Frank Said the Women Will Have to Leave — Nobody Told Him California’s First Woman Alcoholic Was Sitting Right There – Sybil C.

We come to the part of the day that I have been looking forward to since March, and without any further introduction, I would like to give you Sybil C. from Burbank, California. Hi, everybody. My name is Sybil Doris Adams Stratton Hart Maxwell Corwin. I had to get married five times in order to find the right one. I wanted to find a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he is. His name is Bob Corwin, and he's at home taking care of our menagerie. We love animals, and we finally overdid it a little bit. Can't help it. Little kittens came along. We took them. We never gave them away. Nobody would keep them. We started out with four dogs. Two died of old age, and we have two on the threshold of going some old age. They're not going to live. They're not going to live. They're not going to live. The last time I came home from a trip, or I was leaving for the airport, two little black kittens walked up on the porch, and I said, oh, Bob, take those kittens when you get back home from the airport and do something with them, but don't let them get put away or killed or anything, but give them away. So I called him up on the phone that night from the hotel, and I said, what about those little black kittens? He said, honey, they're sleeping in the bathtub. He put a blanket down, and they're still there. They're still there. I call them. I call them Quattro and Cinco, because they're cat number four and cat number five. I want to tell you about Cincinnati. I have never seen such a beautiful city from the air and after I got on the ground, and it is gorgeous. I had no idea. The only thing I knew about Cincinnati was WKRP from Cincinnati, which for some strange reason is no longer on the air except in reruns, and we watched it the night before we left. We wish they'd started up again. It was just a charming thing to see. And I wanted to get a good look at the skyline of Cincinnati before I go and see if it's like that one that's believed in to that former piece on TV. And also, I've got to go across that famous bridge. Bob told me not to come back until I saw the Ohio River and saw that bridge that that famous man made, the one that did the Brooklyn Bridge. And he knows everything about Cincinnati. He just told me all about it. He's never been here, but he knows a lot about Cincinnati. I'm going to go home and talk it up about moving here. I never want to go back, I'll tell you for sure. It's delightful, and so are you. And you've been so good to me, I just can't stand it. I just can't understand it, because I've never been anywhere where I've met such love and hospitality, and it's just a joyous occasion for me. Thank you very much for letting me come here this morning and be standing up here when I'd a lot rather be sitting down there listening to all of you, and that's a fact, really and truly. I can't get enough of Alcoholics Anonymous. As Bob often says, he says, I'm having a love affair with Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the way I feel about it. And the day that I read about it in the Saturday Evening Post, March 1st, 1941, drunk, hungover, sad, sick, a little baby at home, I'd been missing, I'd been in my car driving, wound up in San Francisco. Didn't know how I got there. I was too sick to drive the car back, and I picked up a hitchhiker, and he drove the car back. I slept past out in the back seat. And then when we got to Los Angeles, he shook me, and he said, Lady, we're in Los Angeles. Here's where I'll leave you. And I called out and looked around, and I saw a sign there that said, Turkish baths. And I thought, well, I've got to get, you know, straightened around before I go home. I had this little baby, and my mother was taking care of her, and I was afraid. And I thought, I'll take the Turkish bath and look good, and then I'll cook up a good lie and tell them another story, and I'll have time to think about it. And I thought, but I can't think now, so in order not to think, I'll have to read something. And the newsstand was right there where I was standing, taking this all over. And it had laid out papers and magazines, and I picked up the first one that was laying there. It was the Saturday Evening Post, dated March 1st, 1941, by Jack Alexander, that magnificent piece that got so many people sober. After the Turkish bath, I was... I was too sick to read the article, but I looked at the pictures. It showed a man being placed in an ambulance. And then he was on a stretcher, and they were putting him in an ambulance. And I could see that ambulance. I couldn't see a big sign with the big red A's on it, but I thought it would have him. I thought that's what it would be. I thought it was an AA hospital. I was so hungover. And I thought, oh, that man's real sick. He's worse than I am. They're going to put him in that AA hospital. Now, that's all I got out of that article. But it was enough for me, because I had read about it in 1939, in a little piece in the Liberty magazine, now defunct. The piece was by Colson Ausner, and it was called Alcoholics and God. And I was a mess, and I should have responded then, and meant to. Like a lot of us do when we read about it. Oh, I've got to do that right now. I'll do that tomorrow. And so it was two years later, from 1939, to 1941, that I read about it again in the Saturday Evening Post while I was having that Turkish bath and thinking about some good lies to tell to the family. And I rang the bell and had them bring me all the ingredients to get a letter mail. When I was drinking, and today, it's very hard for me to get all four things. I think it's four. An envelope, a stamp, and a pencil, and paper. I find two, and oftentimes three. I have gone. Letters. Letters. I had letters there at home the other day that I wrote to my brother, a surviving brother who lives in Dallas, Texas, that I wrote to three months ago because I didn't have any stamps or didn't have the part I took. I just don't have what it takes to get letters now. But I mailed that letter. It's not a lucky thing that I did, or I would have died soon. I truly would have. I was 32 at the time. Going on 33 years old, I'd been drunk for 17 years. No times in between that I can remember being sober, except, nine days when I went up to a friend's chicken ranch in Modesto and found booze upstairs and some unknowing good citizen brought a jug of wine in one night, and I drank it and took the next Greyhound