You Might as Well Try to Incorporate a Sunset — California AA Before the Traditions Existed – Sybil C.

You're in for a special treat tonight. It was 15 years ago that I introduced this lady at another meeting in Los Angeles. And at that time she was new in Alcoholics Anonymous. She'd only been sober 26 years. Boy, you're sad tonight. This lady is the number one lady in Alcoholics Anonymous. She's been sober longer than any lady now alive in AA. Marty Mann was the first and she was the second. Marty was on the East Coast and Sybil was on the West. And she's also the co-founder of the group that I got sober in along with her brother. So we have a long background with each other. I know all her friends and she knows all mine. And it's quite interesting, I hope, that some of you who enjoy the history of Alcoholics Anonymous get a chance to talk to her and listen to some of the things that happened in the early days of AA. One of the things that happened was that they had an article in the Saturday Evening Post. And letters came in to New York. And they sent them all. And they sent them all over the country to the area that they came from. And Sybil, being the only woman in AA on the West Coast at that time, got all the letters from all the women. So she had over 50 to 100 12-step calls to make immediately. And she says, what the hell do you do with them after you get them? AA was that new. They knew not what to do, but they stayed sober. Later on, she ran the central office in Los Angeles for 12 years. And if any of you have ever been to a central office as large as that, you will see what chaos it can be. And what a thankless job it is. The pay is no good. The hours are long. And everybody criticizes. But few come to do the things that are necessary to keep the city the size of Los Angeles in contact with each other. And over there, the beauty of this lady is that if you meet her, you'll find out that she's not a big shot. She's not. You wouldn't know that she's been sober longer than anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. She is a sweet. She is a sweet person. She is lovable. And this is the way she's known in California. And I remember the first time I saw her and heard her, I had to introduce three people that evening. And the other two were also what we call wheels of AA. And these other two men were very demanding in telling me because I hadn't been sober very long. And I was scared like most people said they were up here tonight. But I'll pass that stage. I don't have sense enough to be afraid now. But at that time, I was. And the civil came up very sweetly and said, What do you want me to do? And I thought, My God, she must have just got sober last week. And then they told me who she was, and I got scared all over again. But I've been with her this afternoon, and I've been with her before. And I know her brother was the teacher of the people that taught the people that taught me. Tex Adams was known all over California for the work he did in Alcoholics Anonymous. He was an orthodox. A lot of people hated him. But thousands of people got sober. And she was right along. And they started what is known as the Hole in the Ground. And it's the oldest group in the country today that's never moved. It's still there. And I have a real personal feeling of gratitude to her and a real affection to this lady. And I know that you're going to love her. And at this time, I'd like for you to stand and give a rousing ovation to Sybil Coleman of Los Angeles, California. You know, after an introduction like that, maybe, now is the time for me to retire from Alcoholics Anonymous. And what a terrible thing that would be. I'm not going to give it a thought. I'm going to tell you that I'm terribly grateful to be here. And I'm going to tell you what my name is. He doesn't know much about that, so I'm going to give you my full shot. He just said Sybil and Sybil Corwin. But he wasn't around to know the rest of my full name, so I think I'll give you my full name. My name is Sybil Doris Adams Stratton. Hart. Maxwell. Willis. Corwin. I love AAMOR tonight than I ever have in my whole life. Believe me, I do. I need you more now than I did when I came in. And, I want to thank all of you for being here, but I must not get carried away as I sometimes do. Without thanking the people who made it possible. I have no idea. When it was that I got a letter from Jerry, phone calls from them, and then subsequent calls, and I'd call them, and they'd call me, and I called Jerry quite a bit, and I know how busy he is. But there's so many people on the committee, and to think that they allowed me to come and share this weekend with you. And then the frosting on the cake, my husband, who is so precious to me, another old-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous, is here with me, and you will hear him Sunday morning. Bob and I have known each other for many, many, many, many years because I met him at the hole in the ground when he was married to somebody else and I was married to somebody else. As you can gather from that list of names that I gave you, they married quite a bit in my generation. And Bob and I had no thought of any hanky-panky or anything. It was just, I said, hi, Bob, you know, how it is in Bruce, drink coffee together, go to a convention together with his wife and my husband, and so on. And if I couldn't get to a meeting, he'd drive me to a meeting, and my husband would babysit with his kids, and so forth. That's the other life. We re-met many years later, and eventually we remarried. Let's see. How long have we been married, Bob? That's a long ride back on that TWA plane to Los Angeles, too, off the King's Pass. Married a long time, baby. Seems like yesterday to me. Now then, after what Jim told you, that lovely introduction, which I certainly don't deserve, I imagine then you're prepared to hear something about the covered wagon days of Alcoholics Anonymous, the olden days of Alcoholics Anonymous, and with that, something about myself and what I was like. And maybe what I'm like today. And that's a constantly changing picture, because to me, this is a school, and we're here to learn, learn together. And I think we change as time goes by. And hopefully, for the better, we might vacillate, and we might get off the beam. But if we're continually active and do the best we can with this program, we stay sober. I have the utmost faith in Alcoholics Anonymous, and tune in with that faith. I have a great faith, that I had that faith. I was drunk for 17 years with absolutely no hope, and didn't want to be. Did not want to be. Because my family, my father and my mother, they were very strict, and they were very religious, and I was brought up in a little town in Texas, non-existent now. We went back to look at it a few years ago, and there's nothing there but a little church with the tall steeple. But that's where I was raised, and then we moved to Burt Burnett during the oil boom, and that will date me burke burnett texas and then from there my brother tex came up missing and we thought he was dead and finally got word that he was in california through a friend of ours and we pulled up stakes and moved to california when i was 13 and tex was 23. well the family held back why he ran away he was in trouble with the law then he was an alcoholic in full bloom but they wouldn't tell me about that because they never mentioned booze and it was a family skeleton and it's best not to talk about that before civil she's too little she's too young she wouldn't understand and i had no inkling that he was in any trouble with booze then until i was 21 and i found out he drank and he found out i drank because we hadn't been in california too long and i found our customs so different and i was such a misfit with my long hair way below my knees and papa wouldn't let me cut it and the kids in school laughed at me and they really did i mean they really did i didn't fit in i simply didn't fit in and couldn't and i knew it and they laughed at me and it just about killed me because here i am with this long hair and i have to do something with it so i put it up on my head in a big girl's world of some kind uh on their little bangs and their short hair and i wanted