Only Total Defeat and Three Words to Higher Power Produced What Three Years of Willpower Never Could – Don F.

He was sick physically and mentally. Why would he go back and try this potion again? And sometime along in that area, and Arbutus mentioned the writer of this story, I've seen this story, the show, the movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is the story of a renowned London physician who from time to time would go down to his office in London, go back into his lab, a mix of concoction and drinking, and got a very severe and disastrous reaction to it. But would finally pull out of it. But continued and continued until it became a real, real, real tragic story. I didn't know that Robert Louis Stevenson was an alcoholic. And I'm sure that he got his ideas from his own experience with booze. I... My mother took my brother and I... My mother took my brother and I when I was 11 and he was 7, down to Father Murphy, to take the pledge. He was very reluctant to give us the pledge. We didn't care. I couldn't care less about taking the pledge. I never had... I was never going to drink anyway. And very reluctantly, poor old Father Murphy gave us the pledge, only until we're 21. Now here's the funny part about the story, or the sad part about it. When I was 20 years old, with a background like that, in the city of Des Moines, on a New Year's Eve, in the company of... three other young men just like me, who were drinking spike beer, and who insisted that I try it. And I finally did, with some misgivings, and some concern, and some apprehension. And any of you who are young here and don't know what spike beer is, it's a bottle of near beer with an ounce of alcohol in the top, and you turn it back and forth until it's mixed. Now the paradox of the thing is, I drank his first bottle of spike beer, and my first reaction to it, is my God, this is what I needed all my life. I was no longer afraid. I was no longer the skinny, pimply face, fearful kid. And I became a man among men. I'd found the missing link. And it did great and wonderful things for me. All the lights came on. Actually, and Tom O'Briens says it's much better, but as long as the Master didn't show up today I'll say it for him. Actually what booze did for me is take me out of the edge of society, and put me right smack dab in the middle of everything. I became the Master of Ceremony, Not a great time. A lot of hilarity. A lot of laughter. A lot of cops chasing me who never could catch me. And after about two and a half or three years, one day that whole thing stopped. And this is the sad and sick part about it. Because if it had continued, I'd still be drunk. But then it quit doing those wonderful things for me that it once done. In fact, it went in reverse. Instead of a euphoric feeling came a feeling of misery and hopelessness and despair. And then I spent about ten horrible years, drunken years, trying to recapture that wonderful glow and that wonderful feeling of euphoria that booze had originally produced, but never could do it. In the meantime, I'd got a wife. I had two little kids. And I tried to sober up. And I am a Catholic, and in those days priests used to give pledges. And I'd take pledges for three months, six months, whatnot. Some of them I'd keep. As many of them I broke. But there's always a chance I might keep it. And I can remember one bleak day in November. And evidently we didn't have a car because we rode a bus down to 24th and Dodge in Omaha. My wife had made arrangements. She had bypassed our local pastor. She called down to Creighton and got a Jesuit and made arrangements for me to take the pledge. And my defenses were all gone. I'd blown it. So now we were gone. We went. We walked down that street, 24th Street to Creighton University. And the Jesuit who was to give me the pledge met us. He took me a little room and I took the pledge, whatever it was. Maureen was happy. She had me on the shelf for 90 days at least. We walked back up the hill to 24th and Dodge. She used to take a bus west. I used to take one east and get back to work. She was going home. Fortunately for me her bus came first. I watched it go from 24th to 25th down the hill at 26th out of sight. And then my alcoholic, sick alcoholic rationalization started. And it went something like this and I think many of you can identify with it. It simply said, Did I take that pledge for both beer and hard liquor? I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, or was it just for hard liquor? And the more I thought about it I didn't recall anything being said about beer at all. I was shaking and scared and I turned right around and walked the short block down to 24th and whatever it is. I can't think of it. I walked in the bar and somebody will have a bottle of Miller's Highlight please and I drank it. It felt a little better. So I think I'll have another. In the process of drinking the second bottle, I caught a glimpse of myself in the back bar mirror. And I had cooled down quite a bit. I took a good, healthy look at myself, and I said to you, phony bastard, you know you took that pledge for both beer and hard liquor, but you broke it. So you just want to have a double shot. So an alcoholic is capable of going east and west at the same time, and make no mistake about that. And of course my condition that night was probably worse than it was the night before. And how these gals put up with it, I don't know. However, we have one thing in our favor. Alcohol is honest, if you're an alcoholic. And you have no winners. Once you cross that alcoholic line, there are no more winners. Now you