bus home. And really, I wanted to quit secretly, but I didn't tell anybody I wanted to, especially not my big fat brother who drank with me. He was always on my case about quitting. You don't drink like I do, sir, but I think, thank God I don't. I bailed him out of jail. I bailed him out of jail 86 times. James Hobbs would turn me loose and, uh, lock him up. We were fightin's, Ross, we were always getting in great jams. Finally, he wouldn't drink with me because he said I drank too much and he didn't want to be around me. And I didn't want to be around him there towards the last beat, I'll tell you the truth. But what a wonderful thing it was that I followed through at the Curtis bath and wrote this pitiful little letter. I don't remember what it said. Or anything. I didn't know I'd be here today tellin' about it. Keep copy. And son of a gun, I just said, uh, tell me where it is. And I'll come back to your AA hospital in New York right away if you'll tell me where it is. On account of the picture in it, I thought I'd have to take... I'll take the next plane, my pitiful little letter said. And I went on home. I don't know what happened in the interim, whether I got drunk or stayed sober, but within a few days I got a letter from the New York headquarters, which wasn't very big, because Ruth Hawke was its secretary. Non-alcoholic girl that Bill Wilson, our founder, and Hank Parkhurst had been...had hired years before as their stenographer. Uh, when, uh, Ruth went to work for them, they had a little auto accessories business in New York. Ruth Hawke came out to Los Angeles and talked to us three or four years ago and told us all that. Oh, I was...that was fabulous. You ought to invite her out here. She can tell you all the history, if not down on paper. And so she had worked for Bill and Hank Parkhurst, and they...they were supposed to pay her $25 a week, and they didn't have it. So they got this thing about AA started. They invented AA, and they sold...and they gave her stocks in alcoholic amounts for her salary. And she said...and she knew indeed it. She says, I...I lived with my poor old father, who was dead, broke. And they tried to... They tried to sell him some stocks, too. Well, needless to say, that was all short-lived. But there she still sat, working for them. And then when a letter, a stray letter, would come along about AA, she would be the one left to answer it, see? And I was so lucky. And she answered mine. And, uh, I didn't save that letter either, and that...that breaks my heart. And...but I didn't know I was going to get sober. I thought I was going to die. And it said, generally speaking, it said, you don't have to come back to New York to find Alcoholics Anonymous, because AA started in California in December of 1939. Four fellows, drunk, in the county hospital. Got acquainted, got friendly, got sober, and hit the streets the same day. And they stood around on one foot or the other. They had the big red book that a woman by the name of Kay Miller, a non-alcoholic from New York, passing through, had left in the alcoholic ward. And, uh, they had given it to these fellows. And they read it. And they were impressed. And all discharged the same day, just holding that big red book covered with a red linen cover. I had one. Somebody swiped it. And, uh, so they said, now what are we going to do? Are we never going to see each other again? And one fellow said, no, come on over to my house in Pasadena, and we'll just continue what we've been doing, reading to each other out of the big book. And they didn't know anything about AA, so they read the fifth chapter to each other. One of them said, why don't we read out of the book? And one of them says, well, they're in there somewhere. It tells us how it works. So let's just start there, because it says how it works. It must tell us something, what to go on. And that's what they did. So they read the fifth chapter to each other. And that became our thing that we do in most places. Some places do not, to open a meeting. And they read that, and they met together until finally there were four and six and eight. And then here I am getting ripe for AA. And when I come in, there's about a dozen of them. I was told by Ruth to go down to the Elks Temple. And she says, they'll be so glad to see you. They've never had a woman, alcoholic. It was a lot scary, and that's frightening. And I was tenured, and I had developed a nervous twitch. Oh, about six months before that, from drinking and shaking. But the shaking would stop, but the nervous twitch just kept at it. Like, I'd look at you, and I'd want to impress you. And I could feel it coming, and tears would come in my eyes. And my lips would go. And it was so horribly embarrassing. It was just awful. And so here I was, trembling and shaking and everything, and getting ready to go to that meeting down the mountain. My alcoholic husband who had been taking care of me and threatening to divorce me and take my baby away from me, he was glad to drive me down there. We drove down there to the Elks Temple, and we were directed into a little room that just had a table and chairs, a table the size of one or two. And I said, I'll lean in, I'll bring you into my room. Well, there was no room. One of my friends in the club said, there's no room. He said, I feel like you still had a memorable memory. And I said, I know I feel like I still do. He said, I didn't think I would get married at all. And my friend said, no, I feel like I still have a memory. And I said, you know that's a good shock. Well, I said, I don't want to say that now. I think about how I've felt in my life, and how I've felt in my life, and how I feel right now. And she said, I just don't feel like my life has changed. And I said, well, that's good. I sat there with my head down. I didn't look up at anybody at all. And finally the man got up on the podium and, oh, he was an elegant man. Blue third suit and a voice of authority. He was the leader. And by that I mean in those days, if you were the leader, you kept your job until you were thrown out. I wish he had kept it longer. He kept it for two years before they got rid of him in a subtle, kind of subtle way. His name was Frank Randall. He was my sponsor. No women. And he opened the meeting. And I'm sitting there with my head down and I hear him, I heard him say, now, this is a meeting of alcoholic synonymous. We're all alcoholics who are here to obtain and maintain our sobriety on an all-time basis with no mental reservations whatsoever. So, that's it. What