Archive note: This file combines Sister Ignatia’s hospital-history address with a Bill W. address matching the archive’s Indianapolis 1966 recording. Although the source filename says Long Beach 1960, it is not presented as a single 1960 event. These performances overlap material already available elsewhere in the archive. Sister Ignatia separately; Bill W. separately.
Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Bill W Candidate Identity Review BW0231 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: sister-ignatia-bill-w-aa-hospitalization-and-spiritual-foundations-aa-1960-archive-19126.mp3 Duration: 00:57:17
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If I understand now why in certain irreverent circles in New York they refer to your institution as Pound's Horseshoes. All of us believe that we are here today, as is so frequently expressed in our meetings, thanks to the grace of God and A.A. Most of us learn about the grace of God through experience with someone who has known of it and who is able to mediate it to us. The entire movement has come to know of the grace of God as it has been mediated to us, expressed to us in tangible form by our next speakers.
I look forward to this opportunity of sharing the meeting because it will give me an opportunity to meet her. And I'm very happy that she has been able to come to the coast and be with us this afternoon. so that you may feel and come to know the sweetness of her spirit, the depth of her concern, and the effectiveness of her service to suffering alcoholics. Mr. Ignatius. I want to thank my good friends in San Francisco, alcoholics and alcoholics as part of my family, I know that God works in a serious way.
I'll live on that thought for the rest of my life, I will spend my days, at least as many of them as I have, in praying for alcoholics. But God works in a serious way. And certainly his divine powers have directed all this, I feel. He can use very weak instruments to carry out his designs. But in our advanced forms, as I know, 12 pounds, let's say, we've seen really wonderful results. Nothing short of miracles.
We are not getting to a lot of imaginary things, but still, my job is extremely caring to the alcoholics. Because, as long as I'm in the hospital, I never refuse to help and give my best to them. I feel that it's a privilege to work in this field. I owe much to my community. I'm guilt-told about this. to Harvey Fager, a plane on Bovomar Gate. And he last said, well, it's something like the A.H.A. step.
We turn our heads and our will over to God. I'm in the direction I was headed. My experience might have sent word at any time that I was taking a walk. It came out of that, you know, the direct part of the appreciation. But thank God, and the early tales of, well, I suppose, many of the sisters who were interested, and the little Dr. Bob, and Bill himself. Somehow we were able to see him. I was just, Bill asked me to say a few words about how he got started in Athens.
I hardly knew him myself. I was sent there in 1928, just to, well, it might be, the doctor recommended occupational therapy. Change of occupation for a while. I was in the field of music, and as you know, that's by the mayor's office. And, uh, they saw me. I changed my, uh, gig for me. So, uh, I was changed to St. Thomas, which was set to open in 1928. And before I met Dr. Bob, we had not been staffed the first year because we didn't know him, and neither did they know us.
The doctor operated at our hospital and the other hospital. I didn't know that he had any problem, and in fact, I wouldn't have known it had he not told me so. Because he didn't come to the hospital when he was thinking. Oh, I can recall sometimes his voice was rather reverberating. I could hear him when he came in the back door.
[00:05:04]
He had a disheartened face, actually. I didn't know him when I met him. But I, somehow I liked him because he was so, so straightforward. Those of us working on hospitals know that some doctors, uh, it's everything an emergency, a matter of life or death. I was kind of the exact truth about the case. So, well, my patients wait a few days, or if they can't, then you know that it's because of what they say.
However, the doctor was so straightforward that I enjoyed working with him. And one day he called. He looked rather down. We often had little chats. And, uh, this morning he said he looked rather down. I said, huh, what's the trouble this morning? Well, then he told me. He said, well, he said, Hi, my name's Lois Huggins. That's um… Uh, I've been in contact with a New York broker and a… And so I've had a thinking problem for a long time.
And somehow we got together and we thought, try to work out something that will help these drunks, you see. Well, you see, we've been trying it out. They tried a few wrist hangs. And um, we had some in the other hospitals. And he said, would you consider taking one? Well, I hesitated to try. Sometime before, oh, probably some months before, I took a man in who always looked, um… I didn't know much about this drinking.