can go to the horse races for 20 days and lose $30 a day, but on the 21st day you may hit. But I can assure you this, there are no winners left if you're an alcoholic. And the saying, one drink is too many, and a thousand is not enough, is a very, very valid saying. And it's such a tragic thing, really. Because in my estimation, as a matter of fact, I feel about alcoholics as Lincoln did. And long before Lincoln was President of the United States, he made a little talk in front of this Washingtonian movement on February 22, 1842. And among other things he said at that talk is, in my judgment, such of us who have never fallen victims have been spared more by the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral superiority. And that's the kind of superiority that we have. And I think that's the kind of superiority that we have over those who have. Indeed, I believe if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison to those of any other class. Those are pretty strong words. He goes on to say, There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into the vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. And the one of us but can call to mind some relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity. And how true that is. And how glad I am that we have this third option. Now, one day, on a hot August day, I woke up in Omaha, I had been on one of my famous running drunks. I was in a 50 cent a night hotel, the Omaha Hotel, which has long since been torn down. I hadn't the biggest idea when I came in this hotel, how I came in, but I was there on the second floor. And I did as I always did, got up, went over to my pants and looked to see if there was any money, and there was none. I looked at my socks and there was none. I looked at my shoes, and I used to have a funny way of dealing when I was drunk. I'd hide money in my shoes, my socks, I'd limp sometimes for two or three days, not know what the hell was wrong with my foot. There'd be two quarters caught in there. I was very glad to find it, but... I wanted a drink of water and there was no tap in the room, so I walked down the hall, and I found a tap and a dirty glass, and I cleaned the glass the best I could, and I said, I'll go ahead and drink some of the lukewarm water. I came back and put on my shirt and made a decision to leave. I went to the head of the stairs, and it looked to me like that stairs is from here, as long as from here to the back of this wall. I'm sure it wasn't, but that's the way it looked that day. I started down the steps I made about to the third step, and panicked, and sit down, and crawl back, crawl back up, and crawl back to my room. And I sit there, looking out that dirty yellow window, and about three blocks up was a church, St. Mary Magdalene's Church. And I'd reached that place in my alcoholism where I knew that there was no hope for me, none. Here I am with a wife, two little kids, one 18 years, or one 18 months old, one 6 months old. We're living out on 3553, Cass, in a frame house, in what is called housekeeping rooms. We have our own entrance to the back door. There's two rooms. I've been drunk, I don't know, for a week or ten days. And I'm pretty sure they don't have anything to eat. And I sit there and thought about that. I knew we had a little credit with the Omar bread truck, and a little credit with the Robert's Dairy truck. And I sit there, and I remembered just three months prior to this, when I went through something similar, and swore to God and all that was holy, and everyone I knew that it would never happen again, and here it is again. And that's the day I really think I hit bottom, because there was no hope for the present, and certainly no hope for the future. And I think what we do under those conditions, we have to think of something. And we go back to when we were kids, and that's exactly what I did. I kept my thoughts focused on the time when I was a kid. My childhood memories are happy, except for the once a year that my dad would get drunk. But after that was over, Father Murphy would come down, and he'd take the pledge, and he always kept his pledges. He was quite a bit different than me. He took a pledge, he kept it. And I thought about the fun. We used to play ball in that little town from the first of March until the last of October. We'd meet our own baseballs. And we'd play baseball. We'd take a little piece of cork, a little rubber ball, and wrap string and string and string. We were all string savers in those days. Then we had adhesive tape, black adhesive tape, and they really weren't too bad balls. It's what we used. We used to play hockey in the wintertime. And we fashioned our own hockey sticks, and we used to use a small carnation milk can as a puck. And things were happy. I remember Christmases. My aunt Tress used to bring the most wonderful candy, most of my rallies were farmers. We never seemed to be short of stuff to eat. Fourth of July, if my dad didn't get drunk, was a great time. We'd go out to Spring Lake, and it was great. And I kept my thoughts focused on the same era. I thought of my poor old aunt, who was a maid for a rich man in Des Moines, for Gardner Coles, who owned the Des Moines Register Tribune, The Look Magazine, a paper in Atlanta, Georgia, and one in Minneapolis, a very wealthy man. And all the things that she had done, she was thrifty, and she was pretty well paid, I think. How she tried to help me with my alcoholism. How on four different occasions she put me in St. Bernard's Hospital to keep me from going to jail for a period of time. And I kept my thoughts on