an order. I can't believe it. That's the way they did it there. We're there on an all-time basis to help me God, you know. No mental reservations whatsoever. I had plenty of mental reservations. Believe me, I had plenty of mental reservations. I was going to do the best I could. And I just didn't think it could be done. And that was as scary as could be. And then he talked beautifully and I'm sure he did that. But I was so scared and so nervous. And then he said, but he made quite wrong talks before he would get into the business of calling on a few people. And he said, now, as is our custom, before we get into the regular meeting, the women will have to leave. And I looked this way and I looked that way and I was the only one. And then immediately my mind worked. I don't know how fast the mind can work, but I figured it out in, say, four seconds. That Joe had said to Frank, when you get up there and open the door, I'm going to call you. And I said, well, I'm going to get up there and open the meeting. I don't care how you do it, but get rid of that broad. Who needs her? Now, do it in as smooth a way as you can. Make up something, but when you open the meeting, get rid of her. And this is all that came out of my head. And so to me, I was being thrown out. See? So I jumped up and put my hands over my face crying and I went out the nearest exit to the lobby and wrung my hands and cried and carried on. And my non-alcoholic husband, expensive. I was in my underwear. And I was all over the place. Like I said, I'd have to be drunk. And I looked around in that lobby, and I was lurking and lurking. And my god, the meeting wasn't over for hours. to meet once a week they didn't watch the clock they didn't care if it was 10 o'clock they didn't care if it was 10 30 or 11. they just talked because they were hungry and thirsty for this thing and lonely for each other and they lived long distances away so here i am pacing back and forth till i thought i would die eventually the doors opened and they came out and i had concluded by that time that they were that that they were specialists that they were doctors and that they were in there quizzing my husband and they were discussing my case i thought it had to be something like that and that they would give him some pills or or maybe tell them to go back in there let them vaccinate me and the cure the vaccination i would have been willing but eventually the doors opened and dick came out and i said give me my pills and let's go home i've been going crazy he said i said you said they don't even know you're alive they give a message your day he said they looked at me oddly all the time i was there and everybody just spoke looked at me i couldn't figure it out well i just burst into hysterics and i ran away from him and went to the nearest bar and got drunk and then i got my nickel out of my purse and i called up aa and told him what i thought of him just exactly at the proper time two o'clock in the morning we brought our answers upon my first words to him i uh i started delirious and remembering the saturday evening post article i said send your a a ambulance and pick me up and he said you're drunk i said of course i said i'm ready and he says we don't do that we just don't do that he said why didn't you go to the meeting and i said i did and they threw me out he said there's been a mistake they wouldn't have done that i said but they did he said but did you tell him you're a woman alcoholic and i said certainly not certainly not and he said well you should have because you would have been as welcome as the flowers in may they thought you were one of the wives and undoubtedly down there tonight, but undoubtedly the wives awaiting that announcement, which is made at every meeting, were already sitting in the lobby. There was no Al-Anon, you know, and it was a closed alcoholic meeting, and that was the size of that. They weren't trying to do anything bad to me at all. He said the wives always wait in the lobby, or if there's any that's in the meeting that don't know any better, the announcement has to be made. The women will please leave the room. That's all. But they did not know that you were alcoholic. You did not tell them so. You didn't talk to them. You would have been as welcome as the flowers in May, so you go back next Friday. I'll call them up and get it all straightened out. And I was furious. I said, I'll not do any such thing, but of course I did. And the following Friday, my brother Tex came over, and he said, I'm going to go down there with you to expose that racket. It's a money-making scheme. I know it's a money-making scheme, and I want my share. I'm going to go down with you. So I did something intuitively. I begged and pleaded with him, Tex, please don't go. Tex, don't go to AA. This is my thing. You told me I drank too much and I'm trying to do something about it. You always said you could take it or leave it alone. Now, don't go down there and they'll throw us both out and then I'll lose my chance. No, he said, I'll be quiet. I won't drink. I'll be sober. They won't know the difference that I'm not an alcoholic. And I'll just go down there and look over the lay of the land. And that Friday night, by this time, my brother, who had a keen alcoholic mind, had made many fortunes and then lost them gambling and drinking. Made a lot of money, broke. Made a lot of money, broke. And this time, he was really broke. He was peddling vegetables from down to Stanford Street there where the trucks pull out at daylight and he had a big crew of winos on the truck to peddle vegetables and melons out in the suburbs. And so the following Friday, he pulled up in front of my house and the vegetable truck was 11 winos that were working. And I got up in the cab of the truck and we'd go back to the mother group and there were more of us than there were of them. And I'm absolutely petrified because I'm afraid he's going to open his big mouth and have me thrown out again or something. But he was strangely quiet. I should have known he was hurting, but he just wouldn't admit it. Wouldn't admit it at all. And now here's the thing that happened. The only thing I remember is that after Frank made his beautiful talk, as I say, he did that for two years and then Mort, made his talk for two years. We didn't have elections or secretaries. You were just dictators. That's not quite what it was. Denying dictators. After a while, Frank went out somewhere and got a big carton, three times that big, that carton. It was full of letters from suffering