Drunk to drink. See, some drunk drinks can have it wrong, others couldn't. So, as I saw him to the emergency room, I went down and talked with him. Oh, he said, just lie down a little while. He went to the city garage and looked like a very respectable person. He said, I've been drinking a little too much and I want to get straight in. Which I thought was a good thing. Well, the only doctor we had at the time was a vet in the fourth bedroom.
Then we knew nothing about, um, special treatments. And, um, I signed him to the man on service. I made up a prescription, registered him, put him to bed, and I said, you know how he felt? Oh, no, he didn't know anything. Well, I forgot about him. Well, I came over early the next morning. The night supervisor, who was tall, 50, we all cheated on about a big feat. Well, she was standing at this door waiting for me.
She said, the next time you take a VT and a 23, stay up all night and run around after me. We have to go. Hmm. That wasn't the end of it, either. I decided then that, that's enough. I always felt sorry to see him turned away, but I was not the last word in the hospital. So when Dr. proposed my taking, a real rush, because I thought it really would. Rather than having my own forgiveness, I felt, oh, dear me.
I told my best friend, I said, Dr., I'm not only, well, Ivy put out that I took the patient and everything else, I said, I don't think they want alcoholics. He said, sister, this patient wanted to be a bit of trouble because I was, I don't want to educate him, I assure you. Well, I must compromise him because he never said anything that wasn't true. I always say that. Well. Very carefully, I said, well, Doctor, I shall take him in.
And put him in a two-bedroom. I thought I was drinking, well, because he was so crowded in those days, and basically rather drinking. So I took him in this two-bedroom. Doctor hired me. Doctor went up and made a bedroom and everything. And I thought, well, I figured I wouldn't hear much till next morning anyway, if there was any trouble. So, well, there was a word about it. Doctor didn't seem to be at his office.
I asked him. He said, Tuesday, would you mind putting my patient in a private room? I thought I had done pretty good to put him in a two-bedroom. He said, you know, there, he said, there would be some main conversation with him,
[00:10:02]
and they'd like to talk to him privately. Well, I said, I'll do how I can, Doctor. After he left, I went up and looked the situation over. And right across the hall, we had a flower room where we used to put care of the patient's flowers. And I thought, well, they've been put so far somewhere else for the day, and I believe I could put the bed in there. That's what we did. And he was taking his pain.
We kept a close eye on him. I didn't. It was on me. And I thought, oh, my, they're respectable. Look at them. They don't look as though they ever took a drink. And went along. I thought, now the next time I'm going to have this trouble, I'm going to put him in a private room. So the next one that came along, I put him in a private room. And he came. I didn't know much about these alcoholics. I was not an expert, truly.
The Lord took out a weakling when he took out me. I know. But, however, I took him down to the room, as I would any patient. And then he was taken attack to the desk. So it's plain to me there's a little about it. I couldn't tell you too much. Except Dr. Bob would give her the orders. And he wasn't down after me. Well, he had a short time in ADTL. I nearly went through the floor because the nurse was all looking at him.
And I equalized back and moved him right down. So the nurse came down with me. And here he was under the bed. Well, I thought this will never work. I don't think this will go at all. I better put two together the next time. I didn't want to give up at once. I don't know just exactly what I did, but I had someone stay with me and what I did. But I knew after that, I put two together and then finally took a four bedroom, a two-bedroom.
One would help the other. Usually, one or two would be in a few days before they'd be coming out of it as well. And then… So then we took another two guys across the hall. Well… It is hard to say no when they really want to see something about it, and for that time men were coming in quite often. So much so that some of the sisters said, he might be fine to be an independent so often. He was so interested in the places.
And I didn't say much at first, but I later, I said, well, that is AA. I said, what is AA? Would you like to know something about it? And yes, well, I'll bring some letters to him. That's how I grabbed it about him. But of course, before that, I committed an alcoholic anomaly. Talked with Sister Superior. She'd run in, had a lot of experience in the old days of charity and all. And she knew what we were doing.
And she said to these men, she said, well, it's strange. She said, when we had them at charity, they'd be running around in the park, and they'd be on a pedal. But since Dr. Bowder's treating them, we don't know that they're in the house. So she said, there's no problem. Try it back and see. Just provide a loan. Well, that was wonderful. But that wasn't all. Of course, I'm very impatient to complain, because I didn't have visitors at any time of the day.