that. And when I was a kid, she had five nephews, and I seemed to be her favorite. I was the kind of a kid that grew up, I was very active in the Boy Scouts, I was an older boy, and I really think I was the kind of a kid that most of the mothers in the neighborhood wanted their kids to associate with. And my aunt, I used to take her to the Lenten devotions. And Lent comes at a variety of times during the year. It comes, a lot will be in February, a lot will be in March, and a lot will be in April. And I kept my thinking directed in that same area. We would go every Wednesday night and every Friday night. And I think on Wednesday it was Rosary and Benediction. I think on Friday it was the Stations of the Cross and Benediction. And then when we'd leave, and sometimes during Lent it would be raining and thundering and lightning. Sometimes the sidewalks would be frozen and I'd run ahead of her and slide. But always coming back, we stopped at Louie's Candy Kitchen and she always bought me a nickels worth of fudge. And God bless Louie, because that beautiful white sack that he used to fill so full of fudge for me for a nickel would cost $3 today or maybe more. And that's the way it went. And as I sit that afternoon thinking, my thoughts focused on Father Murphy. And I remember how this old man would go from one station to the other. And I think the Stations of the Cross is depicting the last few days that Christ was on earth. And always before he moved from one to the other, he would genuflect and say the simple prayer, Grant, that I may love you always, and then do with me what thou wilt. And as I sit there that afternoon, the thought crossed my mind, just a smidgen of a thought, somewhere, somehow, somebody told me nothing is impossible for God. And I made a determination that if I didn't die that afternoon and I got out of that place and I had the courage to walk down those stairs, as I stared out that window, that I'd go up to St. Mary Magdalene, the church, and I knew exactly how I was going, I would walk down a half a block to where Brandeis Old Garage used to be, walk up the alley, cross 18th Street in the alley, walk up past the old Elks Club, and ring the buzzer. And about 7 o'clock that night, that's exactly what I did. And as the priest came to the back door, and I said, Father, I'm a no good drunk, I've been drunk for the last week or 10 days, I have a wife and two little kids, and I don't even know if they have anything to eat, will you talk to me? He put his arm around me and says, Come in young man, come in. And before you say any more, I want you to understand that you're really not a bad fellow. And oh God, how glad I am that he was there. Because if it had been some hard-nosed guy who said, Yes, you sure are a first-class bastard, I probably would have fainted. Now, I said I figured out this afternoon two things. That I'm dealing with a problem that's hopeless, and I can't cope with it. I'm a chronic alcoholic. I'd never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous at that time. And the other thing I figured out that nothing is impossible for God, and he says, You're right on both counts. You do have a serious problem. There's no doubt about that. And again, you're right on the fact that nothing is impossible for God. And so he and I sat down and figured out a deal. Whereby I would take a pledge, and he suggested strongly that I go to communion every Wednesday morning and every Sunday morning. And he says, If this holds up, if this works, you come back today, it's up, and we'll go for two years the next time. And that's exactly what I did. He asked me if I wanted to go to confession, which would be a fifth step, as we know it. I said, No, not tonight. I think I will in the morning, which I did. I followed this routine with no exceptions. And I would get up, and I don't care how hot it was or how cold it was, I would walk down 35th Avenue, the 35th Avenue in Dodge, and hope to God at that stoplight that somebody would pick me up and take me downtown. And more often than not, they did. But if they didn't, bus fare was a dime. And I always had the dime. The day it was up, I went down, I said, It's worked, it's worked. He said, Let's go for the two. And again we did. Now, I was a priest. I was a pastor. I was a pastor. I was a pastor. I was a priest. And it was a pretty spiritual approach for me and I continued that on. But that's only part of the story. A lot of things happened to me during that period of time. We went from living in housekeeping rooms where we were always three or four months behind to two little kids. They don't kick you out if you have two little kids and a nice little wife. We went from that to going into business for myself. I owe a lot of money I opened a branch in Des Moines on 8th Street in the Stalmart building next to Yonkers. Very nice place. We opened a studio in Wichita in the Petroleum building. And they used one of their elevators, there were two elevators, for nothing but our customers who were on the mezzanine. We opened one in Junction City, which is right next to Fort Riley. And, of course, we had one in Omaha. And we had three road crews that covered five states. And money was coming in fast. We were doing great. I'd been 4F'd in the service. Most of my competitors were either in the Army, Navy, or Marines. I had something everybody wanted. Not too much competition. We had 80,000 WACs in Des Moines at that time. We had Wichita as the airplane capital of the world. Junction City had 115,000 new people coming in there. We had a Wichita Air Force training center for training every 13 weeks. We kept open seven days a week until 10 o'clock every night. And so on. And I wasn't drinking. And I was very arrogant. Very grandiose. And I used to carry $100 bills with me and make damn sure everybody's seen them. And I couldn't take two or three couples out to dinner. And I didn't have to run up and pay the bill. I paid every bill. And I was miserable. And in some vague, alcoholic way, I held my wife responsible for the fact that I wasn't drinking. I was very envious of people who were drinking. A lot of people in our organization drank. Some of them did. They all knew I wasn't drinking. And it wasn't uncommon for me to work 18 hours a day. And I can tell you that the last six months of that sobriety left a hell of a lot to be desired. I withdrew from everybody. And if an old neighbor or a relative or a friend, an old friend, would pull up in front of the house on Sunday and I seen them first, I would run upstairs and tell Marina, tell them I'm not home. I felt very sorry for myself. In a very peculiar way, I held her responsible that I wasn't drunk. And finally, the sequence of pledges ended. And then I started my long debate, which lasted seven days. Will I try it again or won't I? And it went something like this. I've shown the world I'm not a bum. I've shown the world that I can make money. That I can employ people. That I can operate a business. I am a man of property. One of the grandiose things I did was bought a home. One of the most sane things I did, too. Paid cash for it. The red tile roof. A very grandiose way. I put up my wife's name. Tried to. The realtor wouldn't let me do it. We had two new cars. And I was a little bit worried. Then I started buying. So you think, and those are things I'd always wanted. To be successful, to have enough money. But that wasn't it. It didn't work. If you even heard of the song Pei Li sings, that's all there is. Let's keep on dancing. And I can understand that song because there is something missing. So I made a decision. I gave it a lot of thought. Will I try it again? Maybe the reason I had so much trouble in the past is because I was always short of money. And that's not the condition now. And I can remember the night that I started. I was in Des Moines and my sister ran our Des Moines studio. And I'm sure Maureen had called and said, He's acting very funny. I'm afraid he's going to get drunk. And as Marguerite said, Yankee Doodle Dan, he's opening at the Arkham tonight. I know you always liked Jimmy Cagney. I know you're always very fond of George M. Cohan and it's the story of his life. Would you like to go? I said, it sounds like a good idea. And I'll tell you what. I'll meet you at John McNerney's Drugstore on 9th and Locust. If I'm in state, but if I'm not there, you go ahead. I walked out of the building, started down Locust Street, past Vulcan House, past House Full House, a place I'd gotten lots of trouble. On down Locust Street to the Savory Hotel, turned up 4th Street. There's a bar there I looked in. There's a nice gray-haired old lady with a white, crisp apron. And I said to myself, this is the place. I can't get in any trouble here. So I walked in. I said, I think I'll have a Miller's High Life. She brought it with a glass and poured a glass full. Now, keep in mind, I've been three years and seven days since I've had a drink. It looked the same. It smelled the same. It tasted the same. And I drank the first glass. And the only reaction I had to it, it seemed to make me a little nauseous, a little sick to my stomach. I finished that glass, put a nickel in the jukebox. Somebody will have another. I drank that. And then I was convinced that this isn't it. And I, alcoholic thinking, said, I must have graduated from this stuff years ago. And I walked across the street to a place called the Marble Club. Ordered a double shot of whiskey. And I took almost instantly drunk. After three years and seven days. That drunk lasted three and a half weeks. I covered four states. I spent a little over $3,000. I picked up one of my guys in Omaha who worked with me for many years. He'd be my chauffeur. All he drank, he was not an alcoholic. We ended up down at Phillips Hotel in Kansas City, right across from the Millback. It's a new hotel there. And we'd go out and buy peck sacks of booze. Booze was rationed then. Some stores would have quarts. Nothing else. Some would have half pints and nothing else. Some would have gin and nothing else. We didn't give a damn. We didn't give a damn what it was. We'd buy a peck of it. Whatever. A big grocery bag. Bring it back. We had a supply of booze in that hotel room. It would last forever. Mac quit drinking. And I stayed in bed most of the time and drank. And I was so lonely some of those days that I'd call for more ice cubes. One day a kid came up with another basket of ice cubes. And he said, you've got five baskets of ice cubes here now. Do you really want another one? I said, yep. But I really wanted someone to talk to. And I'm sure you've probably experienced that feeling. One day it became obvious that Mac was going to leave whether I went with him or not. And so I seen that he really meant it. I said, for God's sake, don't leave me here. Get me back to Omaha and get me in St. Joe's Hospital. It was a horrible trip back, but we got back. He put me in St. Joe's Hospital where I was kept for about 14 days, 12 or 14 days. And where I almost died. I overheard a couple of doctors. I was talking down at the end of the hall one day about me. And one of them was telling the other he had enough alcohol in his brain to kill 11 men. When he came in here, I hope he makes it. I'm not sure I know what DTs are, but I think I do. Under a lot of sedation, I finally felt a little better. And more or less forced myself out of there. Very much against Dr. Kelly's wishes. And he said to me the day I left, I said, you've got to get out of here. You had me locked up there with a bunch of emotionally disturbed people. Doctor, would you classify me as insane? He says, no, unfortunately you're not insane. He said, if you were insane, the medical profession has something to offer you. But you are what we term medically as an alcoholic. And quite frankly, I don't think we have any hope for you. He let that set in. However, he said there is an organization that's having considerable success back east called Alcoholics Anonymous. You ever heard of it? I said, yes, I read the piece in the Saturday Post. Also, I think I read something in Reader's Digest about that. He said, I don't really think it would apply to you because they only deal with people who are sincere. They mean business. He says, however, I have heard that they have a small chapter in Omaha. Do you want me to look into it? I said, yes. So he spent about a half hour and he called several places and got a hold of a nurse whose husband had attended a couple of meetings. No more of the trangeness to meet my potential sponsor at the Regis Hotel at Cigar Stand following Friday night. He let me out. He gave me a little vial of capsules of some kind. A marine and I drove home. And I made a strong determination on my way home I was going to build myself back to health. I mowed the lawn. I trimmed the hedge. I really went 90 miles an hour. And the next day I did the same thing. The second day in the afternoon I developed a horrible headache. They did that. And I decided, well, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. That night I'm sure I had DTs. I was deathly tired and I'd fall asleep and the minute I fell asleep I'd wake up screaming. A sequence of horror. There's only one I remember that I'd arouse the ire of everybody in a small Pennsylvania town, hard coal town. And every citizen of that town was chasing me down the street. They're all throwing coal at me and they had me cornered on a porch and most of them were hitting me and I'd wake up screaming. And at two o'clock that morning I got up and I said, that's it. I'm going to get dressed. I'm going downstairs. I'm going to get Gary's ball bat and I'm going over to 52nd, which is only a couple blocks from our house. We live on 53rd. I'm going to get Dr. Kelly out on the porch and I'm going to beat him to death. And the sad part of it is my thinking seemed to be crystal clear. That seemed to be the logical thing to do. I never had a clearer thought in my mind. And Maureen said, well, before you do that, let's try seeing the rosary once more. And so we nailed down and I don't know how that went. We made an attempt that. I guess I slept fitfully through the night. I was up about 4.30. The headache had become more intense. And I've had a lot of headaches. I know what a headache is. It's not very nice, but this is more than that. This is a lot more than that. It was the worst. It was the worst pain I've ever endured. And I tried the aspirin, the broma salts and the alcohol salts and all this stuff. Eight o'clock in the morning she called Dr. Kelly and he very abruptly said, I told you not to take him out. And there's nothing I can do about him. And you insisted that he would be all right. And I'd rather step out of it. She called our family doctor and he said he wasn't equipped to handle a case like me. She called a friend of hers, I believe, who was a nurse. I don't know whether she talked to her or not. By that time I was following Maureen around the house. From kitchen to living room to sunroom. And the feeling was so horrible. Leaves didn't seem green. Grass didn't seem green. Nothing seemed fitting and right. And I made a determination that I'd died. And I kept following her around asking her if I'd died and if my soul was falling or what was going on. And it must be pretty damn eerie for a wife to try to answer questions like that from a guy who's just been in a hospital for almost three weeks. And she got away from me the best she could. We had a problem and we had no solution for it. You know, in our literature it says... Well, anyway, I'll tell you this. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. Again, it was August. It was very hot. I was in the sunroom. She was upstairs. And I knew for the past thirty minutes that I was looking death in the face, eyeball to eyeball. And I also knew that death was going to win. I fell on my knees. I threw up my arms. And I said, God help me. Now, any of you doubt this God business that you hear so much about in AA, don't. Because what I'm telling you is the truth. Instantly. Instantly. A wonderful feeling of well-being came over me. A euphoric feeling I've never experienced with booze. It's indescribable. Total peace. And I'm sure it's what heaven must be when we move on. I was on my knees. I was crying. And I said, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. She came running down the stairs. And I told her what had happened. She said, okay, you better go upstairs and see if you can get some sleep. And so I did. I slept thirteen hours. Now, keep in mind, I knew nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous, except what I read in the Saturday Post in that brief discussion with Dr. Kelly before I left the hospital. I'd never seen the word spiritual experience coupled together. So don't think this is a figment of my imagination. I may have picked up from reading something. Since that time, I've read many things, William James variety of spiritual experiences, and it's not a bit uncommon. And it's quite real. They all tell you that. But always preceding this thing that happened to me is horrible agony that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. A pain that's indescribable. And I know what pain is. I broke my pelvis bone once in eight places while drunk. I fell out of a second-story window. And that's terrible. The structure of your... It's the basis of your whole bone structure. And it's very, very painful. Without morphine in a hospital, you couldn't endure. This pain was worse. And it left. So I went to my A meeting. And this time, this little Episcopalian priest said, I'm... gone. I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... I'd had... The program is a spiritual part. At least spiritual for me. What I had done is withdrawn from my fellow man. And that's why we have an AA. Both God and your fellow man. And I can't help but think how lucky we are to have this third option. And... And... And... And... And... And... Now, I can't help but think of another alcoholic who lived in the last century. He was a terrific guy, a fellow by the name of Stephen Foster. The seven states of our country use one of his songs as their state song. He had written over 200 songs, and our beauties talked about him too. And every May I watch the Kentucky Derby, and those 115,000 people sitting in that great grandstand, and that little band down in front playing the song, My Old Kentucky Home. I have trouble keeping tears in my eyes when I watch that, the whole group there singing, because I know how that song was written. Okay? Foster died at the age of 38, of mortal wounds he received in a Bowery basement brawl, three or four days before he finished up. His wife had been crying all day. He was broke. They lived in cheap housekeeping rooms on the east side of New York. There was no furniture. She was on a little bed and had been there lying. He was sitting at a table, totally dejected. And what he did is what so many of us do when there's no hope for the present, and no possible hope for the future. He thought about how it was in the past, and that's what he put in the words of My Old Kentucky Home. And I'd like to read what he wrote that day. The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home. Tis summer. The darkies are gay. The corn tops ripe. And the meadows are in bloom. And the birds make music all the day. Weep no more, my lady. Oh weep no more today. We shall sing one song of my old Kentucky home. My old Kentucky home far away. Stephen Foster didn't have the chance that we have had. Thank you. » . worried instructionżej How do you think a speaker that delivers a message like that? I felt, as I heard Don, and we told us his story, he shared his experience, strength, and hope with us. And to me, it's the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. And to me, AA's message to the world is not that we have succeeded in ceasing to drink, but in so ceasing to drink, we have succeeded in learning to live. And that's what I got from Don's talk this morning. I would like to ask our beautess, is she here? Come up. Tommy Grafton. Mike Rainbolt. Would you like to come forward, please? And someone else that's very special has taken part in this thing this weekend, who demonstrates so much love and tolerance in taking me under his wing and doing so much for this weekend. Come on up on the platform. And that's Jim Griffin, our past trustee. Jim, would you come up? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This has been a tremendous conference. Five hundred and... Thirty-nine registered. And so many times people say it's those people up at the front who have made this possible and it's been so successful. But knowing these people as well as I do, I think they would join with me in saying the success is not ours, it is yours. And I'd like our speakers to show our appreciation to these people who have made this conference so successful. By all being here. Would you like to stand? We've had a wonderful weekend and it's our closing meeting. We know that every one of you will go back to your groups, your states, your hometowns. And you will carry the message there to those other individuals who weren't here with us this weekend. And tell them about the first weekend in March next year. And when you come back, you'll be able to tell them about the first weekend in March next year. And when you come back, you'll be able to tell them about the first weekend in March next year. And when you come back, bring some of them with you. And when you come back, bring some of them with you. And there may be some new people here for the first time. And who may have been as impressed as I was with the tremendous messages that these people have given us. And if you're to say, how may I get that way also? How do I find that peace of mind? So on. And the message is in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think it's on page 164. And it doesn't apply only to Alcoholics Anonymous. I am sure it covers AA, Al-Anon, and Alateen. And it tells us there how this comes about. It says, abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit. And you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road to happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then. Will those that care to help us close this conference with the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For heaven. For heaven. For heaven. Forever and ever. Amen.