alcoholics from all over California. And that mail had been forwarded by Ruth Hopp that week. And my letter had gotten there prematurely, ahead of the flood of mails in the Saturday evening. I'm going to try to count. These were 12-step calls. Every little letter was a sick, dying drop. And Frank came back with that carton and I don't know what's going on at that time, but I'm real interested in watching this pageant. I don't know what's going to happen next. And I heard him say, here it is. Any of you jokers that have been sober 15 minutes, you come on up here and get these 12-step calls and make them. And bring these drunks down here next time. I've got these letters all bundled up according to the counties and the towns and the streets and the sections, like Glendale, Pasadena, the beaches, and the Southwest and the Southeast, and Norwalk, and San Bernardino, and Santa Barbara. So as I call out, and he had them all wrapped up with rubber bands or tied with twine, maybe 50 or 60, to each section, see. He'd say, anybody here from San Bernardino? And Kent Hayden raised his hand and said, here, come up here, Kent. Get these calls. Go pound those doorbells and bring those drunks down here next Friday. And then he'd call out a different section. And this went on until they were all gone but one stack. And he picked it up and he said, I've saved this stack to the last because they're all women alcoholics. And we've got, as I understand it, we've got a woman alcoholic now. He said, Cliff Walker called me and said she called him up drunk. And he told her to come back down here sober. Are you Sybil Maxwell? I said, yes, sir. He said, okay, come on up here, Sybil. I've been expecting you. Come on up here. I just sat. I just sat. I was so sick, so embarrassed. I could not. He said, I said, come on up here, Sybil. These letters are all from women, just as sick as you were when you called up last week. They're all from women alcoholics and I'm putting you in charge of all the women. Well, Sybil's in charge. It rang through my ears like this. Well, even more so. Besides ringing in my ears, I could see a sign like a neon sign going on and off. Sybil's in charge. I thought as I got up and slowly walked up there, boy, you get promoted here in a hurry. I was thrown out last week and now I'm gone. So I sorted those letters out. According to the town or the area, my brother Tex came over and he muttered, well, I'm not doing anything today anyway, so I thought that I just lied around with you politely. Well, that's what we did. We rode around with each other for laughs and for sobriety until he died at the hole in the ground, which he started within a month after he got sober. He went faithfully to the little Friday night meeting. He drove me down there every Friday. He was very quiet. He didn't raise his hand and humiliate me. He was listening. Now, I didn't realize how the nan had been hurting me. He was a marvelous actor about it. And one night he said, you know, Sybil's trying to help me. You know, Sybil's kind of ridiculous for us to be going down to Long Beach on Wednesday and meeting in Curly O'Neil's home and then down to the mother group downtown on Friday. I think I'll start a group about halfway so we can have one right in the middle of the week. And he did. He started a hole in the ground in Huntington Park. Well, I tell you, the founders downtown, what do you think they did? He was just as innocent as a newborn child when he started that. He just did it for good reasons, you know, to go there and then go there and then go to Long Beach. Just natural evolution of the whole thing. But anyway, when we went down there, the week that he started that meeting, the elders or the cliques or the committee or whoever you want to call a troublemaker, they were all charged up and they met him at the door. And they said, we were expecting you and we're here to tell you that we knew when we laid eyes on you that you were going to be a troublemaker and disrupt our group, which has always been such a peaceful one until you came along. And we hear you started a new group. And Charlie here and Max and Al and Dick, we have incorporated alcoholic phenomenon in California, which means no one can start a group without our permission. And we are here to tell you that you will have to fold up that new group you've started because we're not giving you our permission. And so we're incorporated and that's the way it is. And Tex sat down, he was laughing so hard and he roared and he laughed and he screamed until tears were rolling down his face. He said, you've incorporated AA. He said, I'll lay you eight to five and in three months we'll have groups from here to Orange County and down by the sea. And of course he was right. But it took a few months. It really took a few months for everybody to get over viewing with alarm for the good of the cause. As Bill says, we were afraid somebody would rock the boat and hurt things, but that just didn't happen. We were busy running around making 12-step calls and life was good. I'll tell you how I felt about AA. I was so privileged, so honored. I felt so, this thing, the anonymity of it, that I, Sybil, belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous that I remember leaving my house one day to walk a block down the grocery store to get a loaf of bread. Residential area houses on both sides of the street. And as I walked down the street to go to the store, I looked into the windows of all my neighbors going to the store and I looked into, looked at each house as I passed it. And with my chin up in the air, I said to myself, they don't know it, but I'm anonymous. I remember that so well. I really, really, really enjoyed it. And I kept waiting for it to wear off, and I'll tell you why. Because I always had enthusiasm. Oh, this is it, this is it, you know. Like Tex and I and our other brother and his wife, we played bridge night and day, all Saturday nights until Sunday morning, until Sunday noon, and then drink coffee and play more bridge. We wouldn't stop until everybody just fell over. We never did anything in moderation. And nothing. It wouldn't matter what it was. And so I figured that this thing would wear off. I gave it about three weeks and I was afraid, oh, I really was fearful that I'd wake up one morning and think, oh, to hell with it. You know, short beer can't hurt. I know better now. I've heard them. I've heard what they had to say. And it'll be different this time. And I was afraid that all this was going to happen. But in the