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Source: Walter O – Speaker Talk (1968) – 1968-08-16.mp3 File: walter-o-speaker-talk-1968-1968-08-16.mp3 Duration: 01:02:30
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And I now give you your speaker of the evening, Walter O. from the state of California. Walter. Thank you, Bish. Good evening, my dear parishioners. My name is Walter O. and I'm an alcoholic. That's the attitude. I'm fine. I'm the son of an alcoholic. I'm the father of an alcoholic. And I was very glad to be up here tonight because I wanted to see how many works. After that last night thing, I thought you gave us a sort of preview of Vice President Humphrey's campaign.
I think he's going to have a few apologies and a few blunders, and it was a charming thing, Manny, and you added very much to what was going on here. I was enchanted last night, incidentally. It's been a series of enchantments here, but I was enchanted last night when Lou talked in that lovely poetic flight about the dogs. Because I haven't known what to do about ours. And as fanciful as that flight was into the dog world, I'm going to discuss the problem of AA in the world of horticulture.
My beloved Terry has the green thumb. Now, let me explain. I'm a city-born fellow. I was born in the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, like tomorrow night's speaker. He was too. I was raised in Hartford, Connecticut, London, South Bend, New York, Los Angeles, and I always thought that stoop labor was for peasants. It wasn't for an intellectual like I fancied I was. It wasn't for me to bend over and sweat in an ungainly fashion. And so this summed up my life until one morning Terry said, look, we've got to get out of the nursery and get some flats.
So I went along because I wasn't working. You can get habits when you're older. And I love to travel with Terry, like coming here. I love to go out shopping with her as long as she's got her credit card with her. It's very pleasant. But anyway, this morning she wanted to go down to the nursery, and I went down with her, and she's out picking out things. And you could call it conscience, you could call it God, but wisdom said to me, Walter, the fact that you never did raise anything doesn't mean you never could raise anything.
Why don't you get with a great creative symphony of nature? Why don't you take something and plant it and care for it and nourish it and bring it to fruition and flowering? And I thought, well, I will. So I looked around for something worthy of me. And hanging over here I saw a fuchsia. And it was a gorgeous thing, and I was drawn to it in standard. And I bought the fuchsia and went over here to pay for it. And when I came over here to pay for it, there was a book there, How to Raise Fuchsias, 50 cents. So I bought that and I got up on the hill and I found out in the third paragraph why the fuchsia and I were drawn to each other.
The third paragraph starts off in boldface type, the fuchsia is a very heavy drinker. And then I was exalted yesterday when Marty was talking about, and she was talking about an improbable background in which to find an alcoholic background. The Seventh Day Adventist in Kansas, which he implied was about as dry as a thing could be. Look, I'm a Catholic from New England, and the Irish have a great explanation for a guy who drinks too much. They turn it into a compliment. They say, well, he has a very strong weakness.
And when she was talking about responsibility, remember she listed the word responsibility financially, responsibility emotionally, and she didn't say anything about responsibility sexually, which is a subject I love to entertain. Now, do you remember the feeling you had when you were loaded and you looked at somebody of the opposite sex? Oh boy, what a lover you were in those days. And I have Ann Landers here with me. I like to bring you up to date on these things. And here's Ann Landers.
[00:04:59]
She says, Dear Ann, I have been married for 30 years to a man who is turning into an oversexed alcoholic. Bish was telling me he's an educator and he knows the mistaken grammar there. That is redundant.
[00:05:25]
The guy's an alcoholic, of course he's oversexed. And then she goes on and says he drinks almost a case of beer every night and even more on weekends. When I tell him he's becoming an alcoholic, he points to his work record. He has not missed a day in six years and insists that people can't be alcoholics if they stick to beer and work regularly. I admit it's amazing that his work record is so good. I also find it amazing that he can be so amorous just before he passes out.
Then it says which he does almost every night. And maybe that's why it's signed Aggravated Edna. No, I think of the embarrassments that a fellow has. Before I hung up my gloves as a drinker, I was over to a cocktail party in Pasadena one day and three days or four days hence I was scheduled. Do you remember when they used to have those television marathons and you'd run them from 9 o'clock Saturday night until 3.30 Sunday afternoon or something like that? I did one over in Birmingham for cerebral palsy and I was booked to go over to Texas.
And I was at this cocktail party and somebody said to me, hey, Edna Ferber's written a new book. Well, I knew Edna. I'm of that vintage and I used to know her. We were in the same office there and I read all her books and enjoyed them and loved them from showboats and Good Earth, Good Sun, Great Sun and all that sort of thing. And I said, what's the book about? They said, it's about Texas. It's called Giant. I said, oh God, I'm going to Texas over the weekend. I'll have to get it and buy it because I have to read about it. They said, you can't. It won't be published in the hardcover till fall. It's coming out in a serial form in the Ladies' Home Journal. Well, I hate serialization. I don't like to read things in magazines like that.
