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Source: Clancy I – Akron Homecoming – History, Traditions and Hope (2012) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clancy-i-akron-homecoming-history-traditions-and-hope-2012-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:04:55
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I'm sorry. Too late. My name is Clancy I. and I'm an alcoholic. Now some of you who don't know me have heard perhaps that I'm kind of a crusty old guy or something, kind of a cynical old guy, and I'm not. I'm really the worst type of soft pussycat inside. And I was just thinking sitting there tonight, if I had one day left to live, if the doctor told me I had one day left, which may happen at any time in my life, I think I'd like to come to Akron and have you recreate your introduction of the staff and the trustees. It would make that last day seem like forever. I'm very pleased to be here today. I want to give a special thanks to Mike and Mike and Cindy who met me at the airport, took very good care of me. I want to thank Cindy again for rushing me over to the house today, spent a pleasant hour at the house, Dr. Bob's house. And the last time I went by that house was I spoke here in 1971 at the Founder's Day, and they took us and drove us by the house.
At that time there were still people living in it, and there were a procession of cars. You could see these people in there, what do they want? But it's been a splendid evening last night and a splendid day. I'm only sorry I missed the talks by Gail and Tom, who are great speakers and I would have enjoyed them. I heard all the speakers today. I sat in that chair and drank it in. It was a great day, a great evening, going to be a great day tomorrow.
My job here, however, is not to comment on them. My job is to talk a little bit. You know, I was thinking today, all these people speaking are like guys giving you insights on how you can tune up your engine and really make it run better and smoother and better and smoother and better, and really wonderful. And my job is to kind of remind you there's a chassis that may be falling apart. Bob, this is the signal for applause. I hate to see a sponsy so coward that he claps at the drop of a hat. But I think one of the things that I'm sure one of the things I talk about tonight will be known to most of you because it's like preaching to the choir, as they say. I know most of us are kind of students of Alcoholics Anonymous, but for those who aren't, it may help you a little bit to get a gathering, a little feeling. You know, when Bill Wilson, in New York, and Dr. Bob out here, and in the late end of 1940, AA was struggling, a few people in each place, they'd had an article in Liberty Magazine, but it made it sound like a religion, so it didn't do any good, but it lost members, actually. And then at the end of 1940, the editor of the Saturday Post assigned his top corruption investigator, who had just won an award for divulging the corruption on the Philadelphia labor unions, on the docks of Philadelphia, his next assignment was to work into this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous and show what they were up to. So he did, and after about a month, he wrote his editor a note and said, I don't know how to tell you this, but I can't find any corruption. They all seem to be doing what they're saying. He said, well, okay, we'll use the story anyway, write it. And so March 1941, as we all know, an article in the Reader's Digest, or the Saturday Post, about Alcoholics Anonymous, even pictures of the early members with their faces blocked out, and it just took the nation by storm, because there had, we keep forgetting this, there never had been any answer for alcoholics of our type. And they were dying by the scores.
The best thing they had was the Keely cure, which didn't help much of anything, really. And so they flooded New York with letters, and how can you help me? I've got my brother, my cousin, my husband, my wife, somebody. And so Bill sent out letters and set up little meetings, told them how to set up little meetings, and sent out books. They had a lot of books
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too. They never sold any of them to anybody. And all of a sudden, by the end of 1941, there
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were thousands of AA meetings in America. All of a sudden, just boom. And it was a sensational change. And then in 1942, they kept going and flowing, and people coming. A few little meetings dropped by the wayside, but by 1943, at the end of 1943, they were starting to get letters saying, our group had a series of arguments and fights, and we're not doing very well, and better take us off your mailing list. There's nobody here anymore. And Bill was a little concerned. In 1944, it picked up speed. Yes, we've had some terrible arguments.
Many of our members have quit. They just go back to drinking. Some of them go back, just refuse to do anything. By early 1945, Bill realized that Alcoholics Anonymous was heading towards extinction. And he, in an effort to create some unity, he started the Grapevine, which was in a big tabloid size at first. They'll see each other's stories there, and they'll bring them all together, but it didn't help much. Then in the early summer of 1945, a doctor in North Carolina submitted a story for the Grapevine. He said, Bill, I don't know if you ever heard about this before, but this is really remarkable. These are just like us. There was a story about six guys in Baltimore. One had just got out of jail, and he said to his friends, he said, you know, that chaplain down there says he knows how I feel, but he doesn't know how I feel. You guys know how I feel. And he, they started a little group to help each other stay sober. And Bill read on. And they decided to, people laughed at them. You can't keep yourself sober. You ought to keep each other sober. This is ridiculous. But six of them, they took a little vow, and they wrote a little series of agreements.
