The 12 Steps in Wee Bitty Pieces – Tom B.

Tom Brown's my name, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Tom. This Jim is something else. He explained that last evening fairly well, and I didn't know what the hell to expect when we got through our nice dinner. I was all ready to pull out my credit card. But he took care of that, and we had a lot of fun together, and I certainly appreciate the hospitality. I want to thank also the committee, those responsible for Betty and I being here this lovely week and to be able to share with you. With the help of God and Alcoholics Anonymous, my wife Betty, it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink since April the 21st, 1963. I don't say that, really, to impress anybody here. However, I must admit it impresses the hell out of me. I had no intentions whatsoever of staying sober. I was forced into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. My enforcer is sitting right down there at the table. And I thank God for that. I thank God for Betty and the determination and the power that she had to be able to do that. It saved my life, and I'm well aware of that today. I've learned a lot of things about Tom Brown since I've been sober. I didn't know, for an example, that when I come into AA that I had a lot more of other problems before I ever took a drink. And after I was over a couple of years, this started to make sense to me. I started to accept the fact that I belonged in Alcoholics Anonymous. It took me a long, long time. But I had the monkey on my back. That's not any reflection, Betty is. But she forced me to go to these lousy meetings. And I want to tell you, I went without exception. That first year and a half, we didn't miss any. And I'm talking about every single night. And I thank God for that. I know that as my sponsors told me, if you don't get AA, AA will get you. And that's exactly what happened. They tolerated me for a long enough period of time until it started to sink in and make sense. But I recognize today that I had a lot of problems, ego, self-centeredness. I had to be first in everything. I never wanted to start at the bottom and build myself up. I wanted to star up here. I didn't want to pay the price for anything. And pretty much throughout my life, that was afforded me. I had great opportunities as a young fellow. And all of the jams that I got in from time to time, people were always helping me, coming and bailing me out. My parents, my coaches, my teachers, my close friends I always came to my assistance and helped me out of these jams. And today I recognize that I eventually, I started to expect it. I knew that somebody would bail me out, whatever the situation might be. And that's pretty much the way it was. It took me a long, long time to recognize after I was sober that I had these problems confronting me. And I thank God for the continuous meetings that I attended. Now, I wasn't always paying attention at the meetings. I would count the blocks in the ceiling and the lights, and I was very distracted when somebody was talking in front of the group. It got to the point where nobody wanted to sit next to me. And eventually, through time, if given enough time, I think everybody with the determination and the guts and the willpower to stay in here will eventually grasp the program. I want to dwell on that early sobriety, but I like to make the comparison with the handful of men who put together the program of Alcoholics Anonymous with the 12 steps, and they laid their steps out in that order, one through 12, to be taken in that manner. And I got AA in little pieces growing up in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't get it all at once like I had done most of my life with every opportunity. I got AAA in little wee bitty pieces, one step through 12 in that border. And I know today that that's why I eventually started to appreciate it. Anything that I got in one lump sum, I really never really appreciated that. I didn't have to work for it. AA, they were smart when they laid this out for us because they knew that they had guys like me, the little slow learners coming into the program and devised it for guys just like Tom Brown, and I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. The big book tells us to tell what it was like and what happened and what it's like today. And I don't like to get into a long, drawn-out drunk-a-log. Our stories are fairly similar in one respect. We drank too much, drank too often, and we always ended up in trouble, or I did. And this was pretty much the way it was from day one. I really don't remember the first drink that I ever had. I've been criticized for saying that, but I don' t. it happened on an occasion when I was a freshman in high school. You see, I'd always been a big shot as a young fella. I was fairly above average in my athletic ability and I was the star and I just fashioned myself as running the whole show in every situation. And in high school, it was no different. I was the star athlete, and the ego and the self-centeredness just almost killed me. There's no question about that. And I expected everybody to help me on situations. As a result of that, I was a poor student. I only did things that I wanted to do, that I was encouraging myself