And so I thought, well, I'll wait till the fall. But I started to fly over to Dallas and I was changing there to go on San Antonio. And all the way I thought, but you could be reading about Edna or Edna's book about Giant. And so by the time I got to Dallas, I'd broken down and I figured, oh hell, I'll get the magazine. Now, the ordinary man in Texas is taller than I am. You take the ordinary man in Texas and you put him in high heels and that lifts him a bit higher. Then you give him the high hat and that makes him look more forbidding. And I was standing between two of these steeples, one here, one here at the magazine stand and the woman turned to me and she said, what would you like? I said, I'd like a copy of the Ladies' Home Journal.
It was not one of my greater moments. You know, this whole thing I'm doing tonight, this isn't a speech. This is a peon of praise. The whole purpose of my being here tonight is to hold up the mirror and show you yourselves how wonderful you are, how you have grown. What effect you're having on the world around you and how pleasing you must be as God looks down at you doing your work. You know, the Portuguese have a wonderful axiom. The Portuguese axiom is this, God writes straight with crooked lines. And I think of all of the crooked lines that converge here, that converge here at this lectern where I am privileged to be.
And I'm not worried. I don't get up here worried about my material. I used to be that way when I was a drinking man and I used to be that way when I was a comedian back in the old days, wondering about audiences in the nightclubs or on Broadway or radio or TV, whatever it was. But I don't worry anymore because I'm not going to say one single original thing here tonight. You have written or caused to enter into my routine everything that's said here. And may I thank you right now for the material that you've given me.
[00:10:09]
This meeting that brings us here together says a great deal about the movement. We're supposed to get up and explain what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. And so I very joyfully address myself to that problem, what we were like. Well, we were confused, as you know. We were mixed up, as you know. And I would like to paint a little brief picture for you. We all feel a sense of shock and horror when you see a man living in a house that's a ruin. It's a heartbreak.
The windows are broken, holes in the roof, it's leaking. Hinges are falling off the door. The walls are splintered and rotting. The corners are filled with wreckage and filth and garbage. And inside there is hiding a human being, hiding from the world, hiding from his true self. And I say that's a very depressing thing, and yet you and I know a sight that's even more depressing. It's a man who's living in a ruined house, but is happily convinced it's a very beautiful place to live and everything is ship-shapen in order. And that's what the drunk does. And that's what you and I did. And you and I used to have that address, the house of defeat, the house of decay, or if you will, the house of despair.
And this was a terrible time in our lives, and you look on a person like that with pity because he's living in a shadow world of his own creation and he's cut off from truth and reality. Actually, he's living in a sort of a dismal Disneyland. Now Disneyland is a place of great beauty and great imagination and great entertainment and a glorious thing to have, but Disneyland is a dream world. And this is the dream world that the drunk lives in, the world of yesterday, fantasy land, the world of tomorrow, everything except right now.
And there he lives, convinced that the place he's living is a great place and he has no apologies to make. And he's living in this place that is rotten and ready to collapse, and one day the winds blow and the rains pour and the whole thing topples in on top of him, topples down on him, and there he is, naked, stark naked, in his pride and selfishness. I discuss this and I paint this nauseating picture for one reason. It enables you to see better how far you have come, because you've come a long way from what you used to be like, and what you are now is something that is completely and utterly different.
The thing that accounts for this, of course, is the change, and that's the key word. That's the key word in the world today. That's the key word in American life. I grew up being born as I was as the century opened. I grew up with certain fixed values. The United States of America could not be shaken. The Roman Catholic Church could not be shaken. And then later in life I came to hope and believe and dream in the United Nations, and I thought the United Nations can't be shaken. And what's happened to America, what's happened to the Catholic Church, and what's happened to the United Nations in the last year or two gives every thinking person pause.
Now, on the subject of change, I want to quote something here from your part of the world. It's from the Atlanta Constitution. It is a projection made by the computers at Georgia Tech University and reprinted in the Atlanta Constitution. I am quoting it verbatim, and I'll go on from there. To describe graphically the relationship between America and the rest of the world in size and resources, In Size and Resources, Students Have Constructed an Imaginary Town. They Reduced the World Population of 3 Billion People to 1,000 People to Keep the Proportions the Same.
[00:15:13]
In such a town there would be 60 Americans, as against 940 of all other nationalities. The 60 Americans would have one half the total income, the other half being divided among the remaining 940. Life expectancy of the 60 Americans would be 70 years. Life expectancy of the other 940 would be less than 40 years. The 60 Americans would have six and a half times as much goods per person as all the rest of the world, and far more than their total food supply.
The 940 would be underfed. One half of them would be unable to read or write. In this town of 1,000 people, 303 would be white, 697 colored. Of the 940, 200 would have malaria, 3 would die of leprosy, 45 would die of malaria, cholera, typhus, and malnutrition. Most of the Americans would never get these diseases or probably ever be worried about them. No one can listen to that, listen to the radio, listen to television, and deny the fact that America is in for what must be simply described as a massive change.