meantime, they were really keeping me busy, making these calls. And I'd bring those gals in. Just, oh, you have no idea how many women were writing in for help about that time. But all of a sudden, one girl that I had called on, her name was Kay Riley. I went down to the Friday night group and they had made me feel important. They had given me a little book. And Frank had said, now I want you to list the name of every girl that calls for help. And then I want you to list opposite that. Sponsor and sponsee. I want you to put in there her sponsor and who you gave the call to. And then you could see Fridays and show me your book and everything ought to just come out right, you know. And anyway, I went to the most big Friday night meeting now. 200 people. Big Friday night meeting. And this girl that I had given some 12-step calls had been giving them. And I knew the names of them and everything. And so I turned to her page, you know, to check it out because it was my responsibility. It was my big job. And she walked in with five strangers. Five women. And none of them had been clear through me. I walked right back there to her and I said, Kay, where did you get these women? And she said, it's none of your business. She said, you know, I live in Culver City and I had a lot of drinking friends. We played bridge together. We did a lot of stuff together. And so they watched me stay sober and they got very curious. They asked me how I was doing it. And they said, well, that sounds good to me. I'm awful sick with this thing too. And I just brought them. That's the way it is. That's the way it's going to be, Sybil. And I'm never going to report to you again. I got my nervous click back, right? Because, I mean, I had the innocence of a small child about this thing. And I was right. I was right. I thought that it would all be peace and happiness and ha, ha, ha and great merriment and the dancers on Saturday night and the meetings and everything would just go along like that and nothing bad could ever happen. But outside of that, that wasn't true. I mean, I had the innocence of a small child about this thing. And I was right. I was right. I thought that it would all be peace and happiness and ha, ha, ha and great merriment and the dancers on Saturday night and the meetings and everything would just go along like that and nothing bad could ever happen. But outside of that, that wasn't true. And AA's, most of them are magnificent when trouble comes. Bill Wilson once wrote me a letter. He came out to see us several times. I mean, he would travel around many places where AA was starting. Just to see how his program was working. And he enjoyed doing that. And he came out to Los Angeles three or four times. Maybe five times. I really don't know. But it was great. Just tremendous. And he would correspond with us and read writings for advice and things of that nature. And I saved his letters, especially one that I'll quote to you a little bit later. And this just never did wear off with me at all. My enthusiasm never did wear off. And I thought that nothing bad could ever happen. But Tex was my promoter at a wrestling and boxing arena that I owned. Now that is strange, isn't it? I was a taxi dancer a brief time. I was a bootlegger with my brother, Tex. I was also a legal secretary during the Depression. And working on up to that when I was a real estate broker for many years and then wound up with this boxing and wrestling arena. And Tex was my promoter in that. And then TV came in and forget wrestling and boxing. Everybody stayed home. And I had to go through bankruptcy. And lost my beautiful home and housekeeper and broke and had to go get a piddling job as a secretary again. So those are the things that happen in life whether you're sober or whether you're drunk or just some neighbor down the street. You make money. You lose some. You get some. And it all balances out. And I found out that that doesn't make any difference. I take things very hard at the moment, but I get over it very quickly. And you know what? Why? Of course. Because of my AA medicine. Alcoholics Anonymous to me is a medicine. I require large doses of it. My husband Bob, he's a faithful member of AA. He's been sober 22 years. When I get a little meh, meh, meh, drowsing around there, you know, he'll say, Honey, you didn't go to your meeting last Sunday. Did you have a Thursday or whatever? And I'll say, No, I didn't. Well, I'm not one to tell you that. I'm not one to tell you that you need a meeting. But... And that's the way it is. Bill Wilson had an expression when he would come out to see us. He'd say, Oh, the people, the people, they just won't stay sick. In other words, you get them just all lined up real good in a good spiritual condition and everything's fine. Got the wife back. Got probably the job back. But they just won't stay the same. And I think that it depends with me, with my kooky nature, that I stay thick in proportion to the amount of AA that I have or go to or be with or see or attend. And Jimmy Burwell, who wrote the... His contribution to our book was, God has really understood him. He was the atheist that gave him so much trouble. And he started the group in Philadelphia. When they were writing the steps, he said, If you're going to put that word God in there, by golly, there may be another guy like you somewhere out in this great big world that doesn't believe in the God of that kind. So I will go along with you with this book so far if you will add God as you understanding, because I sure as hell don't understand him. And that may get one more guy like me. And Bill looked up and said, Jimmy, that's a wonderful idea. I think that'll be a great contribution to our book. And it was. And I'd go down to San Diego to visit Jimmy and Rosa. And he'd say, Well, are you still going to a lot of meetings, Deb? I'd say, Yes, yes, Jimmy. Well, are you going to meetings to speak or listen? And I kind of changed the subject. He said, I said, Are you going to meetings where you talk? Are you going to meetings where you sit? I said, Oh, both, both, both. Yeah, I understand that. But what I'm trying to get across to you, Deb, is for every meeting where you talk, you be sure you go to a meeting the next day and listen. Otherwise you get yourself all out of whack, all out of balance. It's not a good thing. I can remember that like it was yesterday because it's the greatest advice in the world. That's why I like meetings like the hole in the ground. And other meetings out in our area, in the San Diego Valley