so much to be like them but i would stand back and just yearn to have a girlfriend i eventually found one and i clung to her um i was still such a misfit and i didn't go to high school very long before i dropped out and got a job papa and mama were very poor and we needed the money and i had uh i worked uh for an attorney free now i got married very young to a boy who later became just like a brother to me and and we were divorced when i started getting drunk when i was about 15 or 16 and he took care of me a while and then i i divorced him and i looked back on that marriage and we were just like brother and sister and i had no business to do it but uh papa i was afraid of him him and he wouldn't let me act like the other kids in california and i was rebellious so i just jumped out a window and meet this boy and we got married and i started drinking and it was very bad and i tell you the first time i got drunk and passed out and they took me home and i woke up in my mother's bed i wanted to die and i begged for forgiveness because to them or to me rather it was the unforgivable sin uh no alcohol in the house no cards in the house can't cut your hair and so on and here i am been jumping out the window meeting this boy drinking with a bunch of and now i'm home in mama's bed and i said forgive me can you forgive me i'll never do it again they said oh yes baby oh we we forgive you and of course before the week was over i was drunk again and i thought i didn't want to do that i didn't want to behave like that i met it and i made those promises first to my mother then to my father then to my big brother text them to all my husbands and it got worse and worse and i never heard the word alcoholism or that it was a disease or that i had no choice that there was no way out and i did my best and when i was 21 i found out that my brother text drank and that he'd been in jail a lot of times and he found out that i was a drinker and he didn't like that much at all his baby sister that he had taken care of when he was 10 or 12 years old i was a baby and he adored me he worshipped me and now his baby sisters are drunk but he finally accepted that and we got drunk together now text was a man of many talents and for several years we this is all right for for us to drink together and then he began to watch the way i drank and then he began to point the finger like me and he would say now sir you can't take it like me for and i can take it or leave it alone i just don't want to leave it alone but if you can't hate it and you're gonna wind up dead dead dead just a common drunk and i'll think okay no no i'm gonna do it again and so i would hide from him and i would go to a bar uh you know to get away from me and he'd find me and haul me out kicking and screaming and throw me in the back seat and i'd yell at him you turned me loose mister i'm going right back to that bar when he turned me loose i'd go back and then i get a call from ted hey shiv i'm allowed one phone call i'm in jail again will you bail me out i bailed him out of jail 89 times and he was a guy that could make a fortune overnight a man of great talent and he was eloquent and he had a special knack of getting along with people a super salesman a super promoter good at anything that he wanted or could do when he was sober and when i say he made a fortune he started the lone star rancho dairy and i worked for him while he was doing that and then i became a real estate broker so then he worked for me as a real estate broker then he got down on his luck and he was poor again and he was known as the king of skid row and he started bootlegging so i bootlegged with brother ted and i would sit there and text and i would drink up all the stocks the would come and knock the joint over down a third and fly out and they'd haul him off to jail and the cops would give me a pint and say go home never lock me up and i'm doing the same thing as my brothers and so it went they never locked me up i would lose my car i would think it was stolen and i'd tell a call up text and tell him my car was gone he's he just walked away and left it again and such would be the case i didn't want to i just didn't want to live like that finally now then i was married to a sailor boy a good boy that i met at a dance Oh, because if I wasn't too drunk, I'd drive my car down to Long Beach at the Silver Spray or someplace and we'd dance. And we fell in love and we were married. And I look back on it, he was a good fella. He was 21, I was about 20. And we had this little baby. I looked at that little thing in the crib and I thought, now that is the end of my drinking. I will raise this little baby. She's pure and innocent and sweet and I'll never, never get drunk again. That wasn't the way it was. It was progressive and I couldn't help it. I simply couldn't help it. So Bill and I decided we'd leave town and get away from all the drunks. He is drunk. We had no knowledge whatsoever. He was an alcoholic too. So we just hiked out of town over the ridge route. People from here wouldn't know where that was in California, but it will take you to Bakersfield. And there was a lot of food to be picked up there in the valley, San Joaquin Valley. The grapes and then later on apricots and peaches and you could work your way up to Hood River. And in that era, a lot of young college students would go up there and do that during the summer. So we had to go. We had this $20 bill in my shoe and we hitchhiked and we got to Arvin. Little town, but lots of grapes. And we got a job picking grapes. And I felt good about our decision. I had a hangover. It was about 120. It was July or August. And I sweated and I worked and I cut those grapes and put them on the tray and so did Bill. And at the end of the day, I felt amply rewarded. I thought, well, this is great. Good way to sober up. And no reason to get drunk. And then when it was twilight, as a young people, who had come there also, 15 or 20 of them gathered around the bonfire, you know, and they were singing and harmonizing those thingies and marshmallows. So we sat down in a circle there and we began to sing and harmonize with them. And son of a gun, I looked around and there was a jug coming around this way and another one around this way and my heart sank. And I thought, I'm going to get drunk. Might as well be in Los Angeles. So when the bottle reached me, I drank. This bottle reached me and I drank. And I drank quickly. And I got mortgaged and I got a crying gag. I didn't want to be seen like that. All hope was gone. I knew that I couldn't do a thing. And I got up and I staggered away from that campfire down that row of grapes. And then I got terribly frightened because I heard heavenly music. Heavenly. And I thought, well, I've gone too far. I'm having these tears. And I've been having hallucinations. I'd hear people in the backseat of my car a couple of years before that. Mumble, mumble, mumble. And then I'd listen and I couldn't figure out what they were saying. But every now and then I'd catch the word. Mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble. But I didn't know what they were going to do to me or anything. And sometimes I'd run screaming in the house, convinced there were people in the car. And now this music. I was so frightened that I was able to kind of run a little bit and fall down a little bit and get up and run a little bit. And pretty soon I found out what it was. This music, it was church hymns. And they had a big Catholic camp there, a revival meeting. And every person in that little town of Arvin was in there singing hymns. And I partied the flap of a tent and stood there swaying back and forth, my face dirty and the tears pouring down my cheeks. And they finished that hymn and there was a hush. And they turned around and they looked at me. Pathetic looking figure. And the preacher said, let's turn to page 39. And as we sing this next hymn, if there's one among you who would like to be saved, please come forward and I'll pray for you. And I thought, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. It took me a long time because they were kind of helping out mentally, you know, watching me do this. I did the best I could while they were singing. And as I got up to