They all signed it. He elected five officers and one member. And who do you identify with? But they, they had this deal going where if one of them felt like drinking, he'd go talk to his friends, and they'd stop him from drinking, and back and forth. And it seemed kind of silly, but you know, you guys are crazy. But some guys from Philadelphia heard about it and went down, went back to Philadelphia, tried to start one. And they said, nothing like this has ever happened in America before. We're like the first of a kind, like Washington.
We'll call ourselves the Washington Society, the Washingtonians. And pretty soon some people came from Washington. And they started a little group there. And a group came down from Boston, and they really got enthusiastic in Boston. And by the end of the first year, they had several hundred drunkards sober, unheard of in America. And in the second year, they got a, you know, there was no entertainment at that time. There was no radio, no television, no phones, no nothing. Entertainment usually consisted of traveling speakers who would hold a crowd by entertaining them with talks. They got a couple of these guys in the Washingtonians, so they went out and started talking up the Washingtonians. By the end of the second year, they had several hundred, almost a thousand members. And they sent out a note to all the, to all of the groups they could find, saying, people still think we're weird. They don't know what we do here. On our second anniversary, we're going to make Washington's birthday our anniversary, February 22nd, 1842. Get somebody in your community who's an up-and-coming leader to come in and talk. We don't care what he says. We're not interested in what he's got to say. But we want him to see what we're doing. And so in 1842, they had this, the guy in Springfield, Illinois, they got a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, came in and spoke. And if you ever read a book of Lincoln's speeches, you find his speech to the Washingtonians. And he didn't have much to say. He didn't. But part of it was the kind of colorful thing. He said, I know you men, and I work with you men, and I understand you, but I don't understand your thirst. I've never had that thirst. I don't understand that. But I'm so happy you're doing something about it. At the end of the third year, they had a lot of people. At the end of five years, they estimated they had a hundred thousand sober drunkards, which may not impress you, but just think, AA, with all its facilities and all of its actions, didn't have a thousand after five years. And then their leaders of the Washingtonians got together, and they made some decisions which seemed right, because there were members in AA, and I'm sure there are members in this crowd tonight who feel
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the same way. We're doing such a good job with helping drunkards. Maybe we should help other people. Help other people with other problems. Help people with narcotics problems, who aren't alcoholics. Not heroin and cocaine like today, but opium and laudanum, which they had then. Maybe we should get involved in politics. Maybe we should try to work in the anti-slavery movement. Maybe we should try to work to get Texas into the union. Maybe we should try to straighten out our government. And people got all enthused, yeah, that's what we need to do. And they really went out there, and they became a force to change society.
And the result was, by 1848, the movement was extinct, and nearly all of them died drunk. And couldn't understand why. I had a book home some years ago, until a newcomer borrowed it. Written in 1861, or they're the most important people in the room. At best, they're the second most important in the room. Because if I'm not in the room, I don't care who is. But anyway, I had a book, and this guy said, we were doing so well, and after a while, people didn't love, they were so busy doing things, they couldn't come to our meetings. They just got involved with other things, and they had no time to help one another. And one by one, they all went in our group. I'm the only one still alive, he said. And Bill read this and thought, my God. And he read the reasons that they had given for the dissolution, and he said, these are the same kind of things I'm hearing in the letters I'm getting every day from groups just quitting their membership. And so he wrestled with that, and he went down to the library and got a book on the Washingtonians and read about it. And saw that how similar they were in AA at one level of working together, but yet they didn't have much of a structure. So in the last gasp effort to save Alcoholics Anonymous, in the summer of 1945, he wrote the Traditions. They were not there long. Thousands of alcoholics had to die before we had the Traditions written, something that had just come out with a book or something. And he introduced them one by one in the new grapevine. And one, unfortunately, Alcoholics Anonymous had a problem then that we have now, and we don't know how to solve it. It's full of alcoholics. And so many of them, we don't want any rules! We're not here to get rules! We're here for love, goddammit!
But the Midwest especially was a real hotbed against the Traditions all around the country. And AA had some great divisions anyway by that time. You know, it's a funny thing. Chicago people would not write to New York. They'd only write to Akron. People in Los Angeles wouldn't have anything to do with Akron. They wrote to New York. All over the country it was like that. People in Akron thought the people in New York were a bunch of big city highbinders, and people in New York thought Akron was a bunch of shit-kickers, you know. They don't really know the truth. And so all of a sudden, here's all these things going on and arguments. And Bill, remember, interesting legend, he got in his motorcycle finally, and put his wife in the sidecar, and traveled up and down the East Coast talking to meetings, trying to explain, these aren't rules. We're trying to save AA, because we're dying on the limb. We're gonna die. And he got some acknowledgment, not Dutch. And they, Bill and Bob, both realized, we have to somehow get this to the membership of what we're trying to do. So they said to their followers, set up a meeting somewhere where we can all talk about it. And the people in Akron said, we'll go to a meeting, but we won't go to New York. And the people in New York, not to be outdone in spirituality, said, we'll go to a meeting. We won't go to Akron. So Bill and Dr.
Bob got together, because they all got along well. Cleveland. Okay, we'll all go to Cleveland. So they decided to have one big meeting in Cleveland. And I have the tapes of that convention that weekend. The quality of the tapes are bad, but what's on there is interesting. Because even then, they were like the Washingtonians, kind of. They still were more concerned that they were misunderstood. They had a lot of non-alcoholic speakers. The warden of San Quentin, the warden of Sing Sing, government employees. And of course, as we all know, Bill and Dr. Bob talked. And most of us know that Dr. Bob at that time was dying of cancer. They said, you probably don't want to talk, Bob, because you're so sick. I've got to talk.
So Secchione, I've got to talk, I've got to talk, because he was always a greater conveyor
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of the message than Bill was. And he, so on that day in Cleveland, son on one side, and his friend, tall, gaunt, sick old man. I noticed on our program we quote that speech. And he got up and he said something to the effect of, you know, I'm glad you're all here, I'll go back and tell the boys and girls in your communities that we're all working together. He said, I look over this vast crowd, I'm glad that some small thing I did 15 years ago helped bring this about.
He said, I want to apologize for my health, it hasn't returned like I thought it would, I've been in bed the last few months. And it's just, you know, just talk. But then he said, but I want to call your attention to two or three things that I think may be of interest. And he knew he was dying, and this is almost like a dying valedictory, I think. It was just wonderful. And we all heard the talk many times, I'm sure most of us have.
He said, let us keep our program simple. Let's not louse it all up with Freudian complexes, which may be of interest to the scientific mind, but has nothing to do with our work here. Our work here, when reduced to the last, consists of love and service. And we all know what love is, and we all know what service is. And secondly, he said, let us guard that erring member, the tongue, and try to use it with kindness and understanding.
And there isn't a person in this room who doesn't know exactly what he's talking about. We're all very wonderful when things are going our way. Love is the answer, baby. But that somebody thwarted us. One of the most amusing things I like about Alcoholics Anonymous is that all of us, I'm sure, for varying lengths of time, fought the term alcoholic. But I'm not alcoholic! Until we finally were worn down.
But after you're sober a while, if you really want to curse somebody in A, you say, I don't even think that son of a bitch is alcoholic. And finally, he said, let us never reach a stage of spiritual, can't think of the word, which prevents us from helping our alcoholics who still suffer. But he gave that talk. It was a wonderful talk. And when you go to the wall of the World Service Office in New York, it faces the elevator.
You see it right there, written in tongue. I've quoted it many times. What I didn't just say, because I couldn't remember for a moment, let us never reach that stage of smug complacency. And then Bill gave a talk. And then they had six young guys, each of them took two traditions, and explained them. I don't know who they were, but you could just see their tails wagging. And he was wonderful, and he's just great.
These aren't really rules, these are just suggestions to say, hey, some of us old timers think that may have been a mistake. I think probably it might have been better if we had some rules and enforced them. Some little snot-nosed newcomer gets smart, I want to get out of here. Don't you offend me. Have people call you and say, I'm not sure I want to do that. Well, perhaps you'd like to go to the AA camp.
We're from Alcoholics Anonymous, put your things together, we're going to the camp. For re-education. That wouldn't be too much to ask, would it? But they got up, and then they read the traditions, and the funny thing about it is, Bill Wilson still wasn't sure he had the votes. I know it. He said, you have heard the traditions read, seeing no objections, they're accepted. And in the distance you could hear the sound of a train running through right through that.
But then the traditions came into being in 1950, and they saved us, and he saved Alcoholics Anonymous. And unfortunately, over the years, Alcoholics Anonymous has, many of its members have come in without knowing much about the traditions, they just seem to be some dull old thing like the Ten Commandments or something. You read when you have to, but not if you can help it. And we have newcomers read them at the meeting to see if they can pronounce words like anonymity
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or other things like that. And yet they are among the most important things we have, because the steps mean nothing if there's no one there to work them, I'll tell you. And today, in today's society, there's a number of movements in Alcoholics Anonymous aimed at the traditions. But they don't really aim them at the traditions, they're just better ways to do things. One of the great ones today is the, there's a little group of meetings in Toronto and New York and Chicago, they call themselves the Four A's, Alcoholics, Agnostics, Atheists, Alcoholics Anonymous.
And they have, just like A's, all mention of God or higher power out of the 12 steps. And of course, they've got these groups going. And in Toronto currently, there are four or five groups that are trying to, that have been listed in the world, in their meeting list, but they've taken them out. They voted to take them out, as they should, I think. And they've gone and raised hell about it. They've just gone to the press, newspapers, had a big article in the newspaper, which was kind of funny, they quoted a very, a Catholic priest, who has a big picture in color on the front page.
He said, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we think we should have God in it. And he never forgot, he kind of missed the concept of anonymity somewhere along the line. I know him as soon as I see him, I'm going to tell him. Dumb puke. But anyway. But they just had a vote again last week. And there are more groups voting for them, but it's still not close. It's like 62 to 8, or something like that.
And they're out completely. But now what they're talking about is bringing suit in court, because the central office is violating their civil rights. And it's such nonsense. In New York, they have a, they just had a meeting a week and a half ago of the same thing. These groups trying to get listed in the world. And there they had to pass a piece of legislation saying, we consider Alcoholics Anonymous groups, groups that accept the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and the 12 concepts, if nothing else.
And in Chicago, there's a group of atheistic meetings who are trying to do the same thing. And it doesn't sound too bad. They have very good arguments. We're members. You can't throw us out of AA. How dare you? And it's hard to remember. We're not throwing you out of AA. You can call yourself whatever you want to, but you aren't going to be in our meeting list, that's all. Our meeting list is going to be groups that adhere to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'll tell you a funny story about a group that did that once. When I was new, back in the late 1950s, there was a guy in Los Angeles, two years sober that I knew pretty well, and he had a place on the beach. He said, I'm going to start my own groups down there on Santa Monica, and it's going to be good groups. He took out all mentions of God from the steps. He didn't like God. He said, I don't have God crap.
It's holding a lot of people back. And so he was shocked when the central office wouldn't list him. He said, you've got to list me. They said, no, we don't have to list you. And so he got angry. He threw all the alcoholics out, took a group of narcotics addicts. I said, Chuck, you never used to use narcotics. He said, I don't, but they got no central office. And changed the name of his organization to Synanon, and that's where Synanon came from.
And it ran for years. It really took off for a while. You know, they owned a lot of property. There's a movie made about him with Edmund O'Brien playing him. It was really a big thing, but it got to be such a big cult, because a guy in England, Lord Acton, once upon a time said, power brings corruption, and absolute power brings absolute corruption. And he had absolute power. It got to the point where when he got a haircut, everybody had a haircut.
When he got sick of his wife, everybody had to get rid of their wife. Not a bad idea. I mean, for them, not for me, certainly. When he stopped smoking, everybody stopped smoking. Just things like that all the time. And a lot of parents began concerned about their sons or daughters were in there, and they wouldn't let them contact their parents or do anything, and it really felt really a terrible cult.
