The Surrender That Saved His Relationship With His Daughters – Bob

hi everybody I'm Bob an alcoholic I would like to thank Lee for asking me I and of the committee whoever the committee is I'd like you to thank you for your hospitality and I'd like to think Meredith for being my hostess she picked me up at the Sacramento Airport about one o'clock and we got in the van and she put that pedal to the floor and I knew I was going to paradise. One or the other. I said, how long does it take? She says, not very long. So I do appreciate your hospitality. I sobered up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, and 11 years ago I moved to Oxnard. I had a little difficulty finding AA meetings when I moved from Oxnards because I was 40 miles up the road, up the coast from where I lived. I finally found a good one on a Friday night, and I went there for two or three weeks in a row. And then it was in a Catholic church, and it was from 8 to 9. It was a book study, 8 to 7 on Friday night. One Friday I got out of the meeting at 9 o'clock. I took a right, went down to Channel Islands Boulevard, took another right. And as I started to drive, I felt a little claustrophobic. And then I saw the cones changing two lanes into one. And thenI saw the sign that said License and Sobriety Check Ahead. I don't know about you, but I never got caught in a sobriety check when I was drinking. I have, however, taken sharp right turns up over the curb and driven off through somebody's backyard. I have also just left the motor running and gotten out and walked off into the woods in Massachusetts and picked up my car at the impound lot two days later, but I Never Got a DUI or a 502. And I thought to myself, you know, I just came from an AA meeting and I've got a driver's license. Maybe I ought to see what it feels like. So I inched forward and these three police persons, two women and a man, were there. And the man had one of those long flashlights and he aimed it at me and I gave him my license and registration. The first thing he said to me was, how long since you've had a drink? And I said, January 24th, 1967. And the three of them started laughing and they handed me my license back and they said, have a good evening. And I did. And this will tell you more than anything else I say about what kind of a guy I am. The next night, I snuck out of the house about 7.30 and I drove all over Ventura County trying to get caught in another sobriety check. I've been trying ever since because I want to replicate those good feelings. When I moved up there also, I went to another meeting one night and some guy said to me, I guess he's just trying to... I didn't know many people up that way and so he said to my wife, he said, where did you go for treatment? I went into jail. They didn't have any treatment centers when I sobered up. They had two places that I was aware of. One was called Shire's Dryer in North Hollywood, and they would lock you up in there for 72 hours, and then they had to turn you loose, and so they sort of dried you out. And the other place was called St. Ern's, and it was down in Inglewood near the LAX airport. And St. Earn's was owned by a Jewish guy named Stearns, and he couldn't get any customers, so he put a period after the ST and he called it St. Ern's and he sent flyers out to all the Catholic parishes around there and the Catholic priest thought it was an Irish recovery alcoholic place and they filled it up for the next 25 years and the head of the central office, a man named Walter King in Ventura told me that story 25 years ago and I didn't believe him And about 10 years after that, 1988 or 9, I was coming home from a meeting one night about 11 o'clock, and the news was on. And they talked about this 13-alarm fire in Inglewood and this alcoholic recovery place burned to the ground. And it had showed the helicopters, and you'd show the sign on top, St. Ern's, just as the roof caved in. And I thought, you know, I didn't believe Walter's story about St. Ern's, and then I saw it burn up and never had a chance to make amends to him before he died. But I told the story about 300 times, so maybe that's amends in itself. But when I got here, well, I'll tell you a little bit earlier what happened to me, how I got here. I was raised in an Irish Catholic family in New England, and every Irish Catholic family in new England I knew of dreamed of their son going to Notre Dame. And I'm the son that got to go to Notre dame. And it should have been, I mean, according to the story book, it would have been a wonderful thing, but I sort of disjointed the storybook a little bit, but I remember taking my first drinks when I was 15 years old. Baseball practice got canceled and this friend of mine said let's go to the park and have a couple of quarts of beer. So he bought two for him and two for me. I remembered how I felt at 15. I had glasses and I had pimples and I bit my fingernails and I was stuttered and I Was jittery and I wasn't really nervous around girls this would not have come forward to you but this is how i felt inside and i felt you know i was embarrassed about my pimples and i just anyway i drank these two quarts of beer and my pimple's all went away imagine well it didn't quite happen that way i had to take my glasses off and look in the mirror from a distance and the pimples went away but the magic of all was that your pimples all went away, too. When I drank two quarts of beer, the whole world just settled down and got better. And so that was my feeling about what happened. My invisible line was immediate. As soon as I started to drink, I had that feeling. I went to a Catholic boys' high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and it was a pretty tough curriculum, and it Was hard to get in, and I had done well in grammar school, But I got into high school, and I felt like a dumbbell for four years. They sat us alphabetically, and for four ears there was O'Malley, Peterson, Regan, Shields, and Smith. I was the dumbest of the lot, you know, and couldn't figure out why. I felt insecure