the altar, the preacher put his hand out, put his hand on my head to pray for me. And I threw up all over him. And they took me up, lifted the flap of the tent, laid me on the ground out there and they went ahead with their service. It was 11 years after that before I found AA and I never forgot that episode. Now, a lot of alcoholics, I'll speak to the women, but I'm sure men must feel that way too, about some particular thing that caused you a lot of pain and embarrassment and humiliation that you did while you were terribly drunk. Well, I can't, I have never dreamed that anyone would walk into a church and throw up on a preacher. And when after I came down to Honest Anonymous, I'd listened closely to the story. And to this day, I have never found anyone who walked into a church and threw up on a preacher. And I would be sober and I'd try to go to sleep some night and I'd think of that and I'd groan. And I'd throw my phone into my pillow and I couldn't stand it. All right, now then, things got worse. Bill abandoned me with the baby. Mama kept her because I couldn't. I was drunk all the time. And Texas in jail. And I, the joint that we had, bootlegging, I couldn't run it, didn't want to run it. And across the street, there was a rose room, a taxi dance hall. And I wanted to get the money, the depression, no money to be had anywhere or a job. So I went across the street and I got a job as a taxi dancer. Now then, they had intermission during those, as they danced while in there, there's a bar room out there where they'd pour pictures of beer and the girls that had a feller that was dancing with her would get a buck of pictures of the beer. But a feller came up to me with a string of tickets that would stretch to the back of his hall and he danced with me all evening. And during intermission, we'd sit out there and he'd buy me pictures of beer and the tears would pour down my cheeks and I'd tell him that I had a little baby and that I didn't want to drink and I didn't know why I was drinking but I thought it was lack of, if I had any money or a good job and maybe it was that I had no security and I'd never had any security and I didn't want to behave like that. And he listened. And finally he said, you know something? I believe you. I just don't know what a nice little thing like you doing in a place like this. He said, I tell you what, you say you don't want to drink and you won't need to drink if you will listen to me for a minute. He said, I will adopt your child and be a good father to her and see that she has every advantage as long as you don't drink. He says, I will adopt her. So he says, let's get married. And I said, well, let's do. So I married Dick Maxwell and we had the big house and the housekeeper for the little girl and I had a shiny black Packard and I thought the goose hung high and all would be well and he had to haul me out of a bar a week later. A week later and my drinking was so much worse than it had ever been because I had failed this man. I had failed myself again. I had no, I had no feeling of self-expect or self-worth. I couldn't bear it. I simply couldn't bear it. But he took care of me for 15 years hauling me out of bars or bringing me a sip of tea in the morning and I would get out of bed in the morning after getting home safe before the sun would come up and I'd crawl down to the bathroom to get a sip of water out of the wash basin because I found out if you just took one sip it would stay down and then I'd lay on that cold tile floor until when I got up it was just two squares of tile they had then a little bit of tile I'd have the imprint on my teeth and then I'd get another sip of water and then I heard some chirping and noises outside the window. It was a neighbor winning and they were talking about PTA and bridge clubs and their children and baking and flowers and gardening and I eavesdropped and I was the loneliest woman in the world because I wanted so much to be out there in the sunshine and have some friends but I couldn't do that. I knew that if I went out in the backyard had I been able one of them might have said we're going to play bridge here next Tuesday won't you come over and join us? And what might happen if I did go? I'd walk in there drunk disgrace myself again and have to move again because I had moved and moved from neighborhood to neighborhood and I always just it was just disgraceful. So I didn't dare do that and I couldn't bear it so I got in my car and I drove to San Francisco and thought what am I doing here I don't know a soul and I came back parked my car down around Sixth and Hill and walked around town wondering what to do. I was afraid to go home because Dick had said that if you ever turn up missing again I'm going to get custody of your child I'm her legal father and I knew he'd do that. He was fed up and I don't blame him. He was a good man he was really a saint he came from a fine family good, tender and gentle but he said I'll take your child. Well, I was afraid to go home and get that kind of bad news find the house empty and I had to have time to think so I'm standing there at Sixth and Hill in Los Angeles and I see a sign saying Salt and Turkish Baths and I had taken Turkish Baths before and the massages and everything to get him safe to go home so I thought well I'll do that and think up a good lie it'll give me a little time to think up one more lie and I didn't want to think all night long after the bath so there was a newsstand there that had all of the periodicals and the newspapers from all over and I thought I'll read after the bath to get my mind off myself just don't think don't think until tomorrow morning and we'll be able to concoct a good story and get everything fixed up once more so I just reached over and grabbed something and I took it with me downstairs and along about two or three o'clock on that morning I was able to pick it up and look at it and it was a Saturday Evening Post and it was dated March 1st, 1941 and the thing that stunned me on the cover it said Alcoholics Anonymous by Jack Alexander the pamphlet that we now have and so many people read it and the central offices send it to the group search for individuals who want to see it it was the first major publicity that Alcoholics Anonymous had had outside of the Cleveland Plain Dealer which had published a few articles Liberty Magazine had a small article in 1939 which I had read one little paragraph it said something like a bunch of band of ex-drunk have gathered together in New York to obtain and maintain their sobriety and that was enough to interest me but I didn't do anything about it at that time in 39 and that was a good thing because we come in when we're supposed to and if I had answered that Liberty article I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it I'd probably be dead today and now here's this article but it stuns me because I had heard of AA just in that little paragraph so I got the attendant to bring me a paper and a pencil and stamp them on a book which is awfully hard to obtain when you're hung over a drug and I wrote a letter and I wrote a letter I just turned the tip of the magazine to the end of the article to get the box number but before doing so so one of them I couldn't read I just looked at the pictures and I opened the pages to the article and then I turned the pages to the article and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and I looked at the pages and there was a full spread picture that took up the whole page of a man being placed in an ambulance and mentally something clicked into place ignorant as I was I thought it's an AA hospital where they cure drugs and there he was in a stretcher being placed in an ambulance to go to that magical thing in New York the AA hospital and get well I turned the next page and the screen and the same man is lying there in bed and there's two men sitting at his bedside and probably Bill and Dr. Bob I don't know that and I thought oh yes he must have been very sick if they can help if they can help him they can help me and that's the basis on which I wrote the letter I couldn't read the article and I got the box number and I wrote a pitiful little letter to Ruth Hawk who was Bill Wilson's secretary and had been