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Source: Pat B – Chair Remarks – 24th Southeastern Conference (August 17, 1968) – 1968-08-17.mp3 File: pat-b-chair-remarks-24th-southeastern-conference-august-17-1968-1968-08-17.mp3 Duration: 00:04:22
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Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Our anonymity, like our sobriety, is a treasured possession. We ask the help of our guests, especially those representing the press or broadcasting media, in protecting the anonymity of all alcoholics present or mentioned here today. We hope you hear something at this meeting which you can take away with you and use.
We respectfully request, however, that you eliminate any mention of names in reference to members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Since we are chaired by the man from Kentucky, this is Colonel B. today. And welcome to this session of this 24th Southeastern Convention. We will have a count tonight. We are going to try to get all the announcements out of the way, and we are coming to the close of this wonderful convention. There are seats here on the right for those of you coming in. All right. I got a lot of them. I'll try to get them out of the way as quickly as possible. From Kentucky, if I can find the program here, Pat. Pat is a wonderful fellow. I met him, oh, a few years back. Somebody at Margaret W. from Atlanta said to me after I had introduced her and said, you know, I've been knowing her for a couple of years, and she wanted to know what I called a couple of years. And she says, I know you've known me eight. Well, I don't know the difference what a couple means, so I was thinking it was eight or ten.
I want to thank you for being so nice to me. I'll tell you some more about that tonight. But for the present here, I am going to present to you the chairman of this meeting, Pat B. from Louisville, Kentucky. Thank you, Manny. You keep on, and we're going to let you in that St. Patrick's Day parade yet. Okay. My name is Pat B.. I'm an alcoholic, a member of the Gateway Group in Louisville, Kentucky. I want to thank the committee now before I forget it for giving me the honor of chairing this meeting this afternoon. I feel that it is a great honor to have just a part in a conference such as this, and it has been a good one in my book.
Because one of the things that I've heard, Manny mentioned just now something about the theme of this conference, and the thing that I have been hearing so much, and it's the thing that I believe in so much, it seems that every speaker that we've had has spoken of freedom and responsibility. To me, they go hand in hand, because if I'm going to keep my freedom, I must be responsible. I'd like to open this meeting this afternoon as we usually do in the Louisville area.
Seems to me a meeting gets off on a little better footing with the 12 steps. They say be brief, and I am a firm believer in that.