for 40 years. I never went to my high school reunion. Finally, I went to 40th high school reunions, and figured out why I felt so stupid. of the National Football League. Peterson was Gordon Peterson, who's been the Tom Brokaw of CBS News in Washington, D.C. for the last 25 years. Regan sells glue machines in Oxnard. You think that's funny, huh, lady? Shields is Jack Shields, who was the chief financial officer of Digital, the big computer company. And Smith was Jack Smith, who's the CEO of General Motors. And so they talk about it in the alumni. Oh, shucks. You were right, lady. It fizzed up. Anyway, I forgave myself for feeling like such a dumbbell. But I did well in high school and I was in extracurricular things and I played sports and really I did Well. And I didn't drink much because I would get grounded every time I'd drink. Because every timeI'd drink, I'd get in trouble. I had bad blackouts right from the beginning. Went away to college, and my freshman year, they sort of locked you up in there. In those days, you couldn't get at alcohol. And as a result, I was like the poster boy coming home in the summertime between my freshman and sophomore year. Everybody was proud of me, and I'd gotten good grades. My sophomore year, I figured out a way to get around the system, and I started to drink heavily, often as I could. And I drank and got in trouble for the next three years. I was able to graduate with my class by the skin of my teeth. I was on disciplinary and academic probation the last three years, but yet I still was able to squeak through. It was really difficult. And I was a troublemaker too. When I'd start drinking, and I'd do things that I wouldn't dream of doing when I wasn't drinking. And the night before my graduation, I went out and got drunk and came back to the dormitory and signed in and then went out the window and ended up in the bushes and tore the place up. And they announced to me the next morning I wasn'T going to graduate, and then they had to relent. And I said, My mother's on the train from Massachusetts to see me graduate. and so he said well I guarantee you she'll never see you get up on that stage and get your diploma and he was right she got off one train and had to get on another and they mailed me my diploma along with this scurrilous letter about me and my activities and how ashamed the university was and how shamed my parents must be and the guy went way over the edge it was factual but it was unnecessary so anyway and this dean that wrote the letter it was ironic because two weeks later the letter came with a diploma and i resented it for the next you know 16 years and finally 1976 i was at an aa convention in southern california and uh this priest who was at Notre Dame came up to me and he said, did you know Father So-and-so when you were at Notre Dam? I said, Did I know him? I said he's the guy that wrote the letter, you know, defaming me. And he smirked and he smiled and he said that's really ironic because Father So and so went through went through guest house for alcoholic priests and he's been sober six years in Alcoholics Anonymous. This will also tell you what kind of guy I am. My first thought was, I've been sober nine years. You think we don't pay attention to countdowns? I'm going to send that newcomer a letter. I didn't send a letter, but I did follow his career. He retired shortly after that to a priest's place across the lake. Went to a little bit of AA, and then he didn't go much. You know, he just sort of hung out in the retirement home. And I thought, what a way to get shortchanged, you know? What a wayto miss something like this tonight. What an exciting, electric evening it really is. And anyway, so he passed on later on, but I thought to myself, we who are activists in Alcoholics Anonymous, We who do the work for Intergroup and for General Service and H&I and conventions and the 12-step calls and the sponsorship and all the rest of it, our lives are abundant. And that's how my life has been in Alcoholics Anonymous. Getting a little ahead of myself, one thing happened in my senior year, my mother and father would not send me money for any reason because they knew I would drink it up. And so finally, I found the perfect ruse. In March or April, I called my mother and I said, Mom, I need $85 to get a class ring. And reluctantly, she sent me the $85. Problem was it got there on Friday. The rings went on sale the following Monday. So by Monday, there was no money. So I got back that summer. It was bad enough that I wasn't allowed to go to my own commencement exercises. but we Catholic families in those days had fish every Friday night, and I was home for a year after that. Every Friday night she'd be cooking that fish, and that must have triggered something in her because she'd ask me at dinner, where's your class ring? I made up a lie for 52 Fridays in a row, another lie. Maybe it got lost in the mail. Maybe they screwed up the engraving. Maybe they sent it to the wrong guy. Maybe this or maybe that. Just be patient. Maybe it takes time, you know? Finally, after a year, I went overseas in the Navy and she never asked again. And I thought, wow, what a relief. And 26 years later, I was 1986. This friend of mine, Vince, finally coerced me into going back to a football weekend at South Bend and Notre Dame. And so we went into the bookstore. The bookstore at Notre Dame is about the size of Macy's, and they sell all this Notre Dame paraphernalia. They had a room about the side of a closet that had a little sign on it that said class rings. Well, I had taken my daughters and my friend Vince, who's on the program, with me, and so I said to my daughter, go get Vince. I can't do this alone. So we went over, and we stood in line at that little window. I walked up to the counter, and I said, to the woman, can you still get a class ring 26 years later? She said, if you graduated and you have the money, you can get it. So my $85 class ring cost $319. The first question I asked was, how soon can I get it? I think I've been waiting 26 years. I