, no, if you want to fly, again, you'll start with a private license. No one thought that was possible. And that decked me for a couple of days. I just had to sit and breathe in and breathe out and be still. And I went back and I told Barbara, I said, this is attitude. This is about attitude. If I make this an ordeal, it'll be an ordeal. But if I, if I, if I treat it as, as something enjoyable, I can make it that way too. So I went back and had to relearn things that I'd learned in 1961 for a private license. I spent 10 and a half months and I got four licenses. Past the written parts. I looked at the flying that was required and said to her, no way, it's going to be 10 to $20,000. I had gotten out of prison and I'd gone back to the treatment center that had saved my life. And I was working there full time with the alcoholics and addicts. I was making $6 and 75 cents an hour. And so there's no way we can do it. Barbara said, I don't know that you'll ever fly again commercially, but I think it's important that you get your licenses. That she said, why don't we sell our furniture? And before I had a chance to ponder that or respond to it, I had a phone call. And a letter same day from a man in Minnesota, Northwest pilot who had a flight school that I was not aware of. He said, I want you to come up here and live with me and go through my fly school free and get these licenses back. I was under three years of supervised release. I had to coordinate with Georgia department corrections, go up to Minnesota, check in with them. I went to this man's place. It's in the summer of 93 when we were getting monsoon rains and floods across the country. I was rained out. I was there for 44 days. It was rained out 14 days. I never studied less than eight months. I was there for a year and a half. I was there for a year and a half. I never studied less than eight or 10 hours a day on any of those days. I only know how to do something one way. And that's, that's as hard as I, as I can apply myself. And I learned that from my parents, you know, they weren't drunk all the time. They taught me some really good things before the alcohol killed them. And, uh, I took three days off just to relax the remaining 30 days. I flew 78 hours and got four licenses back. I got to them in one day. And I don't think that had ever been done before, but I, you know, everything I did, and this is not about me. I'm, I'm using the word I, but this is a program thing because everything I did that I considered to be impossible, I applied program concepts to. That was how I did it. If I had looked, when I looked at the, at the entire panorama with regard to the licensing, it was so broad, so overwhelming. I would have quit. I would never have even attempted it, but I'd learned in here to do things one day at a time, one thing at a time, one step at a time. And so when I broke it down that way, it was a doable deal. So I, everything I did had a program concept behind, and I had to change it. Period. So, three months after I had gotten these licenses, they actually came in the mail, and I got a phone call from the head of the pilot union at Northwest. I had not challenged my firing. I believe Northwest was fair, I was justified in firing it. So I had not challenged it. Grievance had been filed, but that was an automatic procedure. I had not activated it. And, I did what I did, and I got what I got, and it was fair. I do not believe in victimism. And, and I, and I, and I, and I go off on that sometimes a little bit. That being a victim is a matter of choice. You know? I don't know anybody in recovery who has a quality of recovery that I admire, respect, and desire, who still believes they're a victim. I don't know one person like that. And the people who are still victims have nothing I want. So, I just simply believed I got what I deserved. But he said to me, when he called me that night, he said, this is the best phone call I've ever made, because, he said, John Dasford, President, CEO, of Northwest Airlines, individually, on his own, has made a decision to bring me back to Northwest Airlines as a pilot. And, and I couldn't believe it. That was the ultimate, absolute, incredible miracle. This was the airline that I had so horribly shamed and disgraced and embarrassed. And this president is bringing me back. And I couldn't believe it. So, I went back, not quite four years after the arrest, and I signed a very emotional back-to-work agreement with a large gathering of people. I was never to be a captain again. And I said, that's fine with me. I don't care. Because the idea that I was going to fly again and be reinstated and restored among my peers and given back some honor and dignity was just, that was really beyond my ability to comprehend. So, I went back, and I had not quite five years to go there at Northwest. And in the meantime, Northwest had an alcohol program. They got beat up pretty good over my deal, and they went from worst to first. And I was part of the alcohol committee. And what a neat deal it was to sit in there and watch alcoholic pilots getting a second chance and watching their careers remain in place and watching them recover and be able to go back to their families as fully functioning human beings, watching the family thing come back together and watching these guys still retain their careers. The first time I was in one of those meetings, I didn't hear anything that was said. I just, I just sat there and looked around and thought, who would have thunk it? Who would have thunk it here? And look at what's happening. As I approached my final year at Northwest, as I was a 747 co-pilot, I get a call from this pilot again, who is no longer head of the union. He said, I've just gotten the word John Dasberg thinks you ought to be a 747 captain. I couldn't believe that either. And so I went back, and I went through the checkout, and I concluded my last full year at Northwest as a Boeing 747 captain. Now, who... Thank you. I had five meetings with that man in the course of the next five years, one-on-ones, and I really liked him a lot. I mean, we had very honest exchanges, and some of the other folks had what I refer to as a corporate veneer, but he and I just talked, and we'd talk about anything. And I really liked him. I really enjoyed... I never knew when he was going to call me to come in and talk, but I didn't care, because I had no secrets. And we had some great things that took place. But at any rate, I retired from Northwest September the 29th of 1998 on my 60th birthday. And sometime in late 98, January of 99, this judge, who had harbored some very strong feelings about this case and the whole thing, and