They seem like such privileged characters. Well, finally, we decided to, we had a small accident warrant. It was started off from the desk of a hospital, and there we put in the coffee bar, and Dr. Bob set up the program. I have not told you that the first opportunity he had, he brought Bill over, and of course I couldn't imagine who this wonderful Bill was, but I soon learned that John had chosen two great men, but one didn't have the other supplemented, and together they were perfect.
As a guest here, I often say to our boys, had John just had two great political leaders, no one would have come near him, as far as the alcoholics, doesn't want anything about religion or God, nor do we try to teach them.
[00:15:00]
But they aren't leaving it very long until they're asking or telling me what experience they've had and what they'd like to do. They know they have a living life, and I feel that, as many of our nurses have said, the best strategy is peace of mind. Because once they can be relieved of their anxieties and worries and see it properly, there should be no trouble. Personally, Christian and the doctors set up the program.
No televisions, no radios, no newspapers. Only literature pertaining to AA or a person that would have a moral, I mean, a building of their morals and things of that sort. Because they don't, they have all the reading they can take care of, and then their liberties, too. Well, we went on with that. There's so many details I could bring in, but I don't want to make it too long, because I know many of you have probably questions that maybe Colonel Towns could answer.
Some of you people know much more than I. But anyway, during Dr.'s time, I think we paid him for between 4,000 and 5,000. And he came in, he came in every day unless he was out of town or something like that. And without any charge, he said, that's my contribution to AA. Back in those days, we didn't have too much either to start with, and you couldn't mention money very well or how much it would cost, because if we just get them sober, they're doing a great deal.
But that was Second Terrible A-Round, and it worked out very well. And there are no problems. Oh, many times when they have it, they don't really take them in, because God certainly provides. And the man who gets this program is Everlasting and Grateful. Dr. is a cross on his family. Sometimes he goes around and he comes down and says, he says, let that man go home, he doesn't want this program. Oh, but Dr. has a big family and he has his partner.
He doesn't want the program because he isn't ready. So he was always late. Many times, if I meet him and say they have a heart attack story, they would tell me they had a bad heart or something. And I hated to bother Dr. too much. Often I'd call Ann. I think members of this group, or any alcoholics, would often say a prayer for Ann. She's the best phone in the world. In her calm, quiet way, she's really an angel.
I would call her and say, oh, Ann, I'm so worried about this fellow. She knew most of them from either the reputation Dr. is telling about them. You know, he would get them out if it was anything serious, but otherwise, you know, don't worry about them, because they have a, they have a K.L. biologist, in other words, and I use his word. They do anything to promote another drink or treatment or anything.
So, well, um, we take them at once. That was after she fired me, too, and I thought, oh, my. That kind of shit doesn't happen. But, oh, I see the wickedness. Because if there's men around, when that temptation comes, you know, I think, well, I can get back in there. Or, if I succeed, why, that'd be all right. And I'd only encourage men who, they know that it's a one-way, it's a process. And as Colonel Pound said, there are, there are cooperations committed.
Any hospital who tries to just take them in on their own is very foolish, because they need this process. If I ought to say it's something like learning to put me to trial. You know, all these angles are rules, but unless you get out there in the field and do some footwork and practice, you won't be much of a golfer. So we tried, got ourselves, if they could be taken out of their environment at first, it was just five days or so.
People were pretty befriended after the depression and all, financially. And the sooner we got them back to their families, the better. All the men who first were taken into their own homes and tried to help them got to make decisions. They weren't in groups. It was marvelous that they did. But however, we certainly have found that it was very wise.
[00:20:04]
Because a sponsor will not bring them until they are ready. And then we just bring them halfway and go over it. We want to be sure that the sponsor is not just a person you met in a bar somewhere. That's one thing to ask them, what groups they're attending. But now I know most of them well, know who are the sponsors and who are not. But it's a tremendous help. Well, finally, William, at the time of pain, well, at the end of the course, died in 49.