for a good many years before AA really got off the ground when she would just you know answer the letters and so on she had no auto accessory business Hank Parker, Steve Zell he didn't make any money or anything but when they found a drunk to work with they would and there weren't that many because of no publicity and so Ruth answered my letter which was no big deal then the impetus of the Saturday Evening Post article hadn't hit and she answered me immediately and the letter said in my letter to her I said I will take the next plane back to New York and take your cure I'm a desperate woman alcoholic So she wrote me a letter and she said in essence. You don't have to come back to New York to find Alcoholics Anonymous because you have a group in California. And that group, that lone group that they have in California, luckily for you, is in your hometown, Los Angeles. And they meet every Friday night down at the Elk Temple across from Westlake Park, which is down on McArthur Park. And she says, my dear, I must tell you that so far they have had no luck with Lady Luscious. And they are a small group starting with four men in the general hospital and they grew to six and eight and they dropped back to five and nine and then back, you know, so on. So she says, I think there's about a dozen men that meet there now. And she says, you know, we haven't had too much luck with the Lady Luscious in New York either because they age new and there wasn't too much known about alcoholism. And, but we do have, she said, my housekeeper, later on I found this out about them in the letter, later on I found out that her housekeeper, Florence Rankin, who wrote a chapter in the first edition of the big book, I went to AA, didn't miss it, and died. But she says, now we have a woman, she said, we've had several come and they leave. And they come and they go. And they're uncomfortable, I guess, with the idea of being, you know, the stigma, the shame of it. I knew that feeling. And she says, but we have had one who came in a little too soon. Her name was Marcy. But now she has been sober and we've known that she's going to be with us a long time because she's been sober nine months. Well, that gives me great feeling of hope. You know, it really did give me, I had this faith, I cannot explain that at all. But she said, now go down there and they will be delighted to see you. So this Friday night, my non-alcoholic husband drove me down there to the Elks Temple and we were sent into a little room that's big enough to hold a couple of tables like this and they were sitting around there. But I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. And I sat down there and I put on my mask. And I was wearing my gloves. I was wearing my cap and I was having my loungers. And I had to wear my gloves on my back. And I was sitting there. And I said, you know, I couldn't comb my hair. And I had to put it up under a red bandana. And my face was bloated. My eyes were blood stocked. And I had a nervous tic that would go . Every time anybody looked at me. And when my lips would twitch, then tears would come in my eyes. And I was pinching my hands until I only had little half moons of blood in the palms of my hands. And I was just hanging on. Just hanging on. Scared witless. Well, I went in there and I made those people invisible. I just couldn't look. And then I was standing there, I thought, I'm going to invest in this couldn't look. I didn't know what they were gonna do to me or anything. I had no idea what it was. I was, I was just a mouse, a scared mouse. And pretty soon the man at the end of the table got up and he said, You see, I read in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in California, we're a band of ex-drunks who gather together to obtain and maintain our sobriety on an all-time basis with no mental reservation whatsoever. And I heard that and I thought, what an order! I can't go through with it, a half a through with it. Now then, the worst was yet to come. Because he said before the regular meeting starts, as is our custom, we'll have to ask the women to leave. I had seen no women and I thought they meant me! They meant me! They cooked that up to kick me out because I looked so bad. And I got up and I put my hands over my face and I went out the side door and I'd bawled buckets of tears, and I sat there in the ladies powder room, and I would pace up and down in that big lobby and I would honestly be so surprised And I was just devastated. I just couldn't stand it. And later on, I saw a couple of women sitting over on the Davenport meeting and so forth. Well, it turns out that they're the wives of the alcoholic. Said at the closed meeting, they'd never had a woman alcoholic before. So what they meant was this was a closed meeting. The women knew if two came or if five came, sometimes none. They were very comfortable with it. They came back in later on, had coffee and donuts. You know, as is our custom, the women will have to leave. But I hadn't seen them, so they must have been sitting along the side and not with the men there at the table. And it turned out that they were the wives, and they weren't trying to get rid of me. But I did not know that, so it was very real. And I waited for the meeting to be over, and it went on for hours. It did not go by a clock. There was a guy from San Bernardino, and there was a man from Santa Barbara, and there was one from Hanford, California, and Orange County. And then the local boys were seen made up to rest, and only just hungry and thirsty for Alcoholics Anonymous. And he yacked and talked and talked. And that's what they did. And they talked. I don't think they ever looked at a clock. I thought I would die. And eventually the doors opened, and I spotted my non-alcoholic husband. And I yanked up to him, and I said, Give me my pills, and let's go home. I thought they might be doctors or interns who'd been in there all that time discussing my case with him. And he said, Oh my God, Deb, you don't know what I've been through. They thought he was a newcomer, and they had then really given him the work. And he'd never had a short beer in his life. Well, all hope was gone. So I burst into hysterics, and he took me home. And the end of the world had come for me. And when we got home, I went to a bar, and I got drunk. And I got 86 and kicked out because of my behavior. And I figured there was going to be a booze that was going to kill me anyway. And when I got outside of that bar, I saw a phone booth. And aha, I remembered. I had Ruth Hawk's letter in my purse. And so I put a nickel in the telephone, and I read the letter again. And sure enough, at the bottom, she put, T.S., if you need help, call Cliff Walker. Now, a word there, he's living up in A.A. comes of age. He answered all the calls, all the 12-step calls for Alcoholics Anonymous in California until 1944, when they opened a small central office. So naturally, Ruth put the contact there if I needed help. And I thought, I sure need help. So now's a good time to do it. So I put my nickel in the telephone. And when he answered, I said, Hello. I said, Send your A.A. ambulance and pick me up. He said, A.A. ambulance? We don't have an A.A. ambulance. You sound like you're drunk. I said, Well, of course. I said, Now, we're down to your exclusive club tonight. And first off, I want to tell you something that I have here in my hand, a letter of authorization from New York, which should have entitled me to every consideration down there at that group. And I got none. So then I was told in this letter, that if I needed help to call you, and you're not going to come and get me, he said, Of course not. You're drunk. I said, Well, what about this A.A. ambulance? You know, I was remembering the Saturday Evening Post article, and I just pictured this gleaming white ambulance with two big red A's on the side that would roll around in the bars after 2 o'clock in the morning and get falling down drunk, and whisk them off to the A.A. hospital for the cure. This was all just as real as if it had happened, you know. And he said, Well, you got it all wrong. I said, Well, now, this letter of authorization that I have in my purse that really should have, you know, given me every courtesy, I cannot understand why they threw me out, and now you're refusing to help me. He said, Ho, ho, ho, hold up. They did not throw you out. I'm going to ask you one thing. They wouldn't have done that. Did you tell them you were a woman alcoholic? I said, Of course not. Well, he said, You should have. You see, we've never had a woman alcoholic, and we need you. I thought, Uh-huh. So that's the Guinness. They need me. What they want me to do, because I didn't tell you I'm a girl of all trades, and that through those checkered years I was a good legal secretary as well as a good taxi dancer and bootlegger, I thought they'd heard that I'm a good typist and they'd want me to volunteer and do all the typing on them for life. And so I was real party. And I said, Come and get me. He said, I'm a milkman. I'm a poor man. I'm a working man. It's 2 o'clock in the morning and I have to pull out my milk rafters from. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to call the leader of that group. I'm going to start a Sunday meeting in my home where I can have people there and be welcome to come. But he said, In the meantime, they really do want to have you down there. They truly do. So I'm going to call the leader and tell him to expect you next Friday and tell him that you're a woman alcoholic and they will greet you with open arms and you'll be as welcome as the flowers in May. I said, All that. And I said, All right, young man. I'll go home if that's what you want me to do. But I'm going to tell you one thing. I'm only going home for one reason, and that is I can't wait till morning because when morning comes, I'm going to get me parked at the home office of A.A. in New York and I'm going to have you fired. Well, of course, he was my sponsor. And in A.A. then, if you had a sponsor, that person was your sponsor till death did you part. People now, after some sobriety or they walk up to somebody and they say, Will you be my sponsor? And they freely change sponsors in California. After a period of years, you know, if the sponsor dies or moves away or if something happens, some certain person has been helpful to them, they get another sponsor. But then, whether you like that person much or not, that was your sponsor. And that's just the way it was. And that was the way we ran business. Well, I was simply devastated when I crept home like a mouse and I couldn't bear what had happened to me that night. I couldn't bear what had happened to me that night, that time. And when he told me to go back and that I would be welcome, I couldn't believe him. And I doubt very much that I would have gone back. But my brother Tex got into the picture and it was a strange comedy of errors. You know, he had a way about him. I didn't know that he was really hurting from booze because he would not admit it. Well, I didn't admit it to him either. I tell him to mind his own business. But he came over and he read the pamphlet which Ruth had enclosed. It's the only material that he had then, a five or seven pamphlet. And he said, Hmm, I've got to see what the gimmick is in this. There must be some gimmick in it. I bet there's a fortune to be made in this thing. And if it can sober you up, it can sober up everybody. And he said, As you know, I work down on Toadie's Row now peddling vegetables. He had a truck and the winos would gather around there at three or four o'clock in the morning and sell, they'd go out into the neighborhood and sell oranges and whatever, cantaloupes and potatoes. At the end of the day, they'd make enough money to get a bottle of wine. And he said, But most of them are in jail all the time. Well, he said, If this gimmick works, I bet you that I can sober up a lot of those winos down there on Skid Row and, and I can have a fleet of trucks within six months and I'd be rich again. So he said, It's time for what I'm gonna do. I think I'll go down there with you next Friday. And not knowing, like I say, because he'd always denied he had a problem, and he'd had a pint in his pocket when he was trucking in, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. I said, Oh, for God's sake, don't do that. Magic words to drop. Don't do that. And he, I said, You'll launch it up and we'll both get thrown out. No, he said, I'll go sober and there's no way that they will know. There's no way that they will know. They can't kick me out if I don't have any booze on my breath. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna find out about this thing. So I'll pick you up next Friday. So be out in front and we'll go down. I said, Well, okay. So following Friday, Tex rolls up in front of my house in his vegetable truck and standing up in back were 11 winos. And here we go down to the mother group and there were more of us than there were of them. Now, I'm not listening to what's being said up here because from the word go in California, they read the fifth chapter because that's what the four guys in the general hospital did. And when they started the group, they didn't know how to run a group. So they said, We'll just read out of the book. Oh, they said, It tells how it works in this book. Let's just read that to each other, which they did. So they started reading the fifth chapter when there were only four, five, six, eight, twelve. And I'm sure they did that night that I went back with Tex and the winos. But I was worried about the winos. I was worried about Tex. I was afraid he'd raise his hand and say, Just a minute, my good man. I'd like to straighten you out on one point or something. And I didn't know what was going to happen so I didn't hear anything. Just sitting there biting my fingernail. But he was very quiet. Very quiet. And after a while then, Frank Randall, who was a dead ringer for Tex, they were so much alike, they just hated each other. The first year, he went off someplace and came back with a carton of mail. Hundreds upon hundreds of twelve-step calls that had been mailed by Ruth Hawke from Bill and Toter mailed them all down there in California because the calls were so loud and so loud that they couldn't hear the calls came from California, see? And now the group had these calls and Frank had bundled them up with rubber bands about 50 or 60 feet to each area and he put them up there on the podium and he said, Here they appear there. Is there anyone here from Riverside County? We've got about 512-step calls here. They'll have to be made by next Friday. So, if any of you gets over 15 minutes, why don't you come up here and get these calls because we've got to see these drums because if we miss one, he might die and that's a serious business. So I'm going to call off the district in that area. We're going to cover this place like a blanket one way or the other. And he would call out an area and a guy would say, Here, and he'd go down and he'd get his 12-step calls. And then he mentioned Santa Barbara and somebody said, Here, and he went up and got about 50 or 60 12-step calls. Orange County, Mel Tricky, a real estate broker, went up and got his share of 30, 40, or 50, I don't remember, and then the local boys and then pretty soon he said, Now I'm down to the last batch and I've been saving it to the last 12-step calls. And so, Sybil, you come on up here and I'm going to give you these 12-step calls to make because I'll put you in charge of all the women. And I just saw that word just out, just like it was a neon sign, Sybil's in charge, Sybil's in charge, Sybil's in charge. And I thought, My God, I was thrown out last week and now I'm in charge. So I potted up there. Now, Frank is a big man, about as big as him. And here I am, little, and Frank is dressed like the President of the United States and I didn't know you could even touch an old-timer. He's been sober eight months. And so, I don't know, I just go up there and there'd be 12-step calls and I looked up at him and I said, But I can't, I can't, sir. And he said, Why not? I said, Because I'll be drunk next Friday. I'll be drunk. I said, I always have been. I said, Since I was 15 and the longest period I've had was nine days, so you said that somebody might die if we miss one of these calls and that they're terribly important and I can't take that responsibility for those women. I just can't do it