And a massive change frequently involves the miracle, you know it, you've done it in AA, it's the miracle of helping the blind to see. After my collapse in Ireland there a couple of years ago, after Toronto, Terry and I started around the world, it was to be a nine-month trip, and in the fifth week I had a heart attack in Dublin, so we came home. Six months later, when I'd recovered, we went back to the Mediterranean for two months, and that was Portugal, Mallorca, Spain, and North Africa. It was my first exposure to the world of the Arab.
Many of you young men, I'm sure, and you travelers have known it, but it was new to me. I'd been to Europe several times, but not to Africa. And over there I became acquainted with something that I hadn't been aware of here, what I call the dirty blind. Over here, if a person is sightless, there are many places he can turn. He can turn to the Braille Institute, recording for the blind, which is a wonderful new charity.
This is the place where they record the textbooks that teach the blind. You've got the white cane, you've got the seeing-eye dogs, and a compassionate, affluent, wealthy society doesn't like to see people in that condition. But in Africa, there was poverty. Now I'm not a stranger to poverty, not that I've known it as a gut issue, but I've traveled some. I've seen the naked children in South America with their bloated bellies because they didn't have anything to eat.
And over here I saw the ragged, and I saw the diseased, and I saw the blind. And I will never forget Terry and I coming out of the hotel in Casablanca, a beautiful, proud city, coming out of there in the second morning, and here was the gauntlet ahead of us. And there was a woman, I swear she couldn't have weighed over 71 pounds. And in her arms was an infant. I don't think the infant was four weeks old. And the infant was rickety, and the belly was swollen, and it was a sickly child, and she came over and put the child's hand on my coat to tug at me and get my attention.
So that afternoon, Terry and I were in the Casbah, which as you know is a marketplace that goes back to before the Christian era. And in there, strangely enough, and believe it or not, I saw you people. There were five blind beggars in their rags, underfed, blind, with their cups, chanting the beggar's chant down in their hocks. And believe it or not, there was master ceremonies. He was blind too. And he moved around in front of them, and he put the bite in you and took the money away from you, and we watched them for a long while.
And then they went back and sat down, and I saw them feel the denomination of the coins and split it six ways. And when I saw them, I saw you, because I realized that they had made the same decision you and I made. They had once gotten together and decided, we're better off together than we are alone. And this is what happened to you. And when you lived in that house of despair, that house of decay, that house of defeat, there came a day when you were lying, figuratively speaking, maybe literally speaking, face down, crushed, whipped, beaten.
[00:20:13]
And there was a knock on the door of your heart, and you couldn't believe it. It was a believe it or not to you. Somebody would knock on your heart and want to see you. But some mysterious motivation moved you across, and you opened the door, and who was standing there? A drunk. A failure. A guy who said, I thought you might need us. We'd like to help you. Follow me. It was the same thing a carpenter said on the shores of Galilee 2,000 years ago to some fishermen. Follow me.
And so you followed that drunk to a meeting. And maybe you were nauseated by the meeting, the first meeting, and it didn't get through. But the seed was planted. And before you knew it, you had moved out of the house of defeat over into another place. And you looked back on what you were. You know, the Germans have a wonderful word. I saw it myself when I was there. I went over in 1951 to entertain in Germany and Austria, and it was before the upswing economically. And Germany, the 15th and the 8th Air Forces, had demolished it and bombarded it.
And rubble, rubble, rubble everywhere. And what is rubble? It's broken stone. It's splintered marble. It's splintered wood. It's fractured glass. It's all these things with points. And there were acres and acres and acres and miles of it as far as you could see. But I was there in 1951. And although the bombers had said, this is the end of you. This is death. No. There were edges, little edges here where vines grew or grass grew or flowers grew or leaves grew. And there was life. There was something. And that's what you realized all of a sudden. There was some life.
And somebody said, stay in my heart. Stay in my heart until you have your own place fixed up. And you left that first meeting because you'd moved over, figuratively speaking, into an awareness of God. And that's a big thing because God is very shy. God is very shy. He won't come into your heart until your company is gone. And as long as you're entertaining anger, resentment, jealousy, lust, fear, as long as this racket is going on in your heart, you couldn't hear God if he whispered to you.
So he waits. He waits for that exquisite moment and he leads you over here through this drunk. And you come away with a strange new thing. The first thing you've got is hope. You actually see these people and you hope. And before you know it, they've given you back something that you jettisoned, you threw away some time ago. They give you back a sense of self-respect. And now you're making progress. And now these gentle educators, because that's what they are, they are educators.