need it tomorrow morning. And they said it'll take seven or eight weeks, whatever it was. So I checked my calendar eight weeks to the day i took off work at noon and waited for the mailman and it didn't come so sent a note with my daughter to school the next day kathy has an family emergency between 12 and 130 tomorrow she needs she'll be she needs to excuse be excused from school she called me at 130 said the mail came there's no ring next day i had somebody else there. We waited for that sucker for two weeks, no ring. Finally I said to my secretary, call back to the university and find out or the bookstore, find out what happened to my ring. She called me a couple hours later and she said, I talked to the bookstore and she says they messed up the engraving. You'll have it in a few more weeks. So on January 23rd, 1987, which was the eve of my 20th AA birthday, my ring came. I didn't tell my mother anything about it and a few months later she was in the hospital in Massachusetts so I went back to see her. I lived out here at the time. And so I Went Back to See Her and we talked for a few minutes and finally I just said, oh by the way mom, I said my ring came. She forgot. Pissed me off. So I had to tell her story from scratch just like i told you and so she cried and i cried and and it became okay and so i still have my ring and uh uh it's uh you know it makes me think of amends that we made when i came into alcoholics anonymous a lot of my amends uh that i remembered i was a blackout drinker i had to make to my parents and i after a year of sobriety my mother was there the first night i went to an aa meeting but i i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself so i'll just bring it up to that point i uh when i got out of notre dame i quickly was about to get drafted in the army so i quickly signed up for navy ocs and i went to newport rhode island they locked me up for 18 weeks you lock me up for 18 months i can become anything without alcohol and so i graduated and i was commissioned and my parents were able to go to that graduation and we threw our hats up in the air they announced that you're now officers and gentlemen and you know you can now go to downtown newport rhode island i did nine nights in a row the 10th day i was up for court marshal as an officer and i had this uh i it seemed like i had this guardian angel that was sort of following me around that helped me get through the maze of troubles that i was encountering up till that time and this it was sort of like abandoning me the reason i joined the navy because it was because they had three billboards. They said, join the Navy and see the world. They had a picture of Hawaii, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. I knew I was going to one of the three when I got a commission. So just before my graduation, they got my first set of orders to go to Kodiak, Alaska. So I bought the heavy wool uniforms to goto Alaska, and the day I got them back from the tailor, I gota change of orders to go to Asmara Eritrea Ethiopia a few hundred miles north of the equator in Africa so took my heavy wool uniforms from for Alaska and went to Ethiopia for a year and a half and I took my alcoholism with me and it got worse and worse I got in trouble there but I had this affinity for being able to when the heat really got on to stop drinking and when I stopped drinking I could become and i i was like the poster boy for the navy i would do her job and his job and their job and i did it cheerfully and everybody was happy to be around me and and then and they just couldn't get over how you know what a nice navy officer i was and uh i was in deep trouble when this was happening and uh about two weeks later this chief yeoman came up and whispered in my ear the captain just tore up your court-martial papers. Well, that's music to an alcoholic's ear, I'll tell you. That night I went back out and started a new set of problems all over again and I was in trouble within a couple of days again. So my alcoholism kicked in early and it took me down as far as I could possibly get. I got out of the Navy. I went black and I spent a year in the Pentagon and I finally got an honorable discharge. I was living in an apartment building in Arlington, Virginia. And I met a young woman and we dated for about a year and she didn't see the depth of my alcoholism and so she married me. And in the first year we were married, she left me no less than 40 times. And I lost three jobs due to my drinking. But it wasn't that I was drinking on the job. It's just that I would get drunk and I'd be so drunk I wouldn't show up for two or three days. And they took a dim view of that. And so finally, my third or fourth job, they said we're going to transfer you out to Southern California. So they transferred me out. We were separated at the time she joined up. We came out to Northern California and I drank in Southern California for a year and a half. And to put it in a capsule, I drank and blacked out. I drove the freeways in a blackout on average of four nights a week. And as far as I know, I never had a traffic accident and I never hurt anybody with a car. I would get up in the morning at 5.30 in the morning, hungover. I'd go out and see if my car was there. I put surreptitiously to go see if it might pick up the newspaper, but I want to see if the car was there, and then I'd walk around the car to see if there's any dents or any blood. Then I'd get the newspaper and bring it back in, and at five minutes to six, I'd be up at the corner at the door of gold waiting for it to open at 6 a.m and I was 28 years old and uh for 15 years in AA my sponsor was Chuck C and he uh he decided he described how he got to Alcoholics Anonymous he said uh he said that the bottle had beat him to death and he had run out of his own resources and that's precisely how I landed on the doorstep of Alcoholics Anonymous. It got so bad in January of 1967, my first daughter was born on January 8th and I was drunk and they had to go find me and get me to show up at the hospital. And