to do. I love sports, and I think today that the only way that you can be good at anything, regardless of whether with your profession or if you're an athlete, is if you practice. You have to practice. And I practiced hard for my athletic endeavors and it paid off. As a result of that attitude, I was a very poor student and I was always being sent for makeup classes and so forth. And I had one heck of a time graduating from high school. through my athletic ability and i don't want to dwell on this uh i call a spade a spate of course but uh i was given a number of scholarships to different colleges throughout the country and i chose the college of william and mary and not too far from here and i went down there and started to live a life of riley everybody catered to me and uh it was just a it was just a wonderful life. Football was good. They had the ratio in the girls and the young men down there was three to one, three girls to every man, and that kind of turned me on. But it was a great experience. I went to the College of William & Mary for two years, and war broke out. And I, being a failure, having to go to summer school on two different occasions, I'd had enough of school, I thought, and war broke out, and I decided to enlist in the United States Air Corps. And I thought in this way I would keep my parents from knowing that I was a failure in college. Of course, I know today that my mother and dad knew that I Was a Failure long before I did. But this is what I did, and i went home to wait to be called into service. and while I was doing my thing drinking, borrowing money waiting to be called into the air car I was coming off of a bender on one particular morning and I ran into my high school coach and I guess Reed would have been the only guy in the world that I would have listened to at that stage in my life and he pulled me aside and told me I should get myself together and he says, why don't you go up and try out with the Pittsburgh Steelers? Now ladies and gentlemen that had been a lifelong dream that I'd had for years to play with Pittsburgh and I thought that was all shot because I only had two years of college and I was going into service and my life was over but I got thinking about what Reed said and I called the Steeler organization and they checked my background out I was only 20 years old, and I was called a couple of days later and told the report to Hershey PA where they were having their training camp. And to make a long story short, I went up there, and with a lot of determination and desire, I made the ball club. And that was the highlight of my life, and still I think back on that year, and I really loved every second of it. I got into a lot of trouble that I won't bore you with tonight, and I don't know why the Steeler organization kept me, but they did. And I came out at the end of that season, and I was called into the service. And I was discovered shortly thereafter that I found a second love. And I found flying an airplane just was absolutely a tremendous thrill. And I know we have some pilots in the audience tonight, undoubtedly. and they'll know what I'm talking about. I loved to fly an airplane. I couldn't wait to get into it in the morning or afternoon. The trouble with that is they had flying one week in the morning, and that afternoon you went to ground school. Pardon me. And you had to learn things like navigation and aircraft and battleship recognition and Morse code and all this ridiculous things that I had no interest in. and I failed to realize that if I'd have been shot up or my bombardier would have been shut up or my navigator, I would have had to get that ship back but that never entered my mind so I figured if I could fly the damn thing they'd get me back and that's pretty much the way it was they averaged the two grades, your ground school grade and your aircraft, your air flying ability together and that determines your passing mark and I was just making it like I'd done most of my life just getting by by the skin of my teeth. And I went through all of the training, basic, advanced, up to advanced, and I had two weeks to graduate. Now, I don't know about you alcoholics, but on any big occasion, whether it was my birthday or I bought a new dog or whatever it was, I had to celebrate prematurely. and as I say, I had a cross-country to do on some acrobatics and I would have been commissioned. So I went into town and I did my celebrating a little early. I come in the wee hours of the morning slated to fly and I took off in that AT-6 and I flew that aircraft in the exact opposite manner in which I'd been taught. And it was easily recognizable from the tower that whoever was flying that aircraft there was something wrong with them. And I was called on the radio and told to report back to the base immediately, which I did. But I was a great con artist, and I could talk my way out of most anything. I knew that I was hungover, but I wasn't falling down drunk. And I WAS COCKY, AND I LANDED THE AIRCRAFT, ANDI REPORTED TO THE CO. AND UPON CLOSER SCRUTINY, HE SAW THE CONDITION THAT I WAS IN. and I was restricted to the base and my quarters. And a few days later, I was washed out of cadet training. Now that's the first time in my life up until that time that anything