because, I said, Unless, unless there's something that you're gonna do for me tonight that'll keep me safe for a week. I said, Is there something you can do for somebody like me that I can leave this call and that I won't get the shivers in my stomach and the butterflies the way that I do when I'm getting so nervous and I know I'm gonna have to have relief and my nerves are stuck and the only solution, the only thing in life that I can do is just to plant myself down so that I can operate my real estate office is to have a drink. I said, Is there something that can happen here tonight that can keep me okay so I can do this? Surely, if you're gonna give help to alcoholics, give me some help to reassure me that I can stay sober a week. I meant that. And this is what he says. Well, he says you've sort of asked for a miracle but it's really not that or maybe it is. But you've asked how you can stay sober for a week I'll tell you. It's not me telling you that. It's in this big book. He said we here in California had nothing but the big books to go on when we started AA and we still we're a firm believer in it. And here's what it says right here in this big book. Now you're listening to this. It says when another alcoholic will save the day and that means when all other majors fail. Working with another alcoholic will save the day and that's what you'll be doing. Now I'm gonna tell you what to do when you get home. You take those 12 steps halls and bundle them into a geographic group. And you have to take a little help from a higher power if you believe in one. Get your mind just calm and meditate a minute or two until you know. Just walk up the door and ring the bell. And when she comes to the door hand her the letter and say did you write a letter and they laughed a lot and like that and they told me to come see you. The only thing is they never got around to telling me how they do it. So if you want to get sober as badly as I want to get sober you come with me and we'll find out together. And he says stop right there because you are having a good time doing that and felt a little hope and one of the things he said get your mind off yourself get your mind off yourself. So I was thinking about that when my brother Tex walked in quite unexpectedly and he said hey sir I'm not doing anything today and I thought I might ride around with you in the car and that's how we ended up getting together with my wife. And I remember the first time we met and we had a really good time and we were just jumping around and we had a big call and we had you'll mill around and sometimes we'd go to call and somebody may say sign in please we've had 11 people here today and it was great and we stayed sober now i had to stay sober a heartbeat at a time very quickly we found out about the 24-hour program this was called then a day at a time but i could not think of a day i could not think of two days or a week or a month or anything and the fact that frank randall my sponsor and cliff had been sober eight months was just about all i could say in fact if they said 80 years it wouldn't have sounded any bigger really and so we called on all these people we took them to the meeting and it seemed like we were hell-bent on destroying each other because we had no tradition no guidelines of any kind and so we were real busy uh throwing people out that couldn't qualify and you know you can go well you can stay we don't want him get rid of her and it went so it went but my brother said was the first one to be excommunicated the very first one and i was on shaky ground because i was his sister and they thought maybe i would cause trouble too but no that's the fact but in the meantime i'm in charge of the women and i said great little job was keeping me sober because the women came in and drove and there were 30 or 40 within a month or two or three and here i am with this big job and mark and frankie clinton pat me on the head saying you're doing a good job sim how long have you been sober now 29 days 34 days and so on and oh i was just so busy and so happy and i was in charge and one of our traditions says our leaders are but trusted servants that do not govern but you see i didn't know that and i was doing what frank and mort told me to do and that was that everybody had to turn in any 12-step call on a woman the civil symbol to call up somebody and get her a sponsor and when i go to the meeting i would look and there would be susie sponsor and mary fancy and that's that's there and all of the other holes her story you know right there and i could count the 40 women and there they would be the sponsor and the fancy and there's a sponsor and there's a fancy and it might look just balanced beautifully and they said i was just doing a great job and i was real happy with that now i couldn't talk or participate i was too nervous and i was twitching yet i switched for three months but the terrible shock that i got when one night a gal walked down the aisle and he was big now about 300 with microphone systems and this gal walked down the aisle and she had six strange years with her and they had not been cleared through me and i walked right up to her and i said hey where did you get these women she said it's none of your business and i said what about my sister she said to hell with your system she says i live in culver city and all of my women friends many of them have drinking problems and so they noticed i was sober and they asked what i was doing and i told them and they said they wanted to get sober so i just brought them out and that's what i'm going to do from now on and i never will report to you again well i got tears in my eyes and i got the nervous twitch back and i couldn't wait to tell my brother text now i told you he was the first to be excommunicated and the reason for that was that he started to group the hole in the ground before he was dry behind the ears and they walked up to him and said you're disloyal to the mother group where you got this variety we don't want you get out i'll come back when i please but he didn't really want to be with the hole in the ground went down occasionally but he was just too busy with a hole in the ground and i went to the hole in the ground it was a different night and i went down to the mother group but now this night when she wouldn't do what i told her to i didn't know what to do and i couldn't wait to get out there and talk to text and he said honey i want to tell you i'm going to tell you what to do he said if you don't resign that's a bunch of gals that you're getting ready to throw you out so what you do is next friday when you go down there i was having a women's meeting every friday in a different room he said you make up a pretty little speech tell him you're too busy helping your big brother down here at the hole in the ground and if you think that you better uh turn it over to them and suggest that the elected secretary on a rotating basis and that you will continue to come down just as a you know as a member and he said it'll be the best thing you ever did in your life or it's really gonna be miserable it's gonna be gangbusters that can just talk you out of your ear and i did that and i continued to go to the mother group and i continued to go to the hole in the ground and it was a marvelous experience because the reason text did that two reasons one was he was tired of hauling drugs in from the beasters in englewood and southgate willowbrook constant a long distance down to the mother group which was really was huge and the other was he wanted a participation meeting where that the drunk could talk and everybody got to talk three to five minutes and he would he was tough and rough with those that needed to be talked to in a strong manner and he was gentle and kind to those who needed the special touch and somehow or another he had a knack with newcomers that i have never seen before or since there have been a few men with special talents in that direction that if i lived to be a thousand years i could never be as helpful to newcomers as text was and a few others one or two others in california that i know and jim here and i just i do the best i can but i don't have that intuition to know sometimes to be extremely gentle