Sponsorship as the Greatest Spiritual Movement of the Century – Dick M.

It's about time. I've been waiting all weekend for this. My name is Dick Martin and I'm an alcoholic. By the grace of God and the actions of AA and sponsorship, I've I've been sober since September the 15th, 1965, and I'm very grateful for that. You took note that when they're doing the countdown, I was sitting down here several people away from my wife. She stood up, andI stood up between 40 and 45. I want to make something perfectly clear. she's been sober for 43 years I've only been sober for 42 and you may think that that's, well, you know whatever, it's pretty close that sort of thing I still have to get her a cup of coffee every morning she still says things like, well when you've been sober as long as I have And I would like to warn you, just to give you a little bee in your bonnet so you can remember this. You know, you guys out there, don't marry somebody that's been sober longer than you have. It's a long, hard trip. Publicly, she's really very nice to me. No, she's a great gal. I used to drink a lot, and that's what chased me into Alcoholics Anonymous. But I was running from that, but I was also running from a number of people who didn't like me and didn't Like the way I was acting, and they were giving me a hard time and threatening me at work and their friendship. and so as an end result I came in here to get them off my back and I also came in here because I just couldn't stand me anymore I started drinking when I was a teenager not an early teenager, I wasn't 11 or 12 any of those wonderful things, I was more like 14 or 15 years old and that was early enough it was actually just in time when I started drinking because I think had I not started drinking as a teenager I really believed that I would have been a teenage suicide I certainly thought about it enough but I had alcohol to carry me to the point where I could come into Alcoholics Anonymous and I haven't contemplated any suicide since that time I've contemplated homicide a few times. But I just contemplate it. You know, I always kind of figure out if I cut the hydraulic pipes for the brakes or something on somebody's car that they'll come after me. It keeps you sober a long time when you think they're going to put you away for a Well, when I came into AA, I was 33 years old. I was married, contemplating a divorce, and I had two children. And I didn't mind the idea of being divorced from her, but I really didn't want to be divorced from the two kids. I loved those kids, andI didn'twant to lose those. and I want you to know that I spent a lot of time crying myself to sleep over that and to the point where it just didn't seem like it was worthwhile crying anymore. And my relationship with those two kids today, I would like to say, is wonderful, warm, and shiny, but it's not. They live in Maryland and I live in Nebraska and we barely communicate with each other. I think that they're sitting around waiting for me to die with hopes that I'll give them something. But in other words, it's come to the point where I've done as much as I can do up to this point. I'm not saying that I can't do more later or I won't domore later, but I'vedone as muchas my sponsor will tolerate. He says, I don't want to hear about it anymore. So when he doesn't want to hear About It Anymore, I sure as hell don't want to talk about it anymore, that's for sure. I can remember when I was about 15 years old and I was invited to one of these teenage parties and I went and knocked on the door and I can remeber I was wearing a coat and tie that wouldn't have been impractical to think of in 1945. But all the guys were wearing a coat and ties, and gals were wearing dresses. Can you imagine a gathering of teenagers doing that today? You know, it just means I'm old. That's what that means. But at any rate, the gal's father came to the door, and he said, you know, they're downstairs. So I went where they were and had a rec room downstairs. That room had about 40 people in it. It was equally divided. There was 39 on one side, and I was on the other. And I felt that foreign to it, to tell you the truth, because the people who were there were the leaders in my class. And there were jocks, and there were cheerleaders, and all of that sort of thing. and I wasn't one of those. I was a pimply-faced kid who didn't have a girlfriend but wanted one or two or three regularly, and one of the guys there asked me if I'd like to have a beer, and I said sure, and it wasn't the first beer I had, but it was the first significant beer I hade because of what happened, and I went back in the laundry room and they had a refrigerator in there and they were drinking beer and I had a church key there to punch open a hole in the top of the can and I stood there and I drank the beer and talked to this guy he became friendlier and friendlier as time went on I went out with other people and they seemed to be having a good time and somebody else asked me if I'd like to have a beer. And I said, sure. And I wasn't drunk or anything like that or giddy or I wasn'T even feeling it as I recall. But I had a second beer and then I began to realize why they invited me. These children wanted to have some gay, bon vivant, boulevardier to be the leader of this crowd of children. And I asked one of the girls to dance and she said yes. And I didn't step on her toes. As a matter of fact, she stepped on mine. And, you know, from that point on, the change that came about from the just I just changed. I just change the whole world. My whole world changed from that part on because I ended up feeling so much better about myself and I ended feeling equal to or superior to other people that are around me. And therefore, I drank at every opportunity I had from there on. Not every time did I drink and get drunk, but I was blacking out when I was 16 years old. So as far as alcoholism is concerned, you know, I had it, and there's no doubt about that. And I kind of had a feeling what alcoholism was, but wasn't sure. But my father drank an awful lot, and I can remember the earliest memory I had. I must have been about four years old. And my father coming home drunk and yelling and screaming at each other and living in that kind of a circumstance, you know, I became more and more insular. I liked my father. I didn't like my mother. My father I could depend on. If he was drinking, he was in good shape and friendly. If he were on his way to the liquor store to buy a bottle, and I oftentimes went with him when he did, we walked to the liquor store together, and he was in great shape. But if he didn't have a drink and he wanted a drink, he would be a miserable SOB and he would feel very unhappy. And my mother, on the other hand, I didn't know when she was going to be pleasant to be around or not. And she was the wife of a practicing alcoholic, and it was a tough time. I drank through high school with very little problems. You know, I drank more than the other people did that were around me that were other students. And I didn't have any particular difficulty with it. I think I probably had an automobile accident, but it was insignificant. It wasn't any great deal, any big deal. But I was known as one of those guys that was a drinker. And I would always be invited to parties where they were going to have beer or other things. And I made it a habit, you know, the older I got, the more capable I was of getting a hold of liquor and getting someone to buy it for me and that sort of thing. So as a consequence, you Know, I became more of a practicing alcoholic the older I got. I went into service and I was in the Air Force and I fought a good war. It was in a battle of Piccadilly Circus. I spent most of my time in the service in England, and I was an air traffic controller. And I was very fortunate to be given every opportunity to succeed. And I Was good at what I did, and was recognized for that, and promoted under grade. and in other words I wasn't really eligible to be promoted but because I was good at what I was doing they promoted me anyway and as I say I fought a good war and after the war was over I came back and went to college and I joined a fraternity and I did that because it was always somebody to drink with i uh i have 160 credit hours and i don't have it even an associate's degree but uh i'm educated way beyond my intellect i can tell you that but i would you know i would be working in some field or another it wouldn't make a difference what i was doing maybe i would take a couple of courses in accounting maybe i'd take a cup of course in management maybe I take a couple of courses in, you know, psychology or whatever or history or whatever just turned me on at the moment. And I like being a student and I like going to college and I Like the fact that on Friday afternoon we started drinking and I was living in Washington, D.C., and I went to George Washington University mostly And we used to go to Brownlee's on Friday afternoon and start our drinking for the weekend. And, you know, I enjoyed my drinking. I had a good time with it, but I began to get more and more difficulty over it. And I began To Drink When I Really Shouldn't Be Drinking. And I begun to defend my position of what I was doing. and I was working in broadcasting while I was going to school on the GI Bill. So I had sufficient funds to be able to do whatever I wanted to do. I had come home from a service on an emergency leave. My father, who had been nominated for federal judgeship, he and his brother were out celebrating. My father had fallen down the basement stairs in the house and had a brain concussion and died shortly after I came back home. And so then I lived there in that house with my younger brother who was 10 years younger than I was and my older sister and my maiden sister, she wasn't married and my mother who is now a widow and that's no place for a grown man to be and so I decided I better get married and I married a gal that I had dated for about a year and a half and it was ill-fated marriage from the very beginning. There isn't any other way of putting it. I suggested to her that if she'd teach me how to dance I'd teach her how to drink and she never taught me how to dance and I never taught her how to drink. She just never learned. She'd go and have, she'd have three or four drinks and get sleepy and go to bed. That isn't what you're supposed to do. You're supposed, you didn't go get in a car and go somewhere, go look for the party. She didn't like that. She couldn't understand it. And she's very difficult to get along with. And I started dating my boss's secretary and she understood me because she drank just like I did. And she had a father that had died from alcoholism. And And I knew about that much about her, and she knew broadcasting. And so we could get together and talk about work, and oh gosh, it was just so nice. And she wouldn't give me any trouble about my drinking, and I liked that. And so as a consequence, we had this ongoing relationship. and it lasted for years all the way through my beginning to court the woman I was to marry and during the time that she had my wife had those two children I had this gal Joe on the side and she drank just like I did too much, too frequently publicly I'd started getting arrested because I used to drink in the Mayflower Hotel town and country bar and there's a lot of senators and congressmen who had their residences in this hotel and it was a fabulous hotel in downtown Washington D.C. and I'd go in there and get drunk in the afternoons And when it was time for me to go, when I just absolutely had to leave, I liked the idea of associating with the people who lived there because they were drinkers and drunkards just like I was. But they didn't like people to go staggering around on the outside of the Mayflower Hotel. They thought the management there frowned on that sort of thing. They had policemen around the building. They had one on each side of the building, so I couldn't escape no matter what I was going to do. And I'd go up and spend a couple hours in the 10th Precinct, and I got along with the cops up there good. They didn't give me a real bad time or anything. They'd just take me and put me in a cell with the other drunks and keep me in there for four hours, and then they let me go again. It cost me, the fine was $10, and it just got so I'd make sure I had extra $10 tucked away because I was arrested 23 times for public intoxication and twice for being in possession of a vehicle while intoxicated and once for urinating in public. this poor lady had a bunch of rose bushes I thought they needed to be watered as I was relieving myself there was an officer who came and tapped me on the shoulder and he said, when you're through and I said to myself oh boy and that was one night that I didn't have that extra ten dollars and they took me to the precinct and I knew the precint sergeant the booking sergeant and I told him that I would give him my watch and I would come back in the morning and pay the ten dollar fine and he knew me he knew where I worked and all that, and so he said that'll be fine. So I bailed myself out with my watch, which probably wasn't worth much more than $10, to tell you the truth. But, you know, I had all kinds of run-ins with the police in that way. Remember, I drove down Connecticut Avenue, and underneath one of those, you know, going under the main street at a circle and ran into a whole bunch of horses down there. Not live horses, but lights, you knows, mounted on those things that they mount traffic lights on, and, you know, park them around so it'll slow you down or redirect you or whatever. And I damn near ran back into one of these cleaning machines that they were washing this tunnel out with. And there was a policeman there, and he made me park the car, and he said, You leave that there all night long. I don't want to see it moved. and I told him okay he got a cab put me in the cab I told the cab to take me around the block and he took me around the block and I got my car and I went downtown went to the bar that I normally drank in which is not too many blocks away and I was in there having another drink I got this fellow came and tapped on my shoulder And he says, I thought I told you to go home. And I said, well, yeah, but, you know, he says no buts about it. You know, come on with me and back down to the precinct again. And I was parked in the alley and I told him, I said well I'm parked in the alley illegally. He says don't worry about it, I'll put a ticket on it. so anyway uh i kept going through these stages of trying to clean up my act and i'd try to quit drinking and i went to a psychiatrist and i Went to a couple of ministers and i uh uh went to two physicians and one physician finally essentially told me he said you know you're going to be just like your father if you don't quit drinking you're going to die drunk and he gave me no solution there was nothing that I could do he thought it would be just like you make up your mind you quit drinking you quit drinking and because you know he'd have a drink or two occasionally but you just have a drink or 2 and that was it and he wasn't he told me exactly the truth But he wasn't at all helpful because what do I do now? And he suggested that maybe psychiatry could help me. I went to see a psychiatrist, and he wasn'T able to give me any direction. He said one of the things he suggested I do, he said, You just drink with your wife. And I couldn't, you know, what am I going to tell him? You know, if I would open a bottle in front of my wife, she'd go take the kids and get in the car and go see her mother. You know? I mean, that's the way it went. I was a member of a club. It was the Saturday afternoon martini club. And we met on Sundays. And we would save up. We had a fee on this. and we would set up a party once a year, a catered dinner, and the guys would get all dressed up in their tuxedos and the gals would wear evening dresses and we'd have a catering affair in someone's house. We just thought we were hot stuff, that's the only thing I can tell you. We were acting like we were grown-ups, but I was the drunk. I was he only drunk in the whole mess of them. There were about 20 of us. And as I say, I was the only drunk in that crowd. But people liked me, and I liked people. And I tried to be friendly with them, but I wasn't a good friend because I would say I was going to do something and I wouldn't show up and do what I said I was gonna do. And so as an end result of that, I lost a lot of friends. and they didn't want me to be that way but I didn't wanna be that way. I remember my wife exacting a promise out of me never to drink again and I sincerely agreed with that and I promised her I would never drink again and after I would drink again she would say to me something to the effect that Do you know what I feel like when you don't hold your promise? When you promise me that you're going to stay sober and not drink and you get drunk and you come home drunk again, do you know how that makes me feel? And I would get so angry. I wouldn't say anything, but I would gets so angry that I would want to scream. and I want to scream, but you don't understand. I don't want a drink. I didn't want to drink. I didn' t want to do this. I don' t wanna break it. I broke my promise. This is what I did. I promised you I wouldn' t and I broke MY promise. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel when I break my promise and when I can' t hold to it? And, you know, I wanted to say that but I didn''t know those words. I just didn'' t know what to say and I would just say nothing because I had no answer. Towards the end of my drinking, I'd gone out to a drinking party and taken my wife with me and we'd gone and it was time to come home and I was pretty drunk and we were driving home and I got to our apartment and I parked the car and she got out in anger and slammed the door and left and I put the car in reverse and went back to the party. Nice guy. Consider it. But I went back to the part and started drinking again and the only way they could get rid of me was to give me a bottle of whiskey. They gave me a barrel of whiskey and I left And it was just dawn, as I recall, and I was sitting in my car smoking cigarettes and drinking out of this bottle of scotch and overlooking the Potomac River, Great Falls to be exact, and just sitting there thinking, what am I going to do now? I haven't got any place to go. The only place I can go is that place that I called home where my wife and two kids were. And there wasn't any other place for me to go. And I didn't want to do that. I didn' t want to go there. That was the last place I wanted to go, but I didn''t have any choice. And all of a sudden there was a knock on the window, that fateful knock that I keep getting. and there was a knock on the window and I turned around and looked out the window and there's a guy standing there he had a four or five day growth of beard and he was filthy dirty and he had been sleeping in the bushes there and he said I need a drink can you give me a drink and I wound the window down and I gave him the bottle and he says how about a cigarette and uh so i gave him cigarettes and uh i thought to myself that's what i'm going to be that's exactly what i'M GOING TO BE IF I DON'T QUIT THIS AND I WENT HOME AND I TOLD MY WIFE THAT YOU KNOW SHE WAS THERE WITH HER MOTHER WHO WAS TRYING TO CONSOLE HER WITH THIS DRUNKEN husband that she had and uh she uh i told her about my adventure and what had happened in this guy and i knew that this was going to be me if i didn't stop drinking and i'll never drink again and they were i was caught up in the moment and i cried and you know did all of the things that i could to assure them that I would really never drink again. And I meant it, and it was the truth when I told it, because that was my concern, that I've got to be able to do this. And I went to bed, and I got up later in the afternoon, and went to the refrigerator and opened a can of beer. And my wife came into the kitchen where I was, and she says, what are you doing? after you promised me that you were never going to drink again. My mother was here, and we stayed because of that. And she says, I'm leaving. And she left and took the kids. The next thing I remember is waking up on the floor of the kitchen and empty beer cans all around. And I was in my shorts, and I urinated on myself. I you know scenes like that just dance through my mind when I think of drinking again and I don't want to be that person I was before I want to see the person I am now the person that has some dignity and some grace and lives a good life by and large I do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it and show up, but when I say I'm gonna do that. And which is something I could never do before. I on the 13th of September 1965, I was out with this gal Joe Wilson, that my girlfriend that is we had both gotten really drunk and she'd gotten so drunk I had to carry her to her car so she could drive home. Chivalry wasn't dead yet, you know. Always the gentleman, I say. But we got, both of us had gotten bad, bad drunk, and we had made arrangements. I remember we had make arrangements to get together the next night and go to a movie. And so I called her up the next morning and said, look, I'm burning hard coal and I'm so hungover, I don't want to drink it. I said, why don't we just meet and get something to eat and go the movie? So she said that would be a good idea. And so we met at Cyborg Cafe on Connecticut Avenue and saw that the movie had changed at the Avalon Theater, and we didn't want to see what it had changed to. So I said, well, let's go out to the old Angler's Inn, which is a high-dollar country inn overlooking the Potomac River. And we went out there for dinner. I know we had a drink or two before dinner, and I know he had two bottles of wine with dinner, And undoubtedly, we had an after-dinner drink. And I said, well, you know, it's going back to the place where we had started. They had a sidewalk cafe there. That was something that was new in Washington at that time. They just licensed places to have sidewalk cafes. I thought that that sounded romantic and sounded interesting to me. So it was sophisticated beyond me, but I thought it was just about right. And we went back there, and we were drinking Rémy Martin Grand Fien Champagne Cognac and coffee. And she asked me a fateful question. And she said, why don't we get married? and i had a series of thoughts run through my mind the first one was i can't do that i'm already married and the second the second thought was and i'm a rotten husband and that's no sign that i am going to be a better husband to you and then i thought i'm not bad employee and I'm a bad citizen, I'm a poor brother and I're a poor son and you know and I just looked at her and I said no I can't do that and I had exactly the right number of drinks to get me to that point if I'd had one more drink I think we would have begun to negotiate and I would have discovered I could quickly get a divorce somewhere but I also would have discovered that that this money that she had, she drove her Mercedes and she shouldn't be driving a Mercedes with her income with the job that she has. And I would have discovered that she really indeed was going to come into a fortune in a few years. And I just looked at her and said, no, I can't do that. And I paid the bill with my American Express card that I had gotten that day. I wanted to amortize it just to make sure that, you know, they knew that I liked them. I didn't want them to think I didn' t appreciate it. and uh i went home i paid the bill and i went home and home was then by this time i was living with my widowed mother and i was in this i had a bed a single bed in the sewing room she didn't let me have a bigger room there was other rooms there bedrooms there but she wouldn't letme stay in those because it was too big a room for me to mess up And I sat on the edge of my bed and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, what am I going to do now? You know, how can I, you know, I've done everything I know to do. You know I've been to see psychiatrists, I'v seen doctors, Ive seen ministers, you know, what else can I do? And the idea came to me, I remembered selling the Saturday evening post door to door when I was a kid. When you sell the Saturday Evening Post, which is a weekly magazine, what ends up happening is you sell enough, you get a coupon, and you save these coupons up, and eventually you can get a bicycle. I did get a motorcycle, a Schwinn as I remember, and It was blue, matched by eyes. But in this particular Saturday Evening Post that was published on or sold on March the 1st, 1939, it had the Jack Alexander article about Alcoholics Anonymous. And in that article, as I remembered it, it was alcoholics helping other alcoholics. And they were, once you're in this thing, you never drank again. It was like a leper colony. You know, once your in there, they don't let you out again. And I was wrong about that too. But it was filled with derelicts and bums and near-do-wells and used to be's and a few has-beens and a few gray-haired little old ladies with blue tent who would lead us in hymns and jump us to Jesus and, you know, it was the Salvation Army. And I remembered the Salation Army because I used to drink in bars downtown and at Christmas time they'd have these bands that'd come by and play Christmas carols and played some song like put a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum and they'd have some guy come in with a tambourine to the bar and collect money. It wasn't a very high-class bar that did this work. But anyway, I thought to myself, well, that's one thing that I haven't done. I've never gone to AA. I thought about going to AA, and I picked up some AA literature at the central office there one time. And I bought a, I remember bought a six-pack of Rolling Rock ale, and I don't know why I bought that, but I bought this Rolling Rock ale and drank that while I was reading the AA literature. It sounded interesting, but I didn't go. I didn' t go for about a year and a half later than that. I went to my first meeting, and I called up a minister who was friendly to me and told him I was drinking more and enjoying it less, and I'd like to go to AA. And he said, well, we have somebody in the parish who I'm sure would be glad to take you. This fellow named Kelly Brown. He said, I'll have him call you. And Kelly called me. And he, uh, said that he hadn't been sober long enough to go on a 12-step call, so he turned me over to his sponsor. And so he turn me over a fellow called Buck Doyle. And Buck DoyLE was about 5'10", and he had no neck. He looked like a retired Irish cop is what he looked like, a little overweight. But I found out later on that, you know, in the AA, he was thought of as kind of the Bill Wilson of northern Virginia. He had 12 steps so many people and sponsored so many People, and he was so well thought of. And so Buck said that he would meet me that night at the corner of Fox Hall and Reservoir Roads in Washington, D.C., and take me to my first meeting. He took me to a meeting over in Silver Spring, Maryland. And this was a service meeting of alcoholics and autos. The area chairman was describing the service structure of AA, and he showed a film strip, something like Circles of Love and Service. And that was my first AA meeting. And I've been sober ever since. I haven't had a drink or any mood-altering chemicals since that time. And that may not sound like the right place to take a newcomer, but it was exactly the right space for this newcomer. And it wasn't because of where it was or what the subject matter was. It was a matter of the people. You know, in AA we have two things. We've got words and we've got people. And the words tell us what to do, and the readings tell us what to say, and they tell us how to do it. They tell us that's what to be able to do. And the people tell us what they have done and share their experience with us. These guys took me to a hot shop after the meeting was over. And at this hot shop, something like a Village Inn, that type of restaurant. And Buck said, why don't you, I'll order for you. And he ordered a hot fudge ice cream cake with marshmallow on it. And I said, Buck, I don't think I can eat that. You know, I'm afraid it will make me throw up. He says, that's okay. They've got a lot more. So I sat there with lovable old Monsignor Doyle and no-growth McGee and Ernie the attorney, and they 12-stepped me in the traditional sense of the word. They told me what they were like and what had happened and what they're like today. And I immediately had an affinity towards these guys. I like these guys. I like what they stood for. I like the way they comported themselves, and they kept telling me my story. And I said, wait, how did you guys learn about me? I mean, there isn't anybody that knows what you guys know about me. And they said, Dick, we're not talking about you. We're talking about me, and we're talking our stories. These are our stories that we're telling you so that you can identify as to whether you're an alcoholic or not. And I said, oh. And they started me on, Buck started me, on a round of going to AA meetings. And he said, I want you to go to a meeting every night for six weeks and don't take a drink a day at a time and carry AA literature stuffed in your pocket. And I suggest you have some candy in your packet at the same time. So if you feel like taking a drink, you can eat a piece of candy. He says, You're not diabetic, are you? And I said, No. I wasn't then, but I am now. I think it's something to do with all that candy I had in my pocket. But at any rate, I did what they told me to do. And I went to a meeting every night. And I say, Well, after six weeks is over, what do I do