I didn't blame him. It was a horrible betrayal of the public trust, over the course of the years, has become probably one of my strongest supporters. And it's through the offices of this program. It isn't anything I did. And he knew that I was an avid hunter and outdoorsman. He said, you know, if you want your firearms rights back, the only way you can do it is with a presidential pardon. He said, I have never in 16 years ever supported a petition for pardon, but if you want to make the attempt, I will support yours. So in January of 99, I sent away and got all the paperwork. I didn't do it the Mark Rich way. I had no shortcuts. I dotted every I, crossed every T, put in an exhaustive amount of work on this. This judge wrote a three-page affidavit that is so emotional in nature that I can't read it. I can't read it from page one to page two without getting tears in my eyes. I can't believe the things this man says about me in that affidavit. And I've not, until just three weeks ago, I had not even seen him since I stood in his courtroom. I did, I sent all of this, and I thought, what are the chances? You know, one in 5,000, one in 10,000. Then I thought, well, the chances I was ever going to fly again were one in a million. And so I did it. And the first two lists came out, I wasn't on it. I saw Dan Rostenkowski and some of these people, I'm going, this is just a political payback thing. You know, my stuff is probably in a box on a shelf someplace. January the 20th, 2001, I came walking in, there were eight phone calls there. And the first one blurted out, the last list is out, he just received a presidential pardon, which is a huge, huge thing. And I know from having talked to some of you guys that some of you have been in prison. So, I can tell by looking at the group, for that matter. But, you know, a presidential pardon, no one can appreciate that like another felon. That's just an incredibly amazing impact, I mean, an impact on life-changing things. And I didn't think it was even remotely possible. And in the summer of 98, a number of people were talking to me about a big book coming out. And they wanted me to write my story, and I did not want to write it. I didn't want to write it, period. And I kept running into them, and they kept talking about it, and it kept getting embarrassing. And I kept, uh, started ducking them. And finally, I told Barbara, I said, the easiest, soft way to sit down and do it, get it over with, and just send the damn thing off and not worry about it. So, I did. And so then I ran into them, I said, yep, it's been done. And, um, I got, um, they had said, uh, well, it'll be about three years before we know anything about it. I said, that inspires me. I don't even really care. I did not expect it to be published. I just did it to get it out of the way. And then, uh, May of 01, about three months later, after the presidential party came in, I got a letter that said, uh, from the GSO in New York. I had no idea. I didn't even hook it up with the story thing. Um, and my wife was standing there. I said, I have no, what a wonder whether writing about, and she walked in the house and I opened it up and I said, the police informants, your story has been selected for the fourth edition of the big book. And I just shook my head. And I walked in, I said, look at this, you're not going to believe this. And I didn't say, um, much about it to anybody. Although I did call my counselor who had been with me, uh, in the middle of all of this stuff that was going on in the early days. And, uh, his name's Ed. Although when he answers the phone, he says, this is a Ed. Two syllables. When Ed says it, he runs a treatment center in Griffin and I love him to death. And I called him and I read him that sentence in the letter. And Ed says, God dang. He said, God dang. He said, he said, you remember when all that stuff was happening to you and you and this? I said, yeah, I remember. He said, you remember when I kept telling you, man, if you can stay sober through this, it's going to make a hell of a book. And I said, yeah, I didn't find that particularly comforting at the moment. Ed says, well, God dang. He said, I didn't mean the book. You know, I never enjoy talking. I'm always glad I did it afterwards. It's not something I look forward to doing. One of the reasons I do it is because I remember sitting out there in the early days with no hope. None. You know, when you're, when I was on the edge of suicide, that's about as hopelessness as I am. I was on the edge of suicide. I was on the edge of suicide. I had hopeless as you can get. I had no hope at that moment in time. And I would sit out there and I'd hear these stories and I would think to myself, and I heard more and more and more and more and more. And I would think, you know, if you only heard one or two stories like this, what the hell would the chances be? You know, who'd care? Why do they read the promises all the time? There must be something to this. And so the hope began to just sort of build just a little bit at a time. I had no idea that I would have this kind of a journey. None. But the hope was there. I was in a very low state of mind. I was in a very low state of mind. I was in a very low state of mind. I was in a very low state of mind. And so the hope began to just sort of build just a little bit at a time. I had no idea that I would have this kind of a journey. None. But the hope began to build just a little bit. So when I come up here, it's really for the newcomers. It's for the people out there who think that there is nothing at the end of the pathway here. And there is. But I didn't realize. I said when I began that I saw my life come to an end. And it did. That life came to an end. I didn't know that I was beginning a new one. I had no idea at that moment in time. Every single thing that began as the most horrible curse that I could have experienced has transformed itself into the highest of blessings. Every single thing. And I've had a lot of time to look back. And I could never have believed that that was going to happen or that it could happen. This is an amazing program. An incredibly powerful program. This is incredible. An amazingly powerful weekend here. And it's through these sorts of things that we regenerate and we get all of these things that can begin to build for us. I'm extremely grateful to be here. I'm grateful to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was never one of my early career plans. It's been the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm glad to be a part of it. And I'm glad to be a part of this weekend. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.