I know Bish will tell you, those of you who have forgotten the derivation of the word education, it comes from the two words in Latin, e, the prefix, and dutere. Dutere meaning to lead, to lead out, lead out from. To educate is to lead out from where? To lead out from darkness. To lead out from hatred. To lead out from ignorance. To lead out from drunkenness. To lead out from blindness. And the blindness that I was talking about in those people in Africa has not left America untouched today.
We don't see clearly what we should do on race, nor do we see clearly what we should do on Vietnam. And we don't see clearly what we should do in politics, and we don't see clearly what we should do with the younger people. But you and I, the members of AA, and all the blessed AAs around the world, have got 20-20 vision and perfect vision on one thing. You and I can see very clearly what would happen if we took the first drink. We'd be back in the snake pit. We'd be back in the house of despair and defeat and decay. And so these people have given us hope, they've given us a sense of self-respect, and they give us faith, and we believe.
[00:25:05]
So we go along with faith and hope and self-respect for a while, and it's almost as if these two things come, it's almost as if they come as one divine gift at the same time. Suddenly, you have a sense of value. Now, a sense of value is a very important thing. I can digress for one minute to give you an example of value that was dramatized in the life of Terry and me a few years ago. We were invited to Akron for the 25th anniversary, and my bosses wanted me to go on to New York to do something for them, and we were staying at the Plaza, which is as noble a hotel as there is, and we were going to see a man for all seasons.
And it was a hot day, and the humidity was tough, and Terry is very smart about these things, and she came back from a shopping tour and says, darling, why do we make a big thing about dinner? Let's take a shower and rest. Let's have a couple of sandwiches and coffee here. Go to the theater and then go out to Sardi's or the Star Club after that. And I went over and picked up the phone and ordered two sandwiches. Do you know what I paid for them? $14.50.
I didn't look at the menu. I ordered two steak sandwiches, $5.50 apiece, coffee, $75, room service, $1, tax, tip to the waiter, $14.50, and you know damn well there's nothing you can do to a steer to make it worth that much. And you also know there are thousands doing that tonight, thinking they're big shots. There's a basic dishonesty here, and the con men have taken over. But along with a sense of value, God puts right into your heart at the same time a feeling of reverence.
They go together. I can't imagine value without reverence, nor can I imagine reverence without value. They go together. We were over, Terry and I, in Virginia for the Blackstone Convention here a few months ago, which is a happy place to call with Tom L. and all those people. I used to love Dutch very much. And we came north and spent two days in New York, and we had read, or rather we'd seen the copy of Life magazine where the new Ford Foundation building was pictured. And I hope every one of you, when you get to New York, will go into the Ford Foundation building and give yourself a treat.
I'll tell you for this reason. This is a building that's almost opposite the United Nations at 42nd Street and 1st Avenue. It's 12 stories high, and you go up in front and it's nothing but glass, all glass there, and it's all glass there. There are two floors of offices on top, but those ten floors underneath are very narrow. On that side there are offices, on that side there are offices, and here, standing ten or eleven stories high, one third of an acre, right in the heart of materialistic Manhattan, right in the huckster paradise, right there, there are flowers, there are pools, there are vines, there are rocks, there are shrubs, there are trees.
And I found myself whispering, and Terry said, Darling, you don't have to whisper. You're not in a cathedral. I said, But I feel as if I were. This building has been designed to invite the soul of man in the middle of New York's Hurley Burley to stop, to stop and listen. And maybe if he listens, he'll find out what God has got to say to him. And I realized that in the creative talent of the architects who imagined this and made it a fait accompli, here was an occasion for reverence. I was in Radio City when they opened because I was working for NBC.
That's one of the great things of life, but for heaven's sakes, when you go to New York, give yourself a treat and walk into the Ford Foundation building, and you can't say that to everybody in the world, but you can say it to AAs, because AAs have a sense of value and AAs have a sense of reverence. We came back, and within two weeks, an assassin killed another Kennedy boy. Killed another Kennedy boy, and the world stood still for a while and grieved, and you saw those three women, you saw those three women against the backdrop of eternity, because let's face it, the Greeks never imagined a tragedy that can equal the tragedy of those three women.
[00:30:24]
Three women, three wives, three mothers, three widows, and every one of those women carried herself like a queen because she was close to God, and this arouses reverence. Where else do you find reverence? You and I know it at every meeting. You and I know it at every meeting at least once, but here, thank God, it's twice. Many calls for silence that we may contemplate for a moment, and then we recite the Serenity Prayer, and there is reverence in every heart, and this meeting will end with the Lord's Prayer, and reverence will fill this place.
But ah, there's also another kind of experience and an intimate knowledge of and awareness of reverence. You heard Frank get up and speak. He spoke from a full and beautiful heart and well. I looked at Marty M. yesterday, and I thought, oh God, how I love her. When I thought of what she had done, what she had done, and I think of all that she's done for us and for people who are stricken like us, and I loved her like I loved Frank.