two weeks or 16 days later, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I got fired from my job the day before I came to AA, it was part of my bottom. They repossessed my car out of my driveway three days before that. My wife was going to divorce me in spite of having a young child. I mean, everything hit bottom. I had no money. I owed thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, no job, nothing. And I contacted a priest that I'd met in Malibu at the retreat house. He put me in touch with a lady from Alcoholics Anonymous, and she took me to my first meeting, which was the Arlington Group in Los Angeles. And a lady spoke, and I don't remember too much of it, except my mother had come out, and my wife at the time also went to the meeting with me. And it was a ray of hope, and I didn't drink for the next week, and we went back to the Arlington group the next night, I mean the next Tuesday night, and Norm Alpey was a speaker. I don't want to cause a run on Norm Alopey tapes, but I just bought, or I didn' t buy, in fact, I have to humiliate myself again. and I left my money in the hotel room tonight, and I'd been teasing Meredith all night. And I walked in and reached in my pocket to get some money for the seventh tradition. I didn't have any money, so I had to borrow two bucks from Meredith. And then I said, Meredith, I want to get you a Norm Alpe tape. And I realized I didn' t have any more money. So I walked over, and I realized they don't have enough money. So I had borrow five more bucks to buy her a Normalpe tape This is humiliating. Anyway, I'll pay you later, I promise. Norm Alpe was the most exciting AA speaker you ever heard. She's got two or three of his tapes. I'm not touting his tapes, but do you ever think you need some medication and you're having a bad day? Listen to a Norm Alope tape before you take your medication. He was on fire. You know, he talked a mile a minute. He was full of energy. He had a great program. I came to get to know him and know him well, and he was a wonderful guy. He used to talk about in the summertime, he was phony, he said. In the summertime he'd be driving around the San Fernando Valley in the middle of August. It was like 110 degrees with his suit on with his windows rolled up so people would think he had air conditioning in his car. He said he used to stop at the bus station and use the pay toilets but he didn't want to pay so he'd slide under the door and he'd use a toilet. And then he'd slide back under the door when he was done and he was really upset. He said he was five years sober when he found out once you're inside, all you have to do is turn the knob and you can walk out. This rang true with me. And so we became good friends later on. I was at his 25th surprise AA birthday party and I was there in Palm Springs the morning that he had a heart attack and died. We were both runners, and so he had just finished a run when he had an accident. He had a hard attack. Anyway, he was a great guy. I got active in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think this is the crux of maybe what I have to say tonight is that I became an activist. I have a home group. My home group is the It's For You group. It meets in Port Hueneme at noon on Saturday. in the Navy base. It used to be easy to get into, and since 9-11 it's difficult to get into. And I'll tell you, we have about 20 people that show up at our meeting. We have about 300 years of sobriety among those 20 people. And we have a couple of them that have 30 days and 90 days. So there's a lot of sobrietty and a lot of good sobrieté. But after 9- 11, we couldn't get on the base because they locked it down the only guys could get on were the guys who uh were the retired navy people and there was like four of them or five of them in our group so it was a choice do we close down the meeting do we move it to another location or choice three do we meet at denny's up half a mile up the road and have the guys with the passes drive us on and we'll have our meeting and if you were to for for about two years, the people would be standing out there with 20 and 25 and 30 and 35 years of sobriety waiting in the Denny's parking lot at 1115 to 1130 for the guys to pick them up to take us on to the base to have the meeting. And then they'd drive us back to the Deny's after the meeting so we could get our cars and drive home. And it didn't seem like much of an inconvenience at all. We were just that devoted. We have some characters at my home group meeting. I think that's what attracted me to it. I was a little ashamed of my Navy tenure. I didn't do as well as I could have if I hadn't been drinking, and so I've always felt a little sad that I'd shortchanged the Navy. But I went into the meetings at the base, And they were good meetings, except they had these two redneck loudmouths that retired Navy chiefs that hogged the meeting all the time. And we're supposed to talk for three to five minutes and they'd talk for 12 or 13 minutes and only a few people get to share. And so I sat there and I was new to the area and I wasn't going to say anything. But after about three months of this, one day I said, you know, their names were Choice and Dave. And they thought they owned the meeting, I guess. so instead of calling them choice and Dave one day I said you know if Leroy and Bubba over there wouldn't chatter on all the time more of us would have a chance to share and I thought they were going to kill me instead the next week they showed up at the meeting with name tags that said LerOY and BubBA today I sponsor them both even though Bubba is living in Dallas, Texas they had a young sailor there I was about to get thrown out of the Navy, and he fancied himself a ladies' man. And so I nicknamed him. Back in Massachusetts, every kid in the neighborhood has got a nickname. And so, I nicknamed the young ladies' men with three-girlfriend John. So, he kept that name for about six months. But within six months, two of the three girlfriends came to our meeting and found out about the nickname. so for