had been taken away from me that I really loved, and I became real tough to handle. You guys and gals know that you don't fool around with Uncle Sam when you're in the service, and I spent a lot of time locked up because I failed to comply with orders and so forth. But here again, one of the officers at the base saw that I had played with Pittsburgh. He got me out of that, talked me out, I was locked up. He got my out of jail and he says, With your ability, we'll send you to one of The Air Force bases. And that's what happened. I went down to Marchfield and was given a great opportunity if I were to behave myself. But that was too far-fetched. I was drunk and in trouble most of the time. At the end of that second year, they broke up our football team for various reasons I won't get into this evening, but they sent us to different places throughout the country. And I've got to tell you about this because it was one of the low points of my life. I was sent down to Havana, Cuba, to the Batiste Airfield. So now I don't know if anybody in this room has been there. I'm sure you have, but Batiste was the island of Cuba is just a gorgeous, gorgeous place. And for an alcoholic, it was a paradise. It was just great. The rum and Coke was very inexpensive and there was lots of young girls floating around all over the place. And I was thrilled to death to go there and I was having a wonderful time. And one weekend, the base was quarantined for some reason or other. And it didn't bother me. I got drinking on the base. And to show you the insanity of an alcoholic, I got drunk. One of my friends was an officer. He had an officer's quarters right close to mine. I went in and took his cap, and I swiped the Jeep. i talked my way through the gate and i went into havana i figured i'd have the whole town to myself and i did for a couple hours then the mps captured me and worked me over and dragged me back to this and put me into the stockade and to make a long story short and i was court-martialed and given six months of hard labor in the stockade and that in my duties were to cut sugar cane in the sugar cane field and to pick up paper on the base camps the most humiliating experience i'd been faced with up till that time of my life and they had puerto rican guards that i couldn't understand their language and one little fellow never took a liking to me and he would when i would fail to comply with what I was supposed to do, he would hit me in the middle of the back with that M1 rifle. And that wasn't killing me. It wasn't hurting me in any great degree, but it was just so humiliating. And I just hated his guts, to be honest with you. And one day I made up my mind that if he ever did it again, I was going to get him. And sure enough, it wasn't too long after he made this gesture and i went after him and i can remember as though it was yesterday the two guards on my right and left flank cocking those m1 rifles and hollering halt and i just fell down in that field that sugar cane field and broke up like a little kid they dragged me back to the stockade and i was on bread and water for a few days and my friends that i had made had told me that uh after you get in here you never get out he said just forget about that six months boy you throw away the key and i think for the first time in my life i almost gave up and a couple of months passed and a miraculous thing happened i was let out of the stockade and i joined my other teammates to come back to riverside marchfield california i had made up my mind that if this was a cause of my drinking that I was going to quit. Now, I had made promises all my life that I was going do this. I was gonna quit drinking and I truly meant it, I think, on most occasion. And I had had it with the problems that I was having and I made up my mind I wouldn't touch a drop. But lo and behold the team was going up to LA for a party and I didn't want to go. I didn''t trust myself. But eventually I gave down, I broke down and I went with them. And I was just like a bump in the log. Everybody was dancing and having a good time. And finally, one of my friends said, have a couple of beers and that won't bother you. We'll take care of you. Don't worry about it. And that sounded pretty good to me. I wasn't much of a beer drinker, but I took a couple of drinks and you know what happened. I went to the hard stuff. And then just a matter of a few hours. I was right back where I had left off when I ended up in that stockade, and I was in trouble from that time until the day I was discharged, honorably discharged. That's a miracle in itself. I came back with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1946, but I had lost a lot of the desire, and I played three or four games with them, and I went to their farm club in Richmond, Virginia. And then in 1948, I went with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the All-American Conference and lasted four games with Brooklyn and I was let go for the same reason that I'm talking about, my alcoholism. And from that day on, I just lost it. I thought that someday they would be sorry. I kept blaming everybody else. And I ran from coast to coast for the next seven or eight years looking for my pot of gold and i don't know what in the hell i was looking for