And Lou last night, with his charming lesson and his performing dogs, and then Cease came today, and Cease talked to me, as he talked to you too, but he talked to me and my heart flowed over because he mentioned, he mentioned Shy. Shy's dead. We honor our dead. I remember in September, I went to pick up a birthday cake in Hollywood, and I looked around for Charlie. He had a wonderful name. Some of you may have met him at the conventions. His name was Count the House Charlie.
Count the House Charlie K., and I'll explain to you how he got the name. He was a delightful little man. He was a wonderful little character, and he loved to count people at AA meetings. And then he would happily come up and whisper in the speaker's ear, 78. Or another night, 44. And I'll never forget seeing him at Long Beach International in Toronto, figuring, the poor man, what the hell can he do here? And I loved him because he was a good AA, and I enjoyed him, and he added a little paprika to every meeting.
And I looked around where he always was, and I didn't see him, and I thought, well, I'll have to call for Charlie, and I didn't call. And I got home before I thought of it, and Thursday morning, I was sitting at my desk, and the phone rang, and a voice says, Walter, this is Bill. I says, yes, Bill. He said, did you know Charlie was dying, and he wants to see you? And I got in the car and raced over to the valley, to the motion picture home, and I saw Charlie. And two days later, he was dead, and we went to his funeral, a group of us.
Now, what were we honoring here? There were no pockets in a shroud. We were honoring a man of honor. It's the same feeling you and I have when we think of our co-founder. And I remember the sensation I had that morning in June, in 1962, when they came by to pick me up, and we had coffee, and they said, where do you want to go first, Walter? I said, I want to go to Bob's grave, because I knew my life today, and all my happiness, and all my blessings, and my wife, and my children, and my health, I knew all these things were contributed to by Dr. Bob, and I owed him something.
And I went out there, and I saw this little marble slab. You've seen thousands of them. There was nothing to indicate that this was one of the great men of American history. There was nothing to indicate that he was a great American. There was nothing to indicate he was a saint, because that's what he was. That's what Charlie was. They were saints.
[00:35:13]
And, of course, there's a word that's grown out of style. You know, I can remember, if you were brought up like I was, there must be some Catholics in the room, because there are an awful lot of drunks here. And when you were a kid, and they talked about saints, you'd turn to a sister or somebody and say, what's a saint? And she pointed to a stained glass window, and there was a cat up there in the stained glass window that looked like the first part of a commercial for a laxative, before he took it.
And you didn't see any fun in him at all. You didn't see anything magnetic, anything attractive, anything you'd want to follow. And then you come into AA, and they break it down for you. And somebody tells you, look, a saint is nothing but a sinner who never stopped trying. And that's what Bob was. That's what Charlie was. That's what Shy was. That's what you are, a sinner who never stopped trying. Somebody else explained, a saint is simply somebody who believes that God loves them.
Can you adjust your halo a little bit? You see, you're getting there. You know God loves you, you people. Somebody once explained, what makes a saint a saint? And the explanation was, he was cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful. He was patient when it was difficult to be patient. He pushed on when he wanted to stand still. He held his tongue when he wanted to speak. Oh, that's a big one. He held his tongue when he wanted to speak. Think of the times that you've run off at the mouth with some bad news about somebody. You didn't have to say it. You didn't increase your spiritual capital. You weren't more pleasing in the eyes of God.
But that's what these guys were, saints. And as I looked at Bob's grave, I thought, gee whiz. I thought, there could be one inscription on there that would be very fitting, because in my business, in show business, we had a guy named Otto Harbach. And I remember Otto, as I remember, say, Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig was in my time. And Lou Gehrig piled up, I don't know how many records. I haven't any idea. But from Lou Gehrig died, Damon Runyon, Joe Williams, Dan Parker, Bill Corum, the whole crowd. What did they say about Lou Gehrig? Not that he was the iron horse. Not that he played more baseball games than anybody else. Not this, not that.
They said simply he was a good man. And a good man is news. And we in show business knew that Otto Harbach was better than we were. He had more nobility than we did. He had less cheapness, less vulgarity. Stanley Adams of ASCAP, speaking at the obstacle, he said this, speaking of Otto, and fit this to Bob. Fit this to Shy. Fit it to Charlie. Fit it to somebody you love in AA who's gone. And here are the three sentences, because it's a measurement for your daily activities.
What a man should say, he said. What a man should do, he did. What a man should be, he was. And that's what I like about you, what you are. Because you're under observation, so many people are watching you. And you know that little book, that little pamphlet that we have on all the tables of all the meetings all over the world, Just for Today? Remember that? Down at the paragraph on the left on the bottom it says, Just for Today I will do something for somebody and not get found out. If I get found out, it won't count. And I think of the silent, unobtrusive, under-publicized way you go about your quiet business of helping other people.
So, a man finds God, not on a golden throne. He doesn't find him like that. If you don't find God in your fellow man, you're not going to find him anywhere at all. And I will quickly summarize, because some of you have heard this before, the awareness that came to me and took me away from what I was like when I had no sense of value.