the last nine years he's been known as one dog john another retired navy chief uh that was sober up to 16 years and then he got drunk and now he's back and i sponsor him and he's the sweetest guy you ever saw his name is jimmy mac and uh And he just celebrated 10 years of sprightly after having 16 before. And anyway, the women just love him. But man, he cries all the time about anything. And every time he starts crying, I wish I could cry like Jimmy. The women just flock to him, you know. Leroy and Bubba and I just get jealous. So anyway, he became Weepin' Willie. And about three years ago, he came up to me and he said, I was wondering if you'd sponsor me. And I said, does that mean I've got to quit calling you Weepin' Willie? He said, I never want you to keep quit calling me Weepn' Willie. His wife glares at me every time I say it, though. Anyway, we have some real characters there. And they're good guys, and the ladies are good. I made the gross mistake of nicknaming a couple of the women and you pay a high price for that. This tape never leaves Sutter County, does it? This one woman came in with a cast on her foot one day, and she came back like four weeks in a row, and she just had this cast on Her Foot, so she became One-Legged Joan. And she didn't like it. but i'm going to take her to a play next saturday night so she's forgiving me i think anyway you can tell by the content that we have a lot of fun at our meeting and we have a lot good sobriety and we have a lot of people to whom sobriety is the number one thing in their life. I sort of skipped over a big portion of what happened. Would it be okay if I, it's a little warm up here. I've done that before of course I don't remember it so it's like it didn't happen the day before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I got fired from my job and so within a couple of weeks My cousin helped me get another job, and I kept that job for a year sober. And I got fired again, a year sober, and it was humiliating. And I went out and got another job. And I keptthat job for eight or nine months, and they sold the company. And the guy called me in, and he said, You make more money than anybody here, so I'm going to lay you off first. So I got hired again, andI'm 22 months sober. And by then, I was the secretary of the biggest AA meeting in the San Fernando Valley, which is a pretty big place. And, you know, there's in 1968, there'S 250 people about this many, I guess, on a Friday night. And and I felt I was somebody, you Know, here I was secretary of this big speaker meeting. And and i and i was humiliated when i got fired that second time sober. and I figured, I got fired on a Tuesday and I thought to myself the meeting's on Friday I'm going to think of every possible question they could ask me so I don't have to admit to anybody because it's just so humiliating I want people, I want to have an image of people thinking I'm successful and that everything in my life is okay and that it's alright so from Tuesday until Friday I rehearsed every possible question you could ask how's your family, they're fine how's your new daughter she's great how's your wife she's okay too how's you're car running it's doing great hows your job I'd lie and say it's fine I had them all memorized you know so that by Friday afternoon I wouldn't on a Friday evening I could lie my way through it so I wouldn' have to be embarrassed and humiliated I got to the meeting that night at 6.30 and I started making the coffee and the first guy walked in at 10 minutes to 7 and he looked over at me and he said, what's the matter? I hadn't rehearsed what's a matter. And I said I got fired on Tuesday. I wanted to reach out and stuff the words back down my throat and he did what Chuck C used to describe also. He came over and he put his arm around me and rocked me to sleep. And he went out in the parking lot and he told everybody he was coming in and they came in and rock me to sleep. And it was all okay. You know, I don't have to keep those secrets anymore. People think I share too much sometimes, I think, but I'd rather have it out of my system. So I went out and got another job six weeks later, and I kept that job for five years. And during that five years, four of the five years they said I was the top salesman in the western United States. They sent me back to New York to American Management Association School for Sales Managers, told me I was going to become the youngest sales manager in the company then they fired my boss the sales manager and i was the logical successor so they brought in a guy from milwaukee to replace him and here i was still a salesman and i thought to myself there's no way you can fire me i've been the top salesman for four to five years three months later he fired me here i am seven years sober um you know been fired three times in sobriety i said screw this i went out started my own business and I haven't been fired in 31 years. For 28 of those years, I worried month to month, this must be the last month. I know I'm doing this with mirrors. I know it shouldn't be, I don't deserve this. And for the last three or four or five years, I said to myself, you know, maybe it's meant to be. We built it on a solid foundation and it worked out okay. uh my uh if you were to ask me what's been my vocation for the last 38 years i would not be a businessman it wouldn't be an aa member my vocATION has been a father i have two daughters lynn was born 16 days before i sobered up and kathy was born five and a half years later and they are the treasures of my life. When they arrived, my life shifted and they have just added unlimited joy to me ever since. They've also torn my heart out but nonetheless, my daughters have been my treasures and I was totally involved in their lives. I coached their softball teams and i coached their soccer teams and i would they would call a meeting a pta meeting or meeting of the parents at two o'clock in the afternoon at my daughter's school there'd be 27 mothers and me and it was fine with me that's how i'd i liked living