but i was looking for some easy way out and people still helping me at every turn and i didn't know how many times i ended up back in my dad's house and on this last occasion i'll never forget i woke up on the living room floor of his home and in the morning he had his foot in my ribs and he was looking down at me and he says i want you to get up off of that floor and get the few things that you have together and get out he says i never want you to come back and i hated him this guy had been so good to me all my life and when he told me to get out of his house i hated them for it where was i going to go what was i gonna do i didn't have any money but mothers are pretty much the same i guess wherever you go and my mother and dad had lots of fights over their son tom mother always helped me out whatever she had and she this caused a great big argument, but my dad's mind was made up and I thank God for it. I went into Pittsburgh and I got a place to stay and I got a job as a salesman plumbing supply house and I did very well for a couple of years. I made considerable nice money, but if I would have been making $100,000 a year in those years, it wouldn't have been enough because I was a big shot and I liked everybody to know who I thought I was And wherever I went, I had to be the big deal. And I was so far in debt at the end of those two years, I never thought I would get out. Finally, the bill collectors hounding me at work and attaching my wages and this and that. I just did the only thing I knew how to do. I just picked up and ran, ran away from the problem, the situation that I'd done all my life. And I ran into Cleveland, and I didn't know it at the time, but this is when my life started to change. I got a similar job. I never thought these finance companies would find me, but it didn't take them very long. And about this time, shortly after I arrived in Cleveland, I met my wife, my present wife, Betty, and we had a whirlwind courtship. We liked to do the same things. Betty was a pretty good drinker in those years herself, And we just loved to go out and party. And she's talking tomorrow morning. She'll probably mention some of this stuff to you at that time. But I went with Betty for about a year, and I asked her to marry me. And without any hesitation, that quick, she turned me down. And I asked, I said, what seems to be the trouble? I thought we were in love, and she says that she was very fond of me, but I drank too much. And I said, well, hell, you drink as much as I do. Betty said, Well, it may be so, Tom, but I don't get into the trouble you get into when you drink. So I did the honorable thing. I promised her, I swore in the Bible, that I just wouldn't drink anymore. And she said, You have to prove it to me. So I quit for several months. I don't remember how long. And we went up to New York on a honeymoon, and Betty talks a little bit about that honeymoon. I've been going to meetings with Betty now, listening to her talk for a lot of years, and I just haven't got the full story yet. I'm going to come tomorrow morning, and maybe I'll get lucky. But I'll just tell you this, that I started to drink in New York for the entire 10 days that we were there. And that was one hell of a way to start a marriage. Betty had a daughter from a former marriage, and when we got back, I made a promise that I'd just drink weekends. And for a while, that worked pretty good. But then I got into the daily stuff again, and I lost the job. I changed jobs back and forth, and nothing was getting any better. It was progressively worse. I was constantly in trouble, and on one occasion, we had a seminar at one of the places of business, and I got drunk, and it caused a great commotion. I told my boss what I thought of his company and what he could do with it, and then I just wrecked the place, and I was put in jail that night where I belonged. But he didn't have enough money to get me out of jail that following morning, but a friend of mine came to my rescue, helping me out again, and I went home to face the music. And we had a quarrel that I'll never ever forget. And about this time, I was given the opportunity to participate in a job that I currently have as a manufacturer's representative and I went over to Indiana to be interviewed for this position and lo and behold, I got the job and I was supposed to be back that following day but I had to celebrate. And I was arrested on the way home in Indiana. The Indiana State Patrol called my my then employer and they were very close friends and I was let go. And I came all the way home drunk and I, I was coming from the West and I missed Cleveland. I ended up in Chagrin Falls and I called Betty. It was very early this morning and I wanted a couple more days out because any time that I wanted an extended time out, all I had to do was call her and we'd get into a terrible quarrel and that would enable me the excuse that I needed. I called her in the wee hours of the morning and she said, the conversation went something like this. I'm glad you're back. The children and I were worried about you. By then I had three little girls at home and Sandy, a little older. She was 13 or 14 at that time. And she says, we were concerned with your welfare, but now that you're back, you needn't hurry to get home because we'll be gone by the time you get here. And she hung up. I thought I had the wrong number, honestly. I got home real quick, believe me. And sure enough, the suitcases were packed and we had a real bad argument and fight and things were broken and the swearing and the kids crying. And while this was going on, a taxi cab pulled in the driveway and I wouldn't let her out. I wouldn'T let him in. And it was just a nightmare. And that's when I got on my knees. I got up on these and I begged her for one more shot. I told her about this great opportunity that I had, that we had with my new position. And I promised her everything under the sun. And after a couple hours, she turned to me and she said, the only way that I'll live with you another moment in this house is if you call Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, we argued another hour or two about that. Finally, I knew that your back's up against the wall. I said, well, what the hell? I'll make the phone call. And I did, the greatest phone call I ever made in my life. And Dick P answered the phone and he says, you sit tight. Don't drink unless you have to. There'll be somebody there to talk to you. Boy, I said, that was easy. And I went back in and I was so beat. I hadn't been to bed or slept in a long time. And then I went in and laid down on the couch and I went to bed. And I was only asleep for a couple hours, two or three hours at the most. And the front doorbell rang, and I told Betty, get that door, you know. And she came in and said, you get the door. So I got up and I answered. And I've got to tell you about this first contact. I think it's a little unusual. There was two guys standing there in the doorway, and one had a bow tie on and a loud sport coat and his haircut, the crew cut haircut and real big thick glasses. He looked like a college professor and I hated college professors. The other fellow was he was a shorter guy and he needed a shave and he had a Cleveland Browns t-shirt on. I liked his looks to be honest with you. Those two guys took me into my living room and the professor sat me down on the couch and he started to tell me about some of his drinking. It was the lousiest story I'd ever heard in my life and he was going back and forth in front of me and every time he would walk in front of me, he had a finger about that long and he would stick it right in my face and Jesus, and I'm sick and hungover and there's all this nonsense and I thought, this has got to go so I stood up and I had the professor by the arm I said let's go Buster and I'm taking him to the door and I thought Betty was in the bedroom with the children and she was in kitchen and she whirled around there and she had her hands on her hips with that look you know guys so I let the professor go and I went back and sat down on the couch And he come over to me, and he says, you know, Tom, you haven't been cooperating. He says, You've been yes-ing me to death. You won't do this. You won' t do that. You don' t want to go to a meeting. You don't want to do this." And he says," I don't think you're ready for Alcoholics Anonymous." Boy, he had that right. And he said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. He said, "...I'm going turn you over to Cree," which was the name of the other fellow. and he says maybe the two of you can help one another and he left I didn't know what he was talking about you see I didn' t know it at the time but Cree came into AA that morning So we sat there and looked at each other. The professor left, and Cree and I sat there and looked to each other for a couple of seconds, I guess, and he said, I'll tell you what. He said, uh, I don't want to go to a meeting tonight. I said, neither do I, Cree. He says, uh... I'll come back tomorrow. Bob had given him a list of all of the meetings, and he says, we'll go to one tomorrow night. And I said that's great. I never thought I'd see him again, but lo and behold, he came back that next afternoon or that next evening. Betty immediately loved what was going on in these rooms. She knew right off the bat that there was a lot more to Alcoholics Anonymous than just sobriety, and she figured if she could get me back to enough of these meetings that maybe, possibly, it might sink in. And as I told you earlier, we went for a year and a half approximately and we didn't miss any. And every time I would start to say, listen, I'm not going tonight, I have this to do, she says, if you don't get your coat and get ready, I am going to call my attorney. In those years, it was $50 just to call an attorney. So I was forced to the meetings, and I thank God for that. Cree was a guy that just never accepted the fact that he was an alcoholic, I guess, because he'd miss meetings, and he eventually got drunk, and then he'd come back in, and he'd go out again. It was just a bad experience for the young fellow. And maybe 17 or 18 years ago, Cree died an alcoholic's death, but for the grace of God. And I think about him a lot. He was, we got great friends and we had a lot of fun together. He just didn't want to stay sober. He couldn't do it one day at a time. And thank God for the good sponsorship that I had. I had great sponsors. You know, I was telling somebody, and I met a lot OF you nice people on the beach and on the boardwalk, and we Had a lot Of one-on-one meetings that I thoroughly enjoyed. And I was Telling one of these young fellows is that my sponsor kept telling me, you've got to keep coming back one day at a time. And boy, I used to hate him for this. I couldn't stand it, one day At-A-Time. It just don't make sense. And then I had a guy stand up in the back of the room at one meeting and says, in order to keep it, you've Got to give it away. That didn't make Sense to me. How the hell are you going to keep something if you give it Away? I couldn' t understand that. But thank God I stayed into the program long enough for all of these good things, the 12 steps of AA started to rub off on me. I was told unless I got both feet wet, unless I jumped in there and got busy and took an active part in the fellowship, I was going nowhere. And that didn't make sense to me either. But I started to pick up the ashtrays and the chairs and finally somebody suggested that I'd be chairman and I figured, well, now that's more my style. You can be like Jim up here. He's the chairman, and he's got the limelight tonight. And I figured that's the kind of a job for me. I was deserving of that. So I got my sponsors to lead the meeting, and it was great. And I started to enjoy it. I startedto love it. And eventually I learned to really and truly love Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've had a great, great time, a great joy in AA. Betty got into Al-Anon. And those of you who have spouses that are in Al-Anon, you know that the recovery is twice as fast and as good. It was for me in my case. There was lots of things that I had inflicted on Betty that she had to overcome through her own program. And you may hear her tomorrow where you'll find out that she has a lot to overcome too. So anyway, we started to work our two programs together. And I guarantee you, if this should happen, if those of you who haven't tried it, it works, believe me. We went to the International Convention and we were in a van and motels for 30 days or thereabouts. And we only had one slight argument. Al-Anon works, believe me, betty and i have our differences our indifferences and we quarrel from time to time we don't have any of those knock down drag out fights that we used to have because we're working the program together and one thing that always helps me to keep my big mouth shut in a course of an argument is the fact that i often stop and think if she and i could exchange places 27 years ago what i have been a big enough person to be able to forgive and forget just a portion of the degrading situations that i dragged her through and i want to guarantee you that i wouldn't have lived with her for five seconds there was no way that i could have done that so i think that uh i for one have the greatest talent on in the country who has supported me throughout my 27 years of uninterrupted sobriety. And without her, I wouldn't be standing here tonight. I'm convinced of that too. We have a love affair going on. We laugh a lot and of course we do have our little, as I said, indifference because sometimes once in a blue moon, I think I might be right. But that's beside the point. We had a great life together that wasn't even possible, believe me, 27 years ago. I never thought it would ever take place. We have a great understanding of one another and we have love and understanding in our home. And as far as I'm concerned, I think that this is where recovery starts. I think AA starts in your home. It did in mine because this is why I caused most of the damage. This is where I needed to make most of the amends. And I'm still making amends throughout every day of my life because you never complete those steps. You keep working them in my estimation from day one. I have four daughters, as I mentioned, and I could talk to you about my kids for the rest of the evening because I think they're the greatest gals in the world. They're all married and grown up and have children of their own now. But believe me, we have lots of weekends together and we love one another. It just makes the world all worthwhile. And I think this is what it's all about in Alcoholics Anonymous. I could tell you about each and every one of them growing up, some of the great things that we enjoyed together. And they all did extraordinary things in their own right. But I'll just tell you a story that is closest to my heart, really. It was with my second youngest daughter, Debbie. And Betty just told me today that Debbie will be 29 coming up. So she's still my baby. But in any event, Debbie was the shy. As you parents know, kids are all different. And Deb was a little shy and backward. And I was concerned with her when she went into high school because the other girls were cheerleaders and in the band and they did their, they were in sporting teams and so forth. And Deb just didn't have anything going for her. And I know from experience that you have to have something that you truly love in order to really bring out the good in each one of us. And Debbie hadn't found that. She hadn't found her niche yet. So one day she came home and she said, Dad, I'd like to take baton twirling lessons. And I said, oh boy, that's great. So we got her the batons and the costumes and the teachers and she started to twirl. To make a long story short, we followed Deb all over the country and she got better and better. I went to practice with her every day for a long, long time. She was a great student. She believed in me. She trusted me, and I told her the only way you get good at anything, sweetheart, is if you practice, whether you're talking about your profession, your ability on court when you're twirling, or even in Alcoholics Anonymous. You have to practice. There's no other way, and Deb believed me,and she started getting better and better and her senior year she was a feature twirler of a high school marching band and that year she uh was number one in the state of ohio and that's a great accomplishment for four years of practice some of those kids start when they're old enough to walk and uh that was a great thing for deb betty and my daughters went to seattle washington for the state or for the national competition, and Debbie ended up fourth in the nation, which was just unbelievable. This brought out something in Debbie that hadn't been there before. She was her own lady, and it was just beautiful to behold. That same year, Deb came home from school one day, and she jumped up in my arms, and she said, Dad, guess what? The greatest thing in the world has happened to me. I've been chosen as one of the six homecoming queens for, uh, homecoming queen. I'm chosen as One of the contestants for homecoming Queen. And I said, gee, Deb, I said that's, that's really terrific. And we had a little celebration and I got thinking and I called Deb over and I said Deb, you know, there can only be one queen. Don't get your hopes up too high. Deb said, dad, I'm not worried about that. She says, the fact that I'm a contestant is That's satisfaction enough for me. And for the next several weeks, Debbie handled that beautifully. I was a nervous damn wreck, I'll tell you. The Friday night football game on this given weekend, and the six proud fathers, five proud fathers and myself and their beautiful daughters made a couple of passes. They all had convertibles, and Deb was sitting up on the back of the convertible, and I couldn't take my eyes off her. It was just great, just beautiful. And they let us off on the far end of the field right near the marching band. And the band was playing and Deb was tugging at my arm. We happened to be first in the line of the contestants and I had to bend over and look down into those big beautiful eyes and I said, what is it, sweetheart? She said, Dad, she says, I want to tell you something. For the last several years I sat up in the stands and I had the greatest longing in my heart that someday I would be privileged to stand down here on the 50-yard line as a contestant for homecoming queen with my dad. She says, all my dreams have come true. My life is complete. 17 years old and her life was complete. Well, I couldn't handle that. I just, tears rolled down my cheeks and I picked Deb up and I hugged her and I kissed her on the cheek and I told her how just tremendously proud her mother and I were of the accomplishment that she had made as a student and her ability with the baton. And I said, Deb, you're the best. You're the greatest, honey. And shortly after that they called us across the field and announced over the PA system that the 1979 homecoming queen was Miss Debbie Brown. And I damn near fainted right there on the field. That's what I said. it. We went up to the pizza parlor and had a little celebration, and then the kids went to their parties, various parties, and Betty and I went home, and we gave thanks to God for the privilege and opportunity to raise our daughters in a 12-step home. And those kids, they don't even smoke. And I want to tell you, they have an occasional drink. I never told them they could not do that. But they know what alcoholism is. They were raised in our home. They saw the 12-step work that Betty and I had been doing for years. And they respect the fact that alcohol can kill you. And I thank God for the program, the 12 steps that they became familiar with in our home as she and I, as Betty andI were growing up in our own right. I'll never ever be able to repay the program enough for what it has done for my family and my wife and I. So we gave thanks that night to God. And, you know, every morning when I'm privileged to wake up, I know that that's a bonus day for Tom Brown. There's no question in my mind about it. That night with Debbie would have never happened if it had not been for Alcoholics Anonymous. No way would she have been given that opportunity. No way was she had been the young lady that she was if she had grown up at an alcoholic, practicing alcoholics home. No way. And I know dat, and I thank God for it. So every morning is a bonus day for me, ladies and gentlemen. And I thank God from the bottom of my heart for all you great people here and the beautiful facility you have, your 33rd convention here on the seashore. It's just great. And in passing and closing, I want to say that I love each and every one of you from the top of my head. From the bottom part of my mind, you may not need me, but keep coming back. I sure as hell need you. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you.