and the Pasadena area where you can go and participate are the Step Studies meetings and the Tuesday night meeting where it's the Step Studies. Small group of 20 or 25 people. And everybody gets to participate if they can. Speaker groups are great. But I love, just name it. Just name it. I like all types of meetings, which is a very, very good thing. Well, the first thing that happened that was a disaster was that when TV came in, I had to go through bankruptcy. I had to go through bankruptcy because everybody sat home and looked at the screen. They got all the boxing and wrestling they could handle. And I looked at a big empty stadium and no people. And I finally went through bankruptcy and got a job checking away at the typewriter again. It was okay. I didn't mind that too much. And then my brother got sicker and sicker. And he finally knew his time was coming, although he moved his hospital bed down into the hole in the ground and did his cooking out in the kitchen. And he stayed there the last few months of his life. And the place was open all day. And people had drifted in and out. It wasn't a club. It still isn't. But it's still open all day. And people drift in and out, sit at the table, go out in the kitchen, drink coffee, and talk day eight. And he lived several years like that. But then I lived about two blocks from there. And Tommy Butler ran down to my house one day and he said, Jeb, it's gone, I think. He isn't saying anything. I ran down there and he was gone. And so the members went over and shut the door of the hole in the ground and said, well, out of respect for his memory, well, we'll lock the door for a day or two. And I said, look, I never heard of an occasion where an AA meeting was canceled. And the last thing in the world my brother would want would be to have people come and the joint be locked up. And if you guys don't feel like you want to leave the meeting tonight, I'll do it. And I did. And people came from far and wide to pay honor to my brother. And they heard the news just, you know, how it gets rough. And I led the meeting and I called on as many as possible. But what I'm mentioning this for is my following attitude in that I didn't get folded in people's arms and weep and sob and cry like you would have or like I should have. I felt... I have never been able to describe this feeling. I just felt like I had to bear up, I suppose, under the sort of sentiment to sort of set a good example. Whatever it was, it really killed me because I went on for a couple of weeks like that. I felt stormy cold and no emotion. That's bad. That's bad. When you don't feel any emotion, when you should be overwhelmed, at least the way people are when they lose a loved one. But no, it didn't happen. And I finally couldn't stand it anymore. And I looked Bill Wilson and I explained this condition to him. And he, you text well, I suggested him up in Bedford Hills and as I told you, Bill had been out here, had been out to California to see us. And he answered me immediately. And I trained with that letter. I have copies of it. I xerox it and give it to friends who need it under similar conditions because it saved my life and put me back in the land of the living. One part of it, it said, somehow... I love text well. I do tell text well. And I love him also, said. He says, in God's house there are many mansions and somehow I see your brother text sitting on the porch of one of those mansions in the sunlight talking to another drunk. That's my vision of text as of today. And so much for text, my dear. But as for you, I will tell you this. That life is but a long day in school. Some of our lessons are hard. And some of our lessons will be easy. And it doesn't matter so much what happens to us here. But it's what we do that the experiences we have. It's the demonstration that counts. And I read that and I began to get goose pimples. And when I read it over the second time I began crying. Just a flood of tears. And I don't know when I ever stopped. But that was that. And it was a healing type of thing. I didn't part with that letter. And I have read it over and over and over again. It was dated November 1952. And I thought that the thoughts that he expressed helped me so much that if it would help anyone else who might be or expect to be in a similar condition I'd be happy to xerox some more copies and mail them to you. Because Bill said somewhere in the letter if you like what I've said you may share it with anyone who needs it. Well, I liked very much what he had to say to me because it was just that helpful. I came in A.N. I believe it must have been an awful long time before I may not be correct in this. Maybe it was a way of life and it just became a habit. Before I really, really became aware of the steps as such. Well, I'll put it this way. I was doing cross-step work. I was running myself ragged back then. So that's part of the cross one. And I had a belief in a higher power thankfully before I came to A.A. I had no problem with that. So you could say that that was part of some of the steps. And I did admit that I was awful. I did admit that I was alcoholic. And so going right through them I had no qual with any of them and you might say that I kicked them in that respect. But didn't think of them like numbers or that they came consecutively or that perhaps for a reason. And yes, I didn't think of them. I was just glossing over them and living them some. But maybe not as well as when I heard this particular thing. We had a guy at the hole in the ground that wouldn't sober up. And everybody else seemed sober but he would go and he'd come and he'd go and he'd get drunk and he'd come back. And finally one night when my brother, not too long before he died, it was a hot July night and this guy came up to me with a crowd surrounding Tech and he says, Tech, I want to be sober like all the rest of you guys down here. And he said, what step am I missing? And Tech said, Jill, don't talk to me here. I can hardly breathe. Let's get out on the steps when the people leave. And Tech lived with me at that time so I went out and sat on the steps with him. And he said, do you wonder what step you're on? And Tech said, yeah, what step have I missed? And Tech said, well, now let's look at step number one where we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. He said, somehow, brother Joel, when I say that step, I seem to recall that after you've been drunk you come back and you kind of chuckle and giggle about it like it was a lot of fun. Oh, boy, I pulled another