[00:40:08]
To show how stupid I was, what a smart guy I was, I was a songwriter, I was a columnist, I was a comedian, and there was a guy who was having some trouble. And we were both in the same law office, we had the same lawyer. And he had succeeded in the twenties, but in thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, he brought his wares into Broadway and it was no deal. And so he talked it over with his lawyer and they said, maybe we'd better get Walter. Because I was idle at the moment. Get Walter. And the guy said, look, with my experience and my sense of structure and your sense of humor, we'd probably make a great combination. He offered me a fifty-fifty split.
And I worked with him for about a week or ten days, and I signed off because I thought he was corny. His name was Oscar Hammerstein. Some years later, after Oscar died, I was reading Time Magazine and they probated his will and the figure mentioned was $9,975,000. And when I read that, I was standing in a line waiting to pick up an unemployment check. But we weren't aware of God or God's direction or God's help. None of this. But fortunately, I went to the island of Molokai in the summer of fifty-two. I went over to entertain the lepers, and as I drove in from the airport, Mr. Judd, the guy in front, had some flowers, and he stopped in front of a broken-down shack here. No paint, steps crazily falling off.
No windows. He was in for a few minutes, and when he came back, he said, you know, Wally, you've got a great fan in there. I said, tell me, Mr. Judd. He said, no colored woman. She's blind. She says, give my love to Walter O.. I said, why didn't you take me in to meet her? He said, well, a week ago when I came over and explained to the patients that you were coming, I said, never mind what happened a week ago. Why didn't you take me in just now to meet the old colored woman who loves me? He said, well, Walter, the [drug name unclear] did not catch in her case. And at another point, her fingers, her toes, her nose, her ears, she's decaying, and she didn't want to have you see her in this condition, but she loves you.
And it was years before I realized a blind colored woman said, can't you see God over there, Walter? That day, I entertained the lepers, 289. And I had no piano player. I couldn't climax it with a song. So I said, are there any questions you'd like to ask? And way up in the rear, one of the lepers hollered out, yes, Walter, tell us about your two boys, Michael and Anthony. And that was the day I started to join the human race. They came down to the plane to see me off, an Episcopal nun, a Catholic nun, Dr. Hedgecock, the doctor, Father Pat Logan, and somebody else, six of them, to thank me for coming over and tell some jokes.
And I looked into their eyes, and the eyes were calm and quiet and serene. And I realized that they were, these people had something, and I knew I didn't have it. And as the plane flew back across the Pacific, I was reliving this traumatic experience, and under my breath, sada voce, I said, I wish to God I had something like that to give myself to. And I was three years away then from Alcoholics Anonymous, where I belonged. But I'll tell you how I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. In New York, I picked up the paper here yesterday and saw Gary Moore was in town.
And I thought of that time years ago when I replaced Gary. You see, that was the trouble with my life. I was always substituting for somebody. Honest to God, trying to find out who I was, I was always trying to be somebody else. Let me give you the summer substitutions, and you decide. You see, in our business, we've given you some good language. We gave you the word ham. Now, I'll tell you what a ham is. A ham is a guy who looks in the mirror day after day after day and never finds any reason to quarrel with what he sees there.
The only thing worse than an ordinary ham is a Catholic ham. In 1932, in the summer, I took Walter Winchell's place on the magic carpet. In 1937, Fred Allen wanted to make a picture with Jack Benny. They said, let's get Walter. I took Fred Allen's place. In 1942, Edgar Bergamont takes summer off and said, let's get Walter. In 1947, I took Don McNeil's place. In 1950, Milton Berle got sick on Texaco. They said, let's get Walter.
Texaco, they said, let's get Walter. 1953, 1954, I took Herb Schreiner, Two for the Money in the Summer. 1955, I took The Gary Moore Show, and then I sobered up.
[00:45:06]
I achieved immediate humility, because after two talks, I found myself saying, well, I wonder what Bishop Sheen is doing next summer. But there was that day, that was that day in September, that day in September of 1955, and I went off the Moore program heartbroken, frustrated, defeated, feeling sorry for myself. I'd been to one AA meeting. You've got the phrase in the South, they say, so I carried them to a meeting. They carried me to the first one.
But this is the one I decided to go to myself. And I went, I found out where there was one, it was down off Madison Avenue, and when I walked down there in the bowels of the building, there was a guy sitting back of the thing, and his clothes didn't fit him, and his skin didn't fit him. But he had that look I'd seen on Molokai, the Molokai look. Peace, devotion, dedication. He was giving more than he was getting, and he was happy with the deal.
And he led the meeting, and he wasn't a good leader. He didn't have the correct technical equipment. But God ripped the blinders off my eyes, and I saw him for what he was, a man who was convincing by his own transparency. You could see right into the essence of him. What was he trying to do? Trying to help somebody. I went back six more weeks wearing glasses, because I was a celebrity, black glasses. I'd steal in after 8.30, and at 10 o'clock, I'd get out. I wasn't going to talk with people beneath me.