So they brought some lawsuits against him. And he got his followers together, and he said, you know, I wish somebody would take
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care of that lawyer. And a couple days later, one of his followers took care of the lawyer, dropped a rattlesnake in his mailbox. So when you reach for your mail, god, that must be a bill. And they traced it back to him, and that was the beginning of the end. It gradually dissolved, gradually went down, became non-existent. And Chuck, they finally found him after all those years, sitting in his daughter's house in Phoenix with a bottle of whiskey.
I tried to help him, he said, but he didn't realize what happened to him. And it's a strange thing why people are so unable, at least in my opinion, to see that you have to surrender to somebody here. And we say, as you understand him, we don't make you believe the Norwegian Lutheran God that I was taught, or the Catholic God you were taught. And so all this fighting and going to the public, and another funny thing in Washington, D.C., some of you remember two or three years ago, there was a big to-do about a meeting there.
Because some member, an old-timer at that meeting, was getting knowledge biblically of some of the young ladies. And this guy was upset about it, and he roomed with the guy that wrote for Newsweek, and he got Newsweek magazine to write a derogatory article about AA. And they asked me about it, they called me in the long distance, and I said, I don't know what the guy did, but you should never put anything in public print about this.
And he finally died, well, went away. But there's always some kind of a problem, people fighting about something. Of course, in a sense, fighting in AA is very common. That's why groups form. Okay, I'll show you, get my coffee pot and my book, and start a new meeting. That's where about half of the meetings come from. But then we have to live in some kind of peace. And you know, it builds attentions.
You can almost tell how he felt by the way the traditions were written. First tradition, he was so concerned about the lack of unity in AA, and the fighting going on, that he said, our unity is our number one thing. Then there was a great deal of thought that, oh, Bill Wills is just getting us stuff so he can run everything. So in the second tradition, he specifically said, the group conscience, no one's going to do that.
And the third tradition, it's an interesting thing. That's one that's under attack a lot today, because it says, we, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. And you'd be surprised how many meetings people are going to saying, I'm not an alcoholic, but I have a desire to stop drinking. And people call me up and say, how can I get rid of them? There's no way to get rid of them, apparently.
They have a desire to stop drinking, they say, but they're not alcoholic. So then what you have to do, you have to go back to the long form of the traditions, which is the way they were written. And there they say, we want to help all those who suffer from alcoholism, because that's imperative that we have alcoholics and alcoholics anonymous. And who would ever, and then when they abbreviated it to what it is now, that short form, they never guessed that someday non-alcoholics would try to sneak into AA.
Christ, you can't get alcoholics to come, why would non-alcoholics want to come? And the fourth tradition is, you know, people individually, groups are separate, except it affects the AA as a whole. And that fifth tradition, that's another winner now. People say, we have to expand ourselves. You know, today, so many young people are on drugs, we're keeping them out of AA by insisting on being alcoholic.
Why should we do that? We're being so one self-conscious, so self-centered. And then you got to remember why that happened. In 19, you remember, to go back again, down the halls of memory, oh, there's Lee down there, oh yes. And Bill Wilson had his spiritual experience, you remember, and he felt he was, been given a divine mandate to help drunkards. And for six months, he went to the Oxford Group. Now, some of you may not know about the Oxford Group, I'll just give you a little sideline.
In 1908,
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was getting too loose and too not involved. We wanted more dedication. And he was in Pennsylvania, he was a Lutheran minister, and he started an organization called the First Century Christian Association. So we could be like the first century Christians. And he didn't get a lot of membership. You know, who wants to be crucified and burned upside down? That's not much of a drawing card. But he kept going with a few people. And then at the end of the Second, First World War, he went to Europe and talked it up as he could. And for some reason or other, the students at Oxford University just took it over. We loved that. What a great concept.
So much so that it became known as the Oxford Group. And he returned to America in the late 1920s. He set up Oxford Groups around the country, or were set up in a different form than he had visualized. But what it really boiled down to finally was kind of nice, better type people meeting in one another's homes and talking about how they could enhance their relationship with Christ and God. And very nice people, you know. And then Bill would, with his desire to help drunkards and his spiritual experience, he would take these pickup street drunks and take them to these meetings. And that did thrill the people, you know.