my life as you know for my daughters and i just had it was just wonderful and as i mentioned chuck was my sponsor and i spent hundreds of hours with him and for in 1979 my marriage had been sort of unraveling for two or three years and uh my wife at the time had gotten involved in a in a religious spiritual sort of thing that was a little bit off out in left field i thought and she wasn't home a lot but i didn't even mind because i had my two daughters and finally in 1979 chuck said it's time for you to go and it tore my heart out because not so much for the marriage but because i've heard about fathers who uh who got divorced and who saw their kids for about six months and then they met somebody new and they didn't pay any more attention to their kids and i just knew that i couldn't be that way they were the focus focal point of my life and uh and then i had a real tough decision because my wife at the time said or my ex-wife to be he said uh since they're both girls i should live with their mother we can have joint custody but i should be the main custodial parent everything in my in my being wanted to fight you know i just wanted to struggle and fight and something in my spiritual training and alcoholics anonymous told me to surrender you know that's one of the biggest lessons i've learned in surrender i still do it every day And I said to her, I said, you take them. I said they can live with you and they're welcome to come see me anytime they want, anytime it's okay with them and it's Okay With You. And so there was nothing to fight for. And so the youngest one, Kathy, was seven at the time. She found every reason in the world to be over at my house two or three nights a week and every weekend. And I was coaching their teens and I was still totally involved in their lives and I really loved it. It was just I started a Saturday night meeting, which we called Saturday Night Live down in Reseda. And and within a few weeks, we had a couple hundred people. I called all the people I knew were the Norm Alpes and the Chuck Seas and the speakers. And they all came and we just had a great meeting. And Kathy would go there with me and we'd set up 250 chairs. and then she'd go in the kitchen during the meeting and watch her black-and-white TV and then help me tear down 250 chairs, and we'd go home. And I was completely involved in their lives, and it was just a wonderful thing. And when Kathy was 10 years old, she'd been commuting back and forth but still officially living with her mother, and she would come over two or three nights a week and every weekend. And I'd pick her up at school on Friday and she'd have her books and she would have two grocery sacks full of stuff and I'd take her back to school Monday and she just had her books and I didn't pay much attention. She did this for like six weeks and I looked in her room and it was fully furnished. I said, what do you have at your mother's place, Kathy? And she says, I don't have anything there now. She said, I live here now. She moved in on her own on the installment plan at age 10 And so I called her mother and I said, you know, I didn't have anything to do with this. And she said, I know you didn't, but she can move back in three months. I'll be done with this course and then she can moved back in with me where she belongs. And 12 years later, Kathy graduated from college and I bribed her with six months free rent to move into an apartment as she stayed the whole 12 years. and so that's just part of my relationship but I had my problems with my daughters particularly that youngest one Kathy she was more like me than I wanted to admit when she was a sophomore in high school in the fall after five weeks they have back to school night and so I said I'm going she lived with me and so she seemed a little nervous so I went down there and I talked to her teachers and I got to this one teacher a young man about 30 years old and I walked up to him and I said how's Kathy doing he was just trembling he said Kathy is probably the most popular girl in the school but she drives me crazy she talks all the time she disrupts my class I'm a young teacher and I just don't have experience enough to know how to handle it and it's disruptive and I've tried everything and I don't know what to do and I hate to tell you this and I'm throwing up my hands and I said well you don't have anything to worry about I said tomorrow put a chair beside Kathy's desk and if she opens her mouth here's my phone number I own my own business you call me I'm 10 minutes away I'll come over and I'll sit in that chair through your class he said you will and I says yes and I say nothing more I went home, and she said, did you meet Mr. Such-and-such? She asked me, did I just meet my teachers? Did you talk to Mr. such-and such? I said, yeah. She said, what did you say? I told her what I told him, and he was aghast. You didn't tell him that. I said yes, I did. And so I told here I'm going to come, and six weeks later, I never got a call. I went back to the next back-to-night thing, and I walked in the door and this teacher jumped up and he started racing towards me what did you do to that girl what in the world did you say to her what happened I said I just came home and told her the same thing I told you and both of them knew I meant it and I did mean it and it's the Alcoholics Anonymous training that I got that made me be able to keep my word and to keep myself in agreement and that's all it was You know, I never had to go because both of them were sure I was coming. And I was. And a year or two later, I was sort of a tight-fisted parent in the sense that I didn't, I was always worried about them. And finally Kathy talked me into, she said, I want to go to the football game on Friday night, the high school football game. Can I please spend the night with my girlfriend? She pestered me two or three weeks in a row and I said, There's no way I can just keep her chained to her bed. So I said, go ahead and go, but don't get any trouble. So she went to the football game, and I finally