then? And he says, well, we're just going to day at a time until that time. And when six weeks come, we'll figure it out. And I asked him at six weeks, I said, well what am I supposed to do now? And he said, Well, you've been going for six weeks. You haven't had a drink. Why don't you keep on going? And so I kept on going. I'm still going today. He's never told me to stop. So I kept going to AA meetings and being active in AA. And I sponsored people from the very beginning when I was two years, two years. When I was 2 months sober, I got my first pigeon. He didn't stay sober. I asked Buck, I said, what did I do wrong? He said, did you tell him to drink? And I said no. And he said, well, that must have been something. Did you tell them to not drink? And I says yeah. And he says, well he drank. It isn't anything that you did, it's what he did. And he says, this is a new guy to you, right? I said, sure it is. I mean, Buck knew where I was every day of the week and every hour of the day damn near because I saw him every day, and I certainly talked to him every night. And I just very simply looked at it as if Buck said, you know, God isn't going to give you somebody that you're going to hurt. and he said don't worry about it you know he'll come back or if he doesn't come back you're sober and that's what it's all about this is about keeping you sober a day at a time and if you can help somebody else good for you and it's great but it helps you as much as it helps him so you got to keep on going and so i did some of the guys that i sponsor in those first very few months of alcoholics and nonos, are still sober today. And they shouldn't be by all measures because I didn't know enough to keep me sober, much less to help somebody else get sober. But somehow or another, I was able to carry the message to them to stay sober a day at a time, and they stayed sober a Day at a Time. And it's really kind of amazing. I remember I was sober for 20 years. I was back in Washington, D.C., on some business, and I went to the AA Businessmen's Lunch, which we met in the Marriott Hotel and had lunch three days, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And it wasn't an AA meeting as such. It was just a meeting of AAs, but we didn't have a speaker. We sat around and talked about politics and women and other things we didn't know anything about. But it was certainly part of the fellowship for me. And I can remember distinctly going in there and sitting down one time, and the commander-in-chief of the South Pacific was sitting across from me, and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was sitting at the same table, and we were sitting there having lunch. And I thought to myself, my God, what am I doing here? These are two of the most powerful men in the world today, and they were, and one from a financial standpoint and the other one was from a military standpoint. And we're people who normally wouldn't mix, and that's all there is to that. But they were just guys in AA. They were newcomers to me, as a matter of fact. You know, I hate to say that, but I never told them that. But I certainly felt like it. But I began a course of action within AA, and I was busy taking guys to meetings and sponsoring them and being active in AA and helping set up meetings. And I was a GSR before I'd been sober for a year. You know, I was at DCM when I was sober for two years. So I was busy on a course of action that kept me sober. Somehow or another during this period of time, I managed to write a fourth step and took my fifth step with Buck. And he said it was the first person that he ever took a fifth step from. And he says, I was the only one. I knew him well. And years later, he said, you know, I never did take a fifth steps from anyone except you. And he was not a step Nazi by any stretch of the imagination, nor was he a big book thumper. But what he did was he taught me how to live the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I would tell him of some misadventure of mine, and he would say, well, you know, I'd say I apologize and say I was wrong. And he'd say, that's right, when you're wrong, promptly admit it. And all of his conversation was AA. And regardless of what I was saying, he had something to say about it. and something that was practical and simple for me to understand. And so I became very active in AA. In the meantime, this gal that I had dated, I was dating in September, that had asked me to marry her, the reason why it was so stupendous, if I'd have begun negotiating with her, I would have discovered how much money she had coming in And two years after I got sober, she had inherited the remainder of the estate from her father. And she retired from working at this radio station where I was working. And she inherited $27 million net to her. And she built a big house down in St. Thomas. and she ended up dying on her living room floor from an overdose of pills and alcohol. And I would have been right there with her if that had been part of the negotiation, if you will, because that's the kind of person I am. I would Have Been There. So I'm so fortunate that in fact I had that moment of clarity that I could see what I was and what I wasn't and I don't I'm not sure that I've had a moment of clarity that clear since nothing has been quite that clear but I so I came into AA and I remember that I was supposed to chair my sponsors home group meeting I met on Saturday night in Annandale, Virginia. And he allowed me to chair a meeting after I had 90 days. And I was supposed to choose the speakers. And I chose two people to come and speak at that meeting. And both the people I picked, one of them stayed sober and is still sober today. And the other one eventually got and stayed sober. He had been sober for six months or so when I asked him to speak, but he became a part of my AA life, chasing after him because he was a drunk and wouldn't stop drinking. He would have periods of sobriety, and he'd get dried out