And he was a doctor. He was very hard of a doctor. He told them the previous year, of course, that he had just gotten into the profession. He explained to them that he still knows more doctors than I. Anyway, they brought him directly to the hospital. And we checked out today, too, that he was, he was all shaken up with all this, and Anne died of pneumonia. So, went on to marry a doctor, and he died in 1950, a year and a half later.
He knew them, I believe, that he had a more recent. He had talked with Bill, well, I think several times a week, if not every other day. He gave me a little message. And I felt Bill, I knew Bill and his guiding spirit, too, because there wasn't very much done, but they didn't keep talking very long, especially anything affecting the foundation of this. Then, one day, I got, well, we were just, I think, we were in the Army.
You know, we sold the Royal Assembly. I often wondered whether I was off the mailing list or whatever it was. I don't know. I was there twenty-four years. Probably one week started twenty-four years. And finally, he'll be entertained. So, I was to go to charity and work with AAA. They had a habit, AAA Charity, and fine workers there, but they just had a small department. And Sister Dickson, a very fine sister who everybody loved, was there, too.
And she came down, and we told her everything, and Dr. Bob talked with her. And she really did a good job. But they decided to build a new wing, and all the extra. Oh, I know they talked to alcoholics and all. It was a thrill, in and out. But everything was discontinued. It wasn't absolutely as peaceful as it is. So, they just kind of forgot about AAA. But their mother didn't see so much good in it.
I know. I went there in August, and I didn't hear a word about, other than on my obedience, it said, I was to take care of this floor, and visit this patient, and work with AAA. Well, I mean, someday maybe we'd have them. But anyway, I just agreed, and went along day by day. Finally, one day, I got a call. I was in surgery testing him to see if he'd find out the condition. So, we were worried about this patient.
We built a new wing. The superior wants to see the new floor. And I came down, and the architect of the new building was there. And a few nurses, you know, the director of our nursing service was there. And, of course, there was a lot going on. And he said, what kind of a subject would you like to be taking? Well, you know, I'm standing in the middle of the floor and getting ready to strange. I didn't know whether to pull myself or not just yet.
And I didn't think very fast. I just, you know, I said, well, are they violent? I said, no, they're not violent. Oh, they are intoxicated. Yes, they are intoxicated. But they're kind enough to be screaming because we need to make sure that they want the painting. Well, she said to the architect, you won't need it. Take the painting. Well, I said, I'm sorry, Mr. Rocking, would you mind giving me a few days and we'll draw up a little plan of what we'd like?
Fine. Well, the day that they came was on a feast day. Lady Rosie, that's how we called it, Rosie Hall. And there is a nice little bridge they had when I was a little girl.
[00:25:00]
Oh, I'd love to have this in memory of Dr. Bob. Well, I thought I'd finish that and call it the Alpha Heart Award. We'll call it Rosie Hall, and I think he might have enrolled RH. Well, I thought all you needed to know is that I had got the chance to retire again. Now, I was over six, so we called it Rosie Hall Celebrity. Now, the insignia on the door is RHX, from which we open the wall and stand it by a hospital for a holiday on October the 7th, 1952.
She's the most older Rosie. I feel that people, whether they're in this church or out, whatever they're denominating, when you see a rosary, you know it means prayer. I think they get the rosary out while they're praying somehow. Everyone, I think this is all the result of someone's prayers. The grace of God comes through someone's prayer and penance, that's for sure. Well, anyway, the prayer call had been in Rosie Hall for a while, and I told you about that.
In sitting eloquently and expressing the epitome of sisterly charity, Sandy Gretzky and her staffers were reassorted as they joined forces with members of AA, a strictly non-sexuality movement, in an attempt to direct the men and women of all faiths from the bottomless pit of alcoholism. To admit to this war, you must be sponsored by a member of AA and good standing. You must offer evidence of desire, not just to get sober, but also to serve and perpetuate your sobriety on a day-by-day basis.
Unless you yourself are willing to admit that you are an alcoholic, you are liable to seek help from everyone elsewhere. For physical therapy… This is the most modern known to medical science. The patient's entire stay is a retirement to the outside world, and the habits that have caused him to collapse. There are no regular holidays. Um, in case of emergency, nothing that they may live in during, I think, in keeping with the programs are available.