went to bed. And about 1230 that night, I get a phone call. Mr. Regan, I'm not going to tell you my name, but we're at a party up in Northridge, and Kathy's drunk and passed out, and the police won't let us drive her home, so you're going to have to come get her. And I thought, oh. And I had to get up and get in the car and I had drive, Northridge is a bunch of hills and it's a bunch cul-de-sacs and you can't get from one to another. They're all dead end. And so I had weave around it. Actually, the way I found it was I drove underneath a police helicopter with a light. That's how I found out. And I finally got there and all the way up there I said I'm going to smash her in the mouth when I'm just gone. I could just see it, you know, drinking, smoking, prostitution and jail. I knew that was the spiral downwards. And all, I just was going to plow her under when I saw her. Just so angry. And I got up there and somehow my higher power must have intervened because I got out of my car and the police pointed where to go and I went in the house and they said she's passed out in the bedroom and she had on her cutest little dress and she was passed out and she'd thrown up in the towel and something came over me that I realized that this wasn't my possession. This is God's child and I just have a short time in my life to do the best I can to help her out and I picked her up and I carried her out to the car and I took her home and my other daughter hosed her off and the next day I had the great joy of watching her have her first hangover and I had this dread upon me that this is what I'm going to put up. Is she going to be just like me? And you know, she never was. She partied some in college, but she never caused me any grief or problems like that again. And she's 32 years old now and she's the mother of my two grandchildren and I have two grandchildren now that are becoming the treasures of my life, Jackson and Molly. Jackson's six, and Molly just turned five. And they're boy and girl. Molly is a model, and she's been in the last seven or eight Disney catalogs, and everything's perfect. So one night I said to him, I said, we're going out to dinner. We're going to a nice restaurant, so wear your best outfits. So I showed up, and Mollie looked like a princess. And Jack comes out in his best outfit, his Spider-Man suit. So we went to the restaurant and he fed himself through the hole in the mouth where the Spider-Man hole was. So I get unlimited joy from my grandchildren, too. They just, you know, when Jackson was about two and a half, I guess, right? He just started talking, and we had a little family get-together around their dining room table, and it was pretty serious. And he didn't have anything to do with it, but he wanted some attention. And we weren't paying any attention to him. And he walked around, and he had his toys or something. He said, Grandpa. And we just kept talking. And he said, Grandma. And he says, Grandpa? And we Just kept talking, he says Bob! We all jumped up, and he's two-and-a-half years old. He'd figured out how to get my attention. Anyway, they bring me a great deal of joy, and I'm able to enjoy them because in 1967, you know, I got the gift of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't dwelled on what I've done in Alcoholic Anonymous When I was sober about six months, I started working at the central office answering phones. I became an intergroup rep. A year or so later, two years later maybe, I became a general service rep and then I became a district committee member and then it became the treasurer of the Southern California Assembly Area. Later on, I got involved in conventions and I stayed involved in AA conventions for the next 30 years and I've done every job on the Southern Carolina Convention up to chairman and I have been the chairman of the Ventura County Convention and the ticket chairman and the speaker getter and you name it, I've done it. And I put the 10K runs on at the Desert Roundup out in Palm Springs for about 15 years in the desert powwow. And never did too, you know, it was just a labor of love when I've also taken a panel up to the California men's colony in San Luis Obispo for two years. And it was ironic because when I was going out for my freshman year at Notre Dame, there was another young man from central New England who rode in the same train with me named Warren Baker. And he and I became fast friends, and we played sports together at Notre Dam. And we had just a great time for a year and a half or so. And he was more of an academic, and I was more OF a troublemaking party guy after my sophomore year. And so we remained friends, but we didn't hang out very much. And I followed his career in the alumni magazines. And my career wasn't written up in the Alumni Magazines. So anyway, in 1982 or 3, I had a panel. About the third or fourth time, I took a panel up to the California Men's Colony, the maximum security prison in San Luis Obispo. At the end of the meeting, I was overcome with gratitude. And I said, you know what's ironic? I told him a story about Warren Baker and I. And I said, tonight, we haven't seen each other in 22 years, and tonight we're about two miles apart. Warren Baker is the president of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, living in the house up there, and I'm standing in the middle of the maximum security prison putting on the AA meeting. And I wouldn't trade places with him for a million dollars. My life at Alcoholics Anonymous has been that good. the uh uh so i got involved in hni and i took and i had a prominent there was a real prominent judge in ventura county the presiding judge and he hit the newspapers about five or six seven years ago and he stayed in the newspapers with he he got two duis within about eight hours and he got arrested for stalking his wife ex-wife he got arrested for everything but always hit the front pages of the paper with pictures and finally they put him away for a year in the county jail and I'd always kept an eye on him from a distance in the newspapers and