somewhere, and then he'd come back again, and then He'd be on my doorstep all over again. But he was good guy, and He meant well, and meant to stay sober. And he eventually went to a treatment center and met some gal there. They got married, and she was a drunk, and he was a drunken. They got marriage, and, uh, he died sober. And, uh... He lived a good life up to that point. I, um... One of the things that had happened, uh.. Was that, uh.... We used to go to this group called the Friendship Group. And it was located in St. Albans, which is part of the Washington Cathedral. And they used to have a speaker meeting there on Wednesday nights. As a matter of fact, they still do, to the best of my knowledge. And they have a closed discussion meeting on Friday night. And the secretary of that group is a little gal who seemed like to me she giggled a lot and dropped papers and looks like she needed a keeper to meet. and I asked her if she'd like to go get a piece of pie and some coffee after the meeting and she said, no, I don't think so, thank you. Really snubbed me. I don'T like to be told no, by the way. So I was persistent and I would see her again and I remember we went down to the intergroup meeting to pick up the banquet tickets for the intergroup banquet that was going to be held. And she was picking up tickets for her group, and I was picking them up for mine. And I asked her if she'd like to have a cup of coffee. So we went to Avignon Frere, which is a Swiss bakery and tea shop near there. They had a pastry and coffee. and i asked her if she would like to be my guest at this intergroup banquet and she said oh no i won't have time to do that i'm a hostess okay and so this inter group banquet by the way the men would dress up in tuxedos or at least a suit and tie and the women would wear long dresses it was quite a formal affair and it was held in Sheraton hotel downtown and we have a speaker come in from someplace and I've tried to find out who that speaker was I don't have any I don' know it was a male or female or what but I know I was chairman of that later on we had some strange speakers come in. Some fellow named Chuck Chamberlain, some guy played the part of Patton in the movies and tried to get the guy who was, I can't remember the name of show but he was you know another movie star if you will and we had lots of people come in there and we great time went to that meeting at night and I went to the banquet there was Miss Peggy all by herself busy being a hostess i called her and uh i asked her if she'd like to go out and uh she said well i'm going to be at the speak and eat meeting and bar stonebreaker was a speaker and uh he's an unknown in aa today but he was well known in those days he was a had was currently a trustee i believe but uh bar Our strum breaker spoke, and Peggy was handing out the food. I don't remember which potatoes or what it was, potato salad probably. And I asked her if she would like to go out on a date with me. And she said, you'll have to call me. And she gave me her phone number, you have to call me, and I'll have check my calendar, okay? And so I called her, and she said that she was available to go out on Monday, June the 6th. And so that was D-Day, by the way. June the sixth, 1966 is when we had our first date. But it was also the day I got married to my previous wife, so it isn't a number that I'm going to forget easily, I can tell you. But I remember that I was so looking forward to going out, and she was the only person I had dated since I came to AA, and the only woman I ever met. The only person that I met that I wanted to date, as a matter of fact. And I took her out. and we went to dinner to a fancy seafood restaurant there in Washington. And I thought that she'd ordered a lobster or something like that. No, she had shrimp salad, I remember. And we went on and went to a play at the National Theater. It was a pre-Broadway showing of Barefoot in the Park. And we Went to That, and we laughed. And I just, you know, I just fell in love. And I've been in love ever since. And we soon got married. We were at our first date on June the 6th. We were married on August the 12th. And I wouldn't suggest you do that. I wasn't sober a year yet. But somehow or another, through God's grace and through the steps and through the traditions, especially the traditions we've managed to be married for 41 years. And I think neither one of us just wanted to have a divorce at the same time. I think it had a lot to do with it. We never talked about divorce, never had a conversation. We still haven't yet – we've talked about homicide a couple of times. But I've had a great life. I've been in the military for a long time. I've got a great wife. I love sponsoring people. There are three people here in the room tonight that I sponsor. Four. and they're all staying sober. They're not doing as well as I think they should, but that gives them something to worry about between now and the time they call me next. I had, Buck and I had become somewhat separated, mostly because he stayed in Washington, D.C., and I was living in Bellevue, Nebraska, but I would call him every week or so and have a conversation with him but I needed to have more sponsorship than that and I was asked to speak in Sacramento, California and I flew out there and I thought that I'll stop by and go down to the Midnight Mission and see my friend Clancy and go to the Pacific Group on my way back and so I did that and when I was on the plane thinking about you know the trip that I was making I thought to myself I'm going to ask Clancy to sponsor me and my next thought was he probably won't sponsor me because I have facial hair I've got a mustache and I thought he doesn't sponsor anybody that has mustaches or beards and then I thought to myself I don't care if he asked me to shave it off. I don'T CARE IF HE ASKED ME TO SHAVE HIS HEAD, SHAVE MY HEAD. YOU KNOW, I'LL DO WHATEVER HE ASKS ME TO DO. HE HAS NEVER SAID ANYTHING TO ME ABOUT SHAVING MY