with one person and maybe tell someone else a little stronger suggestion but text did that and it was a marvelous thing and so he went back now to the mother group when it was really big and they said oh you're here again all right for you things are different now we told you you were excommunicated but we've gone further we knew you'd come back so we have one of our members here an attorney who has drawn up certain papers and we have incorporated alcoholics anonymous in california and you can't have that group we've incorporated we own alcoholics anonymous in california and text laughs and laughs and laughs and he said you might as well try to incorporate a sunset i'll lay you eight to five that within six months we'll have groups all over this county within a year they'll be as far down as san diego and up the coast and pretty soon in other states and all over the world and you can't stop this thing so you might as well try to incorporate a sunset like i said i'm real busy with the group at the hole in the ground they participate and it's a good thing and come out and see us sometimes well the thing was down at the mother group frank and mort were the leaders we had no uh you know they were the leaders they owned it if you started your group then you owned it frank and mort were our guest kickers for two years i loved them to death i was in awe of them i was really afraid of them i thought when can i be sober long enough that i can talk to these men you know they were eloquent they delivered a terrific message i was very happy to sit there and listen to them for two years well the other man had a problem with me out there at the hole in the ground because i sat in the back and i didn't want to be called on and he said you got to do it i know you're going to stay sober he said remember i knew you as a tiny little baby and i watched you grow up and you're going to stay sober but you're going to be miserable unless you participate so what i'm going to suggest is now you and i'll start coming down here to the hole in the ground along about 6 30 or 7 we'll put the coffee pot on and pretty soon the devil will walk in and you'll say you love people anyway and say you'll say hi jim and happy and you'll drink coffee with me then myro will walk in you'll say hi there and you'll talk to her and then mary and then peace and then youth and and so on pat and bud and he said pretty soon you know you you you will have talked to all 25 of them or whatever number we had and from seven o'clock up till 8 30 you will have had a good conversation with them all just drinking coffee and then i'll get up there and i'll open the meeting and then i'll say i want to hear from my sponsor sid you be in the front row and then you jump up here and you say something i don't care what but do it because if you don't start getting on your feet that won't get the job done i don't care if you're scared but do it and i just say something anything so i said okay okay so i typed out something i couldn't trust myself well i typed out the first step maybe anyhow got there and he got it up and he opened the meeting it's ready to be the hole in the ground and so i'm the first person to participate tonight i'm going to call on my sister sid and he you know he uh called on me and i got up there and i got the twist and i had the tears in my eyes and i got out my little piece of paper and i could hear it crackle and but but i read it oh i read it oh i was so miserable i just wanted to die but i did read it and i was just scared witless i was terrified but as i walked back down and sat down i heard this thunderous applause that would have done justice to the coliseum and it didn't quit and it didn't quit and somebody stuck a cigarette in my mouth and i folded my arms and i began to grin and i thought my god was i that good they knew my problem and then my mind trailed off and i began to think well down to the mother group and i tell you what i better read that big book and when i read that big book i will memorize part of it and when they ask you to speak down there i'll be prepared and i got into the big book for that reason and i started reading it well now you would think well still have been on a honeymoon of alcoholic synonymous for quite a while because we went along for many many years and i had good times and i had bad times because as human beings that's the way life is but my brother got sick and uh we had uh did an ill-fated venture together we had we were you know together with our businesses um when he had this dairy and when he had his bootleg enjoyed but now i'm still in the real estate business and he's building a house and farming we're doing rather well so we buy a boxing and wrestling arena down in santa ana and um that was fine we made a lot of money for a couple of three years and then tv came in and finally eventually uh i had to go to bankruptcy but that wasn't so bad the thing is that the doctor came out of the rest of the dressing room there at the arena one night you're getting 70 wrestlers before you get on to perform and he said i got bad knees for your text came in to have a physical and he's got a bum heart and i don't think he's going to make it 90 days and text came bellowing out of the dressing room and he said oh baloney there's a lot of drugs on heaven's left i'll lay you eight to five i'll make it another five years maybe eight and he did but he was sick and i had him in the hospital 17 times here that he lived and uh eventually i'm living there on randolph street and walking this is the hole in the ground and one of the members come up to my place and tell me that uh just before meeting time just before meeting time that a bunch of guys out of jail had come up uh hungry they got the word in jail they knew because they could come there and text would toss them a sack of boulder and beat them and like that you know and so this guy walked up to the house the text was beating a bunch of guys out of jail in the kitchen and he sat down to to eat with them and he just went to sleep and that's the way it was so i walked down to the hole in the ground the guys were barring the doors and said out of respect to text they closed it for a week and i raised pain and i said listen the doors have been open all these years and text wouldn't want it that way in fact you just won't have it that way and it's not going to be that way and if you haven't got the guts to leave the meeting i will and people came from far and wide there was a standing room down the street with a corner and i lived that meeting and i called on his name as i could but i felt cold and numb and i didn't cry and that was bad and i didn't cry and i didn't cry and this went on for a month or six weeks and i became kind like a zombie i would go there to the hole in the ground i look around that room at my friend who loved me and it was just like in a way though i was sober and i didn't want to drink um i was tuned out from a higher power uh that i had believed in a different way before i got sober and now i had my own and it was just like i was in a bar again and that these people were strangers in the bar and i put a nickel in the youth box when i was searching and searching and looking for a better way and i'd look around and i'd think what am i doing here and then i'd try to pray and it was just like i was praying to this microphone and they knew that something was wrong and they say how are you kid and i said well i'm fine and that wasn't so maybe i was in a state of shock during that period because i wouldn't let anybody help me and i was i think i thought if i did talk to him about my pain that maybe i'd explode or something god knows what that was except stock with the program i'm not getting any results except going there going there being there being there and i just didn't know what to do and i didn't want to just let it all out to them and bits and pieces because i didn't want to disturb them so much about how i agreed and finally one of you think i did i wrote a letter to bill wrote to him texted him up in bedford hills and bill in the early days of a came down to california on numerous occasions he barnstormed around the country to see how a was getting along and i wrote this letter to bill and i told him just what i told you i said i might as well just be a rubb There's a nothingness in my life, and I don't know what's going to become of me. I know I won't grinch, but what's going to become of me, Bill?" And he wrote me a letter, which I still have, and he gave me permission to share it with anyone who liked his remarks, and I xeroxed that letter and handed it out to hundreds of my friends. In part, it just said this, In God's house there are many mansions, and somehow I'd rather I take a text on the porch of one of those mansions. Um, in the sunlight, talking to another drunk, and that's the way it should be. Thanks so much for text. But as for you, my dear, I would tell you this, that life is but a long day in school, and some of our lessons are hard, and some of our lessons are easy, and it's not so much what happens to us here, but it's what we do with the experience we have. It's the demonstrations that count. Thank you. And I read that. I sat there in that rocking chair and ran down the street, and I read it again and again and again. Life is but a long day in school. Some of the lessons are hard, and some of the lessons are easy, and we use the experience we have to help someone else. And then finally the damn verse, and I began to cry, and I cried a river, and I guess I cried forever. I don't know when I stopped, but the healing process began, and I realized that it was a testing period, and that there would be more. And if I hadn't gotten drunk through that one, that action and AA, and being active and continuing to be active, and making 12-step calls, and being with people that I loved and who loved me, that everything would be okay, and that I could expect blockbusters just like my neighbors or anybody down the street, but that God wouldn't give me too much, wouldn't give me more than I could handle. And that if I hadn't been drunk during all this, I had a chance to stay sober during the next testing period. And I've had them. I've had glorious years. I've had it all. I've had love. I've had so much of it, and people have been so good to me because I had no ego, no ego of my own, and I needed a pat on my head just to build a little bit of faith in myself, and that's what you gave me in the beginning, and I would feel deserved now if people didn't hug me and kiss and tell me they love me. And eventually I would get all out of whack again because I'm a nut, and if I didn't go to meetings all the time, I would begin to revert to type and get bitchy and be a mean, miserable human being, and when that happens, I have to get on the phone or open the book and read it or get in touch with another member or go to a daytime meeting or a night meeting, and I did not come to Alcoholics Anonymous to be a guest speaker. That's not the thing. Ginny Burwell, a very marvelous good friend of mine, and I know you know her name, she and Rosa lived in San Diego until his death about five years ago. She was a good friend of mine. And Ginny is the agnostic who screamed, hollered, granted, and raved when they were going to put the word God in the book. And eventually when they were writing that book, Bill said and Ruth said that they prayed that he would get drunk and get out of their hair because every time the word God was mentioned, Ginny would holler and rant and rave. And he said, surely there must be another guy somewhere like me out in this world that doesn't believe in God that's an atheist or an agnostic, so if you're going to put that word God in the book, you put God in the book. And I said, you understand me because I don't understand you. And put it in italics. And he said, okay, Ginny. That's a good idea. And that probably saved, I don't know how many lives. I don't know how many lives. So many alcoholics, if they ever had a faith, they lost it along with their faith in themselves or in humanity. And Ginny Burwell put that so well that I have never forgotten it and I treasured his friendship. And he was very helpful to me. And here's what he would say when I'd go down to San Diego. He'd say, Ginny, I'm going to put you in the book. I'm going to put you in the book. I'm going to put you in the book. I'm going to put you in the book. I'm going to put you in the book. I'm going to put you in the book. And I'd go to San Diego and he'd say, I had those glorious 12 years in the central office soon after Tex died. I got to talk to all the six drunks that I wanted to wholesale. Nobody ever gave me a bad time, except the sober ones. But the new drunks, new drunks never complain. And I go down to San Diego and Ginny would say, are you just going to be a good friend of the old couple? And I'd say, I'm not going to be a good friend of the old couple. I just want to be friends with them. And Ginny would say, well, you know, I'm a good friend of the old couple. So I'm going to be friends with them. And Ginny would say, well, I'm going to be friends with them. So I'm going to be friends with them. in the central office soon after Tex died. I got to talk to all the six drunks that I wanted to wholesale. Nobody ever gave me a bad time, except the sober ones, but the new drunks never complain. And I go to him and say, Diego, and you need to say, are you talking around a group? And he goes, and I say, yes, Jimmy. Well, he said, kid, let me tell you something. For every group where you speak, you go and listen. Sit down and listen. Because the groups where you speak, that doesn't count. I said, okay, Jimmy. And I've taught you to do that. And Bob and I go to a lot of meetings. And I love to go to meetings. Sit down meetings, stand-up meetings, participation meetings, speaking meetings, meetings, meetings. And it gets better all the time. Anybody's told me that. This coming March, I will be sober forty years. And that's in March. I was thirty-two when I came in. You can add that but real quick. Next May, obviously, I'm busy. 73 years old and i can't believe it it astonishes me to tell you that i'm almost 73 years old and that i've never had it so good it's just unbelievable because there's no end to this program there's just absolutely no end to this program for someone like me to be able to stand here tonight and say i hope for goodness then in about uh 26 years that i would be able to come back here to kansas and say my name is sybil and i'm 99 years old and i may do it i hope i do because they keep me young and i would die without them i couldn't live without any i don't want to i have a choice i could go back out there and uh maybe not get drunk for six months or a year or longer who knows but it would kill me dead dead dead after this good life and what she's given me and what i know about and with all this to come and i don't know what's around the corner something wonderful always happens when i've had a bad time i never know what's around the corner so i can't tell you how grateful i am how i thank you for letting me talk this very long time because i'm a newcomer i'll punch anybody in the nose that calls me an old-timer i say it's a dirty word really because there's no seniority in aa a person with a 50-year sobriety can get drunk and die you know aa is here to stay and i want to stay with it i want to be with it we're all newcomers i think that as newcomers we're fledglings learning to fly so as fledglings and i along with you may the wings of your happiness never lose a feather thank you very much thank you sybil that was a beautiful inspiring story and message thank god for the 12 steps and 12 traditions and for the people that were here when i got here immediately and bob i'll be listening to you sunday that's a hard act to follow anonymity aa anonymity there may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at public level our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press radio tv and sound thus we respectfully ask that no aa speaker or indeed any aaa member be identified by full name and publish a broadcast report of our needs the assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that aa principles come before personality god bless you all and we all please stand and we'll close the large prayers our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thy is the kingdom the power and the glory forever amen