thought maybe he'd be a candidate for our program and finally this lady who's in our group who's a deputy public defender called me one time and she asked if I'd be willing to go see him and I said yes I would So in August, I think of that year, or July, I went over to see him for a half an hour at the jail. And he asked me if I'd come back next week. He'd have an hour a week and I got a half an hour of it every week. So I went back for like 20 weeks in a row except for one week. And I talked to him and I shared with him everything that had ever happened to me. I told him my whole story a half an hour At a time and told him the experience I'd had in Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, he got out of that jail on December 6th or so and he went straight into the midnight mission. He stayed there for 90 days and he escaped and got drunk. And then they took him back and he stayed another 30 days and got drugged again. And he's been drunk ever since. And he called me after about a year and he said, would you meet me? And I said yes. So I went and met him. And he told me his situation and I started to share with him and he finished my sentences for me about my own experiences. I'd start to tell him what happened to me and he'd finish the sentence. He knew my story better than I knew it and I'd given him everything I had and I thought to myself, it's what a shame on the one hand but what a gift on the other hand is that we give it away and we don't have to worry about the results. I'm not here to keep that Bob sober. I'm here to hopefully that this Bob will remain sober. When I was getting divorced back in 1979, 78, I guess, I could see it coming and so I decided I'd go down to the local high school and jog. So I went down and I jogged a quarter of a mile around the high school track and I was exhausted. And I went home and I went back the next night and jogged another quarter of mile. and i went back every night and within a couple of weeks i could run a mile and a half 11 months after i ran my first step i was lined up over in griffith park in los angeles to run the hang 10 marathon 26 miles 385 yards and i'd only run half that far before i'd run 13 miles and i thought You know, I could feel this divorce coming on and I had to do something for myself. And so I kept running as much as I could. And so, I started, but I made sure only told about two people that I was even going to try because if I couldn't have finished, I would have just left and gone home and not even told anybody. But I took off and started running and I ran out to 13 miles and I saw my car and I thought I felt pretty good. and so I kept going and I got to 15 and a half miles and I saw my car for the last time and I still felt good and I thought to myself all these people talk about hitting a wall at 20 miles and I felt pretty good I had this sort of a cocky smirk and I'm running along and then my arm just flew out like that and I looked over and it was back down here and I kept running and then it felt like all my body parts starting to fall off. I felt like Mr. Potato Head. And I got this pain in my knee every step I took, shot a pain up my leg, all the way into my skull every time my foot hit the pavement and I thought I've got six miles to go. So I got a little bit of humility and I slowed down a little but I said I have to finish this just for myself. And so I kept going the best I could and I ran up, finally got towards the finish and I was exhausted but they string these flags for about 200 yards like they have at real estate openings and supermarket openings so you can run down this 200 yard chute and friends and relatives stand on either side and they applaud your effort at the end of a marathon so I got up to that point and I saw the flag so I straightened up to look as good as I could and started running and people started applauding and then they start screaming and yelling and cheering. And this one guy yells out, here comes a woman. And I look over my shoulder and there's this long-legged woman bearing down on me. I hadn't seen a woman in 45 minutes. All my macho came back. I said, no way I'm going to let her pass me. So I started running like hell and she just loped right up on my shoulder and she said, Bob Regan, Bob Reagan. And I looked and it was June Gee who was 19 years old at the time that had already been sober six years in AA. And the first thing I said to her was, why do you wait 26 miles to humiliate me in front of all these people? She says, I didn't run the race. I just saw you go by, so I jumped over the flag so I could run in with you. A few months later, I was home and at that time Kathy was seven and I was getting ready to go run the New York City Marathon. and she was seven and she was watching the news and the last segment of the 630 news they had a little human interest story about this man that had run his first and only marathon and he'd finished the race and crossed the finish line had a heart attack and died and she was sitting in the living room and I could hear it from the kitchen I was in there doing dishes could hear the story and she didn't say another word for the rest of the evening and about 9 at 9 30 that night i went in to put her to bed and she said daddy she said when you run that marathon do you think you're going to die and i said no i don't think so kathy i've trained for it and i've worked hard and most people do okay and i you don't have anything to worry about i should do fine she said well you don'T have to worry she said because if you die i'm not going to let them bury you i'm going to keep you in my closet for 38 years and two months people have told me that they love me for 66 years and nine months people have said that they don't love me told me they love me nobody ever told me more eloquently than kathy did that night the perfect metaphor for my being here tonight is that for 38 years and two months you've been jumping over the flags and running in with me and I thank you for it. My life is abundant and I hope God blesses you all. Thank you.