MUSTACHE OFF. NEVER. AND I THINK THE REASON IS THAT HE KNEW THAT I HAD SURRENDERED TO THE PRINCIPLE OF SPONSORSHIP. I believe that sponsorship is the greatest example of man reaching out, trying to help another man, that we can find. I think it's the greatest movement, spiritual movement of the century, certainly. And you and I are sober today because of what one man essentially did and this one man reached out over and over and over again trying to help someone else get and stay sober and as an end result he stayed sober. The people that he reached out to didn't necessarily stay sober but he was able to stay sober and certainly that was Bill Wilson and I was asked today by one of the guys if if I'd ever met Bill Wilson. And I'm going to end my story with this. And I said, well, no. But I said Hugh McGee, we used to call him No Growth McGee. Hugh McGEE called me up one day about 11 o'clock in the morning and asked me, he said, you know, Bill Wilson is down here testifying at the Hughes hearings, which decriminalized alcohol, those are by the way. And And he said he's available to go to lunch, and he would like to have a couple of people to go to lunch. Would you come with us? And I said, no, I'm sorry. I said I already have a commitment for lunch. And he says, well, okay. It's too bad. And I then hung up the phone and started looking around trying to find somebody to go lunch with. And Hugh called me later in the afternoon. He He said, well, you couldn't make lunch. Can you make dinner? And I told him no. I said, I'm sorry, I can't do that. And I've already sewed up for this evening. And I went home and spent the evening with my wife and children. And you would ask, well how in God's name could you do that? I couldn't. And one thing that you have to be really grateful for the fact that I didn't have lunch or dinner with Bill Wilson, because if I did, I'd still be telling you, well, when I had lunch with Bill. And it would never end. but at that particular time you know in the late 50's and the early 60's AA looked at Bill Wilson in a rather jaundiced way sure he had written a book and he started this movement but he was getting goofy he had emphysema and he wasn't thinking very straight and he took acid, and he did a number of things that the general snobbish personalities in Alcoholics Anonymous would do, even me I should think. But he was not well thought of at this juncture, and AA World Services had de-emphasized the sale of the big book and the sale of the 12-in-12 because everybody was pressing on them because they thought that Bill Wilson was making too much money off of those books. And they weren't. They weren't making any. All it was doing was saving their lives, so it wasn't of value to them. But they really deemphasized. They asked Bill not to come down to the office anymore and not to use a stationary for his personal endorsement of niacin, taking niacин, that sort of thing. And so Bill was not well thought of. And back in the East Coast, that was the attitude that they had about it. And so, you know, the big book and the steps and that sort of thing weren't greatly considered in the northeastern part of the United States. Finally, a bunch of guys from Texas and Oklahoma wrote to GSO and told them if they didn't stop deemphasizing those books that Bill had written, it would save their lives and the lives of so many thousands of other people that they were going to stop contributing to AA World Services. And AA World Services said, oh. And they stopped doing that. But in the meantime, you know, Bill's reputation had been scarred by this type of action that he had brought forth. And I would like to say this. Bill Wilson was like you or I. He was not perfect. He was an inspired man, and he was a driven man to get and stay sober and to help others do that. And, you know, he is revered in my mind as much as he is in yours. And I'm not sorry that I didn't meet him, but if I had the opportunity today to do so, Certainly I would have lunch and dinner with him and tell you all about it. But I don't see how I could have been so stupid. It wasn't stupidity driven by nothing. It came from somewhere. Maybe they just didn't want me saying when I had lunch from Bill. I don' t know. But in the meantime, as I said, Peg and I had gotten married. And she became very active in sponsoring, as I did. We became very Active and Alcoholics Anonymous and ended up moving out to Bellevue, Nebraska in 1975. We've enjoyed a great life in AA. We, along with Buck, started the Foxall Group at the corner of Foxall and Reservoir Roads and a church there in 1966. and November the 9th to be exact. And we carried the message of the Foxhole Group to Bellevue, Nebraska and started a Foxhole group there. And it's a very active group of people, 400, 450 people meet every Tuesday night. If you're in BellevUE, Nebraska or nearby, by. We meet at 8 o'clock at night, and we'd be glad to see you. I would like to thank the guys in the committee for inviting Peg and I to be here. I want to thank you for the basket of fruit and goodies. I wanna thank you all for your courtesy and the meals that you have provided us. And really pleased Chad came up here to pick me up to take me back down to Fargo so I could catch a plane at 7 a.m. in the morning but one of the guys that I sponsored down there is celebrating 25 years and they're having a party in his on his behalf and he asked me to come down and or to be there to speak for on his and so I have to fly back there with I'm going to begin that flight with a ride down to Fargo tonight and a 7 a.m. flight tomorrow. And I'm very active in AA. I intend to stay active in AAA. I intend not drink a day at a time and to share my experience when asked. And I want to thank you very much. I want to thank Jeff for hosting me this weekend, and it's good to see so many familiar faces and to meet the new people that I've met since I've been here, and I've enjoyed it very much. And I wantto say thank you. Thank you.