The patient may have no needages, except members of alcoholic anomalies, who are welcome between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. The complications include alcoholism and thrabbing problems. Every evening, a member of A.A. comes to the hospital to conduct a brief O.A. meeting for the patients. In fact, a surprise stands in front of the hall for A.A. members and the patients often gathered to discuss their common problems.
A little R.I.P. is open at all times. Just, if they want, decent gratification, I suppose. There. There are novel and successful works that have been done by members of A.A. who consider their time and money, members who belong to the building chain, work day and night, day and night, their hours, triple treats, a lovely accordion, at no cost to the hospital. O.G. Horace Sessions, first patient, one year old, and since our date, 1,000 young women, have been hospitalized every evening.
We have much, rules of women, we're hoping to get more. Oh, we have three, usually we have two, sometimes four, and even a successful five. That isn't good. However, the amount of Rosie Hall, except for this first patient, one year old, since that date, well, pardon me for cheating, they have been offered not only the treat of surprise, but also the treats we're happy to provide. The sisters of Karen, a member of the Alcoholics Anonymous, who have assisted them at declining the usual credit.
They are aware that it is and isn't Rosie. Well, God bless you all, and I wish you a continued hope of sobriety. And may God's grace be with you always, and bless every one of you. Thank you. Thank you, sister, for bringing us this story of the gain of A.A. hospitalization in your community. Remember, he spoke of Dr. Bob's New England accent, and one of the strange ways which God works is that he selected two men from Vermont to found our group.
The governor of Vermont, taking notice of this, has declared a national or a statewide celebration of whether this is
[00:30:00]
celebrate the founding of A.A. or the departure from Vermont of our founders, no one is quite sure. But we will now hear again from the founder of our great organization, Joe. Good morning dear people. I would like to renew the thanks that Lois gave for the privilege of being with this magnificent crowd. We have heard unsurpassed talk on every aspect of that benign, that providential century, which is our society.
We have seen and felt and heard expressions of a spiritual essence, of its moral substance. We are reminded that our malady was lack of life in spirit, lack of morality. But lest we get too guilty, we are also happily reminded that this is also a bodily disease. You know, I recently went to sit there at Nancy's funeral. And in a very real sense, it was a time not for mourning, but of rejoicing that God had been so good to us all.
And there, as the mind dies from death to those early days, we can see Dr. Bob representing medicine, and there he is, and Sister Ignatia, all the best in religion. Of them, it was the Divine Synthesis. I put history in my belief of the special inheritance. In the middle of the 19th century, a new means of communication burst upon the world to set in motion a train of events, of consequences that even now cannot be reckoned.
This is a telegraph. It is a matter of great significance, and meaning at least to us. Its first words, set over the first wire between Washington and Baltimore, were these. And they apparently characterized the inventor. The words were, what hath God wrought. So today, over a retrospect of 30 years, we are watching the building of a new means of communication, characterized not by material things, but a new way of teaching the languages part one to another.
And this language is a varied language, and we have participated in one of its magnificent variations in this meeting.
[00:35:01]
Having in it the components of science and of the spirit, the only synthesis of any great promise to the world of our time. In a sense, I suppose our beginnings are infinite ages old, because there has never been any age in which the impulse to reach for a higher power was absent, and man became conscious. Then came consciousness. And of course, we are in his tradition and teaching. But I would like to pinpoint, in terms of people, who the personal candlebearers were in the beginning.
And I am happy to say, especially so since we have heard so much good nature, and perhaps not of a massive variegation of psychiatry, that this man happens to be a psychiatrist. And in the view of many, and I am one, one of the great figures of our generation. I speak of Carl Jung. One of the three founders of the modern art of death psychology. He was distinguished from the other founders in that he felt, and I am sure knew in his inner heart, that man was something more than a modicum of intelligence often abused.
He was something more than a bundle of incense. Something more than $2 worth of candy. I am sure of this because I know people who have been in contact with him. And one of my chief regrets is that a correspondence that we had begun before his death had not been started very early. Carl Jung, if you will, a prominent American businessman, who I should call Rowland. Rowland was the typical case. He had exhausted every resource he knew.
So he came to Carl Jung, and they spent a year together. And Rowland became convinced that now so many of the hidden strains of his strange compulsions and motivations could reveal that he would drink no more. He was meeting a doctor who was drunk within a month. To him, this was a gaslighting experience, this was the end. And he came back to Dr. Carl and said, Well, you were my court of last resort.
Is there anything else? And this very kind old gentleman said, Rowland, I thought that you might have been one of those rare cases where my heart might help you to survive in better terms. But now I know your state is that of such gravity and complication that my heart will not unravel it. And the patient took another dive toward depression and death. The basis on which our whole republic rests. He hit bottom.
[00:40:02]
But he persisted. Doctor, is there no other recourse for me? And the dear old gentleman said, Rowland, Yes, there may be, but I must be frank with you. It doesn't happen too often. I speak to you of a conversion experience. All but I said, Rowland, I used to be a veteran in the church. My faith has still not left me. But this hasn't worked. Jung said, I am talking about something that goes beyond faith.
I am talking about a transforming experience in which the recipient as a gift appears to undergo a motivation change that cannot be accounted for by simple faith, by environment, by motivation, by association. These profound changes seem to transcend the sum of all of the ordinary resources that can be brought to bear. Now, he said, among alcoholics, as among other men of all kinds, these profoundly transforming experiences have occurred here and there.
We cannot tell to whom or when the lightning of providence will flash. So I suggest that you must… And this great and humble man had placed the church standard which was to illumine the table as we saw it. Rowland associated himself with the octave group then in Europe and practiced their principles, none of which was new. They had an emphasis. There was the idea of one's close importance as an author.
You know the rest of it. Our basics were abstracted from it. And unaccountably, Rowland seemed to be released. He hadn't been obfuscated out of drinking. He had been released from it. Then he came to America where he fell under the spell of Dr. Sam Singer, one of the founders of the octave group of that old town. And Sam was then also a rector at a textbook church, the City 20 Church in New York. And in the octave group, there were a handful of guns who had been released.
Most of them, I recall early, were trained when they were released, none of the less, by this sort of practice and attitude. And Rowland thought of himself as an old school friend of his. This school friend is the one so affectionately known to us as Eddie. Now, I'll pause here, having illustrated to you this stream of influence, beginning with you, to the O.J., to Hazard, and let's come down there on the other side and see what happened at the confluence.
I'd gone to Ruth. She saw his old view. She's right, isn't she? I've told you a thousand times the story of my adventure. So I shall quickly bring myself to that day in 1934, midsummer.
[00:45:00]
Another physician was treated, dear old Dr. Schoepfer, who certainly will be known in our animals as a medical saint for so long as he lasts. Someone wrote a great volume piece about him, and the title was this, The Little Doctor Who Loved Some. And from the point of view of the rationalist and the scientific man, the little doctor was a nobody. Even Frank was odd-eyed, dear. He said that sure, there is a lunatic compulsion to drink.
Certainly, true enough. No doubt it may have psychological causes, trauma, and use, etc. But he said, I think that there is a big moral question here. And he also said, I believe that there is something wrong with the body and metabolism of alcohol. For a start, not knowing what it is, I use a widely underserved term called allergy. So this adds up to a compulsion that condemns the victim to drink against his will and interest until the destruction is complete.
And this is going to a physical condition that ensures his lunacy and finally his demise. On this hot summer night, this dear little man, who once again had worked in drying out joints of a twenty-pound hospital where I used to go, weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds a month, occasionally sketches here and there. He worked on his kittens. He boarded in the place. He had a room up there. And so, as gently as he could, he told us what the score was.
Just like you, speaking to Rowland, he said, when Bill came here, he clearly wanted so desperately to stop. He asked me. I thought he must be one of his kids. I'm afraid that I must say that he is. He's beginning to be deteriorating. I'm afraid that he would remain sane or even live long. That he will have to be submitted. So this is tense. At times, unfortunately, Dr. Young and Dr. Selfworth had upon me and upon all of us, and both these truly great men, great human beings, have had the courage to say what they believe.
Meanwhile, my friend Abby had got into such a state that he was about to be submitted for lunacy at a state institution in Vermont for the family's promise. The town fathers were worried about him. For the town fathers, this was it. So they gathered up Abby, pulled him before the judge down at Bennington, and just as he was about to be routed to the hotel at Battleboro, then appeared Hazard along with a couple of other drunks from the hospital.
And they took Abby in sorrow,
[00:50:04]
and they got him sort of indoctrinated on the desirability of honesty, restitution, helping other people, prayer, and so forth. They brought him down to New York. Well, just after leaving the hospital, I had stayed sober for a month or two out of sheer fear, constant vigil. And then I was in the foils again. So about the time Abby landed in New York and was parked because he was peniless in Calvary, Michigan, I'm sitting at the kitchen table.
Lois is working in that department store. I had a communication, a kind of a language of the heart, with the delicatessen up there, which supplied me with gin on credit. And I sat drinking in his telephone room. And now I knew that this was it. Something told me so, and science had driven in the last plot. I was nailed down to death. So the telephone rang, and here's Abby. I thought he had gone a little bit in.
I said, come on over. We'll talk about the good old days. Ah, what a very significant thing. Wow, the good old days. Today was unbearable, and there would be no future. So we would talk. I appeared in the doorway. At once I sensed something indefinably different about him. He came in. He sat at this kitchen table in the basement. On it I had a big pitcher full of gin with a little pineapple juice plopped in so as to suggest cocktails instead of the straight stuff when Lois got home from the store.
So I set out to come before him and started pouring. He said, no thanks. What? No thanks. What's got into you, Abby? Not drinking? Well, he says, I'm not drinking today. Well, I said, come on. Let's have it. What's happened? Well, he looked at me, and he said, I've got malignant. Well, if I'd been deflated by the scientist, it would have really let me down to the middle of the heart. Because I had had a wonderful scientific education.
Just like I like teaching. I knew better. Well, one must be polite, so I said to him, what brand is it? And he said, I wouldn't exactly call it a brand. And then, being very careful to avoid the aggressive evangelism of the Oxford group, he merely told me his story, how he'd met Hazard, come to New York, and he felt unaccountably relieved from this disease. Relief, as anyone. I always talk about the waterway.
So his story carried great conviction in me. Over this identification, no doubt, a great depth, over which simple ideas could be picked in. Instead of having to use the corkscrew the psychiatrist had taught, he was able to go right straight through. He hadn't presented me with a single new idea at all. But I will say that after that conversation, I could never be the same man again. And so, without pestering me further, he took his leave.
He said, we'll see you later. In no waking hour in the days that followed, there could be vision of anything. He didn't cross that table easily. And, of course, I felt trapped. I said, but if I only could go along with this. Honestly, yes, you could make it prior, helping other people dandy, you know, in public service, et cetera. That's a God thing. And this had a really, although he had played it down, appeared to be destructive.
So finally, one morning after Lois had gone and I'd got partly changed up, I said, I've got to get a clear look at this thing. So I arrived up at town hospital, had food,
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Dr. Shiltsworth looked at me sadly, and I brandished a bottle and yelled, Doc, look, time, I've got something. And the old man said, I'm afraid you have. You'd better get upstairs and go to bed. Well, you know the rest of the story. I fussed around in the awful dunk. Experience had a certain paranoid component. I was prone to grandiosity. I think I announced during the first six months I was going to fix all the drunks in the world, which was a long, decisive experience.
Ego came back. Till I was in the damn one and got sick. Until I arrived in Akron, and here was here Dr. Bob. And so I said, I'm going to quit placing. I'm going to quit demanding that these people have an experience like mine. Indeed, and this was another cornerstone, if I am to stay sober myself, for I had been disconcerted by the failure of a business deal, I need this other alcoholic drunk or sober worse than he could ever make me.
So we struck that mutuality. I got off of my tightrope. It clicked soon after that I was a third. And in Akron, Bob was just a remnant. Again in its benign state. Medicine, religion, and our own experience launched a set of transformations running through 5,000 drunks at Akron in Bob's lifetime and with his nature and co-workers in the area to another 10,000 after the time of his death. Such is our debt to medicine.
Such is our debt to Christian faith. Such, my friends, is our debt to the everlasting and eternal God. © transcript Emily Beynon