I believe you're vomiting on my shoe. And you take them home. Someone lived in his house. One guy committed suicide there. And one morning, he got up after six months of this. And he said, Lois, the guy we brought home last night, apparently he's left and stolen the coffee pot. We can have a cup of coffee this morning. He said, I've done something terribly wrong. And he looked at his wife, who'd been a chic little society girl when he met her. And she's now old before her time with salt and pepper hair and putting on her sweater with a patch on the sleeve. And he said to go to work in the basement of a cheap department store so she could pay the rent, so he could go to the Oxford group every day, talk about how wonderful he was doing. He said, Lois, I thought I'd been given some sort of a mandate to help drunkards. But obviously, I can see I haven't. Not one person has stayed sober. Not one person has stayed sober. And I'm going to get a job tomorrow if it's just shoveling dirt. And I'm going to get you out of that damn department store. And I'm sorry, honey. I really, I'm so sorry. But I had lunch with Lois. She said something that changed our lives. I had lunch with her in Connecticut about 40 years ago.
And I said, how did you ever think that answer, Lois? What a great answer. When he said, not one person has stayed sober. And she said, you did? Oh, yeah. That's why old timers don't have much hair in front. You get through life. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But he realized what he was doing. He was trying to tell him about the Oxford group and how to get a spiritual experience, which was really an exercise in futility. He went down and see his old doctor at Towns Hospital, Dr. Silkworth. He said, you know, I'm trying to help these guys. I'm giving them all I got, but not one person has stayed sober except me and Dr. Silkworth. How do you do it?
I'm talking to the Oxford group. He said, that's where you're making your mistake, Bill. He said, drunks don't get sober on religion or Jesus. In fact, they don't get sober on nothing that I know of, but they certainly don't get sober on that. He says, I've got an idea. And he had Dr. Silkworth's idea, apparently, that's what I certainly believe, is that alcoholics carry an invisible shield with them, which absolutely stops any meaningful advice ever. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate that.
He said, we, none of us can get through that shield. Why don't you try this? Why don't you try telling these people that you know how they feel, that you know what a drink does for them. I don't know this. I hear about it, but I don't know what the hell it's all about. Tell them you know how you feel when you're not drinking, how you get desperate, and how much a drink helps you. And Bill said, that doesn't sound like, doesn't attract anybody. He said, I know, but it's the best chance you got. You got to get through that shield somehow. And Bill said, okay, I'll try it.
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And then Bill got a chance to go to get a job. He'd been sober six months, and his friends said, Bill, you're really doing well. We're going to give you a chance to make a comeback now. We're going to, they got this machine tool company out in Akron. We're going to go out there and get the proxies together, and you're going to become president of the company, and you're going to be on easy street. It's going to be great. However, if you blow this deal, don't bother coming back, because you're just another failure. So Bill said, okay. And we came out here, as we know, and the deal blew up. And he found himself standing in the lobby of the Hotel Mayflower on a hot Saturday afternoon. Interestingly, just 77 years ago today, this is the anniversary of it, the day before Mother's Day, 1935. And he reached in his pocket, he had a $10 bill.
He could either pay his hotel bill, or he could buy a train ticket back to New York. And as he wrote later, I stood in that hotel lobby, and it was still a hotel, 1971, and I tried to recreate the feelings. I couldn't do it because I don't have enough empathy, but it's enough for me. Anyway, over here's the door, and over the door was a curved orange sign that said cocktails. And he heard the jukebox coming out of there, and the clink of glasses.
And he had a feeling that most of us would certainly have. I would have it. If I just had a couple drinks, I could think of an answer to this. I started to walk. As he walked, your lives and mine just got diminished, almost to death. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw across the lobby some pay phones. And you remember, he promised his friends in New York he'd call somebody in the Oxford group before he did anything desperate. So he went over there, called the first number. And I believe these facts are correct, because I heard him from a guy that knew about him in 1971. He's still alive. And he said, I'm a rum hound from New York, and I got to talk to somebody in the Oxford group.
And the man said, I don't know. I don't understand that, but I'm trying to write a sermon. Please don't bother me. Hung up. Called the next number. Nobody answered. Called the next number. Nobody answered. Called the next number. Guy didn't have any answer for him. Now, Bill later said he called 