And then that last morning, I walked into Denny Moore's with no job, with the government bothering me, all kinds of trouble on all sides, and I said, give me a double Jack Daniels. And I was off. Well, you know what happened the next morning. There I was, back in the house of despair, sick, filthy, quavering, shaking, sick, disgusted with myself, ashamed of myself. What would I do? I'd go out in the kitchen and get a pick-me-up. My brother was there, my brother Jack. And my brother Jack is the reason Anheuser-Busch built in California. And Jack said, you can't do that. Where are you going? I said, I'm going to get a drink. He said, you can't do that. And then I suggested something he could do.
And then I heard him say, I'm going to call the national headquarters. National headquarters. Well, he called 39th Street, and there was a guy sitting in front of a cup of coffee with a cigarette in his hand on a rainy morning, waiting for somebody to call who was in trouble. And the bell rang, and I went down the hall and opened the door, and here was Ed. God love him, here was Ed. Of all the drunks in the world, of all the drunks in New York, God saw that I got the little man I'd first seen down there. And for an hour I chatted with him, I'm sure in a patronizing manner, and then I said I'd lie down and take a nap. The nap lasted 13 hours. Passed out.
And when I woke up, I heard a bell or a whistle in the river, and I was right back where I'd been for 35 years, sick, disgusted. What would I do? I'd go out to the kitchen and get another drink. But as I went through the living room, the lights weren't on, but there was light coming in from a sudden place. And a voice said, Walter, I thought you might need me. So I waited for you. And it was Ed. And in the next moment, the voice of God said, Walter, I don't care how fast you run, I can move faster and I'll be waiting for you, but when are you going to stop running away?
So I followed Ed, and Ed led me to the Dave C., to the Bishes, to the Barses, to Pete, to all the people in this little room, in this organization whom I love, and to whom I'm indebted, to all of my teachers. And so I have much to thank you for, and now you know what we're like now. What we're like now, well, what we're like now, this is the house of peace. This is the house of gratitude and goodness and guidance.
And I remember that word they had in Germany, zurrissenheit, for the bombing hood. It means torn to pieces hood. And so you start to remake your life and you look at all these pieces all over there and you think you're going to get sober instantly, you know. In the urban renewal thing, there was one guy in Washington who said, we're going to have a crash program to make the cities over. And another guy who was wiser got up and said, look, let me make a point. It takes three weeks for a hen to hatch an egg, and you can't get it done in one week by hiring three hens and putting them on the nest.
[00:50:07]
And then you come in and you get in that pink cloud phase, you know that, where you're brought around the fanatic. Oh, God. I will furnish you the definition of fanatic. A man is a fanatic. A fanatic is a guy who does exactly what God would do if God only knew all the facts in the case. And so as we start to remake our lives with prayer, here's a recent survey. It showed these results, and I'm sure this will enlighten you, and I think you'll make your own judgment.
Here was the question asked. If, for the next 48 hours, you were to live according to the golden rule, would you have to make many changes? The answer, perhaps 95-96% of those who answered said no. If I were to live the next 48 hours according to the golden rule, I'd make few if any changes. The golden rule means doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Buried in the survey was a companion question, and it read as follows. If people around you were to live the next 48 hours according to the golden rule, would they have to change? And 95-96% of people said, oh, yes, the people I work with would have to change a great deal.
Does that ring anything to you or bring anything home to you? I've got something here that I want to read to you. I say we move over to the world of prayer, which is a lovely world to be in. This is one I just found. It's written by a Dutch mystic, a Dutch man of prayer, and it's a prayer for everything that's ordinary, and I'd like to be a connoisseur of prayers and study them all. He says, let us pray and never cease to ask for everything we long for, for everything we think we need. Let us pray that God will give it to us for food and drink every day, for clothes to wear, for good health, for a safe journey throughout life, and for every man a home.
Let us pray for the light of our eyes, for the air we breathe, for the voice we speak with, for the sun and the rain in their seasons, for plants and all creatures, that they may grow and prosper. Let us pray for all the things that we take for granted and everything that comes to us all the time from God, our Creator, and our Father. And as we explore the horizons of prayer, we get to know prayer isn't just mumbling words. Prayer isn't saying an Our Father or just a serenity prayer or something like that. There's a definition I read in a hospital bed ten years ago, and when I read it, I knew I saw an accurate description of you.
It said, he prays best who is so close to God that he doesn't even know he's praying. And when I read it, I thought, oh God, that's the most accurate description I've ever seen of an AA on a 12-step call. He's not in a synagogue or a chapel or a church or a cathedral. He's not on his knees. He's not saying the prayer of this persuasion or that persuasion. But the moment that he is helping that alcoholic, he is the hidden hand of God in action. And I have watched you do this thousands and thousands and thousands of times. And I trust you. And I love you. And I trust you in this way. I don't worry about any of you when I'm away from you.