one. Kind of cute. He said, you act kind of cute about it like it didn't hurt too much. So I can't imagine anyone doing that and at the same time admitting that they're powerless over alcohol and their lives are unmanageable. Am I right? And Tech says, you're right. You're right, Tech. Thanks a lot. And he got up to go. And Tech got ahold of his coat and said, sit down, Joel. We've just started. Because I want to get into this with you. When we're talking about the higher power of God as we understand him down there at the hole in the ground you'll always scoff at it. And you'll always say that all you need is willpower and all you need is just to think, think, think. And he said, it hasn't been getting the job done. He says, that's where we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore to sanity. He said, you know, you are pretty arrogant about that. You have displeased a lot of people by that attitude because you started giggling and laughing at it. It ain't funny. And he says, we have come to believe. We have come to believe. We came here, we didn't believe at first. And I have told them and they have heard it from others who told me, nothing is original, that at first I didn't have to believe anything except maybe in the people. They look at them, watch them. See here, they're sitting here sober. And they were in bars drunk. And they were in jails drunk. And now here they are. So that's a power greater than yourself to begin with. Other people that don't want to do that will sometimes think of the book as a power greater than themselves. That's bigger than you are. The people in it, your sponsor, anyone that you want to select can be a power greater than yourself until you're able to latch on to something. And as you stay sober, and as you go to meetings, and as your understanding grows, then down the line somewhere, you'll develop an understanding of some power greater than yourself. So don't turn loose of that now and think it'll never be that way because you just don't know. Just be willing and it will happen. And that puts you in a position to take the third road. We made a decision then to turn our will and our lives over to God. We made a decision then to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood him. So as we understood him for you at this moment, let us just say that it's just you understand our group and you understand the people in it and you understand myself, Jeb, and me and that we are your friends. And that's in the light of your understanding now and then it will grow. And all the steps there, he says, I think these get mixed up on this, you know, as a lot of other people do. He says, we made a decision. That's all he said. He said, we made a decision. He said, it would be like if you came up to me, Joe, and said, hey, Jeb, you know what? I've made a decision to go to San Francisco next week. And he says, what if I saw you here next Friday at the meeting and you came up to me and you said, hey, Jeb, you know what? I've made a decision to go to San Francisco next week. He said, you can do that every week and you'd never get to San Francisco. So he said, that's the way it would be with this staff. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And he said, that's the way it would be with this staff. That will be the road that will lead you there. Don't you see, Joe? He said, just hang in there. Come to meetings. Don't drink and take it a step at a time in the light of your own understanding. He said, I don't mean you have to take them in order. A lot of people think you have to take them in order. But you know, the one we'll talk about now is in order because it's that you didn't have to write anything down that it was all right up here. All right up here. Baloney. Baloney. It's not. He said, I want to tell you what you can do, Joe, if you want to keep it really simple. Make it easy for you, Joe. You're a special case. Now, you get a stamp or a little bitty piece of paper that big would be easier to write on. Just that big. An inch big, say. And a short stub of a pencil. And you write down one thing on it that's bugging you and then do something about it and that's an inventory. And he said, you can do that by the hour or by the day or by the week or by the month or all your life. And you will be taking an inventory. And he said, it'll be a lot different than the manuscript that people here on the ground bring me. He said, some of them are as long as gone by the end. He said, the thing is is to get rid of the thing that's bugging you the most at that time, that day, that hour, that week. And he said, it follows that by saying later on that we continue to do this because we're going to continue to live and we're going to pile on more mistakes and more problems and it's a continuation of it further along. So he said, I don't see any big deal about that. Just write down one thing and then talk it over with somebody else. Admit it to God, to ourselves, and another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Well, the wrongs you have written down on that postage stamp, you've admitted it to me and sometime or other you'll be able to admit it to some higher power, maybe the group while you're standing up there and fun talking to them. Who knows? But that will be taking the fifth step to the best of your ability today. And then you became entirely ready for the ones we've just been talking about or the ones that you're aware of now. And humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings. And you might ask me, well, why does it say defective character and why does it say shortcomings in the next breath? Well, he says, I'll tell you why. When Bill was out here I asked him that question. I said, Bill, why did you say defective character in one step and shortcomings in the other? And Bill scratched his head and said, well, that's because I'm a doctor and I just didn't want to be redundant. I didn't want to use I didn't want to use the exact words twice in a row so I just juggled them around a little bit. And he said, well, that's the truth. And I was in a meeting where they would argue the difference in those steps and Bill made a list of all the persons we'd harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. He said, that could be easy to do. Just start. Get the yellow telephone directory out of there to begin with. You've got a lifetime. Write down the name of one person you've harmed and go over and say, I'm sorry. I won't do that again. Make direct amends. I just told you. Go see the guy or the gal, whoever it is. To those that you can, worry that you will not hurt someone else. That's the sense of the ninth step. Make direct amends whenever possible except when to do so will injure them or some other innocent people. And then, continue and continue to take this personal inventory so that when we were wrong we could possibly admit it and not start letting stuff pile up that we can't handle. It's just a matter of simplicity. Eleven, will we salt through prayer and meditation to, salt through prayer and meditation to whatever good one we gain? Yeah. Wherever possible. I'll publicly delete that for 12 steps. Salt through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood he came only for knowledge of his will for us and then the power to carry that out. Now, it wouldn't do us a doggone bit of good if you just looked upon it as a long step, too deep, too hard, impossible to do that. But, I was told that meditation meant good, clean thinking. Just, just that. And that many members, many of them, they're not going to be able to pray prayer. It's kind of hard for a person who is just sobering up to feel that they're clean enough, good enough, well enough, or maybe they haven't thought of church or God in their whole life or haven't thought of it in 30 years. But salt through prayer and meditation can get the job done fine for a long time to come. So, I think it's important to have the knowledge of his will for us, the power, the power to carry it out is terribly important. Now, the 12th one. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics and then to practice these principles in all our lives. And, you got three today. Last week I did one and two, and now I believe I'll get them to ten, eleven, and twelve. I've never heard it done that way in AA. We're human beings and we make mistakes and it will ever be thus, but our lives improve, we begin to gain friends, we finally I guess. I don't know what I was thinking. But I found it very difficult to let them know that I was a human being and that I had a pretty rotten disposition at times and that I felt put upon or that I had to get rid of all the stuff I had piled up immediately so that I could feel good again. And that was a lesson that took me a long time to learn. Sometimes I begin to think about the newcomers that are coming in today and how quickly they latch on to this program and their marvelous understanding of these steps and the traditions. And I think what a wonderful privilege it is to be with you and see how you react to situations. When you've had a bad thing happen, I'll have someone call me up and then at the end of our conversation, which has been full of laughs. I mean, it's just nonsense. And then they'll tell me something, bang, that happened to them. You know, and I'll say, oh, no, I didn't know about that. Oh, it works all right, Deb. I'm just getting along fine. And they adjust, they adapt, and they keep in touch. And I think the important thing that we need each other so desperately, I think the thing to do is to keep in touch. We want to. If we were told we had to call Susie up at 9 o'clock every morning or that we had to call up so-and-so and make a list of people that we had to do these things, like kids. Yes. When I go to school, I say, forget it. I'll do it on my own time, you know. I don't want people to give me directions. I want a free and easy program where I have such faith in it that I do the best I can with it and then fail miserably. But I pray a lot. I'm not a bit ashamed to tell you that I'm helped down in my bed in that hotel last night. And I said, oh, God, don't let all the words lead me and don't make me a good speaker. Just make me adequate so that when I leave Cincinnati, they won't have to say, well, she didn't even know. make a point. You know, just let me be at it. At it. And that's about all you're going to get out of me. I hope I've been at it, but I know that I haven't been, you know, a powerful speaker that my words will be quoted and they'll say, and so Sybil says, thus the song. Sybil is full of mistakes, trying to do better, enjoying life. I was 77 last month. I was over 44 years old. Well, I have great plans for the future, start willing, and of course you'd have to be willing, but I plan to come back here to Cincinnati when I'm 99 and a half, because let me tell you what I think. No, I firmly believe this. This program isn't very old. This program itself is new, comparatively speaking, you know, as a philosophy, as a way of life, 50 years old, our book says we know but little, more will be revealed to us. And that's it. That's the way it is now. That's true. So in that sense, we're all of us here today that are like little children in kindergarten, you know, or another way to put it would be like that. We're like little birds, little birds, little fledglings, learning to fly. Well, there's a fledgling, and as you're a fledgling, learning to fly, may the wings of your happiness never lose a feather. Thank you. God bless you. And would you come up now, and we'd like to give you a token of our appreciation that doesn't begin to express how I feel. This is Diana. This is the woman who made all the table decorations and put this thing down. Bye. Oh, absolutely. Thunderstruck. Without words. to show that to Bob. I can't wait to have him hang it up. I'm so proud of this. Oh, oh so thoughtful, so loving. I love you all so very much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'll always have it. I'd like to thank everyone for coming this morning and thank everybody who helped to make this second annual gratitude breakfast. It's a gift that I believe that it was. I especially would like to say, ask the committee that served on a gratitude breakfast to stand. Jim's going out the door right now. Jim and Bill and Diane virtually almost sold everything. I tell you, they really worked their butts off. And if you're interested in working on these functions and helping them to be as wonderful as this one was, come to intergroup and get involved. At this time, I'd like to ask everybody to stand and we're going to dim the lights. And on your table should be a gratitude candle. We have 50 of them in the room. We'd like to ask someone to please light this candle and hold it high as we close. And we're going to ask Paul to come up to lead us in singing the Lord's Prayer. After the close of the meeting, we will be cutting and serving the birthday cake, four of which are sugar-free. And this time, if you'd light your candles and hold them up, we'll sing.