Knowing you're going to meetings, knowing you're trying to do God's will, knowing you're failing and getting up again, accepting your limitations, accepting the fact that you can't be as good as you dream you are, but trying anyway to be that way and trying to help somebody else. Some people don't make it. But you have to hold on. I came back from Virginia and called up and found out that my son had been drunk for two weeks.
I later found he'd been arrested 28 times. He'd been put incarcerated in institutions four times. And I got this report and called his house. And he says, there's a hell of a nice guy here talking to me. I says, who's that? He says, Lou H..
[00:55:10]
And the Episcopalians have a very beautiful facility in Pasadena. The Episcopal Church maintains a place called the Bishop Gooden Home. And Michael went in there for five weeks. And now 12 weeks have gone by and he gave me his blessing when I came here to talk to you. So gratitude is the aristocrat of the emotions, and nobody came in this room without feeling a sense of gratitude. But I want to tell you about one guy and then I'm off, because I promised to cut it short with an hour. This is Jimmy, and I've spoken of him before, but I hope you remember Jimmy if you forget everything else I've said.
I met Jimmy one night at a meeting, and we sat over coffee and sandwich, and I knew Jimmy wanted to talk. And there are times when you must listen. We who love to talk so much. There are times when you've got to listen, and your heart will be filled. And Jimmy said, Walter, I had five and a half years. No, five years. Now the minute a guy says he's got five years, you get a profile, you know pretty well what he looks like. You know that he's gone to meetings. You know he's made an attempt to straighten his life. You know he's made amends. You know he's paid bills. You know he's helped somebody else. You know that much about him.
But he said, actually it was six weeks after, but I'd stopped going to meetings. There it is. There it is. He stopped going to meetings. And he says, I was sitting in this bus, I was going to the track, and I thought, what the hell, nobody will know the difference. Besides, I just want to relax. Remember the way you used to say you ought to relax. And he says, so I bought a half a pint, and I went to the track, and I remember up to the end of the fourth race. Up to the end of the fourth race, and I was winning, and drinking, and then blackout. When I came to, they didn't have to tell me where I was. I knew I was in jail. And quickly I filled up here in my jacket, because between the fabric and the lining, I had hidden a $20 bill.
And he says, I got the jailer over. I said, look, pal, obviously I've got to face charges here later, but right now I'm facing the worst hangover I've ever had. I'll give you the $20 if you can get me some beer or whiskey. And the guy said, buddy, you ain't going to have any beer or whiskey for a long, long time. And then I found out what happened. After the fourth race, I crossed the parking lot, I stole an army truck, and driving drunkenly across Long Island, I ran over a man and killed him. He says, they gave me seven years for manslaughter, Walter. He says, I've learned my lesson. Well, during that spring, he was an in-and-outer, and two days before I went to Europe for NBC, I got the word.
Jimmy decided he could drink again. Jimmy is now serving life, and it might be me. Or it might be a kid I met out here today, and I hope he'll come up to me later and talk to me. Because I mentioned Chey, and Terry and I spent our honeymoon with Eve M.. Chey was the guy from Michigan who gave me the date to come and speak to the Michigan Convention, and I said to Terry, well, I've spent our honeymoon in Detroit in a native convention. She says, that's all right, darling. And we went out there, and I wanted to go to the prison, to Jackson Prison, before I went into town.
And I went back there six months later, and Chey died. But Chey's work goes on. A gentleman came up to me today and says, remember, I met you at Jackson, and I'd like to see him later. This is the work that's always going on, and you don't know how much you'd do of it, and God will tell you about it later on. I'd like to close with the prayer I customarily close with, and I have some copies of it if you want it. It's a good meditation for modern man.
My dear God, I have no idea where I'm going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think that I'm doing your will does not mean that I actually am. But I do believe this. I believe that the desire to please you does please you, and I hope I have that desire in everything I do. I hope I never do anything apart from that desire, and I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the hand.
But if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time. Therefore I will trust you, always, for though I may seem to be lost, and in the shadow of
[01:00:02]
death I will not be afraid, because I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone. And that's what you've taught me about yourself. I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone. I have tried to hold up the mirror and show you how wonderful you are, and how worthy of reverence and the love we bear each other. The Irish have a lovely closing line I've used before and I use it again.
Live in my heart and pay no rent. And even as I say that, you can take out anything that's in there, because I didn't put anything in there myself. And you even showed me how to open my heart and receive it. For your hospitality and your warmth and your affection to Terry and myself, may I thank you and may I thank AA for the best years of my life. Thank you. Thank you. Will you remain standing? Will you remain standing as I ask you in the beginning, what kind of AA?
Am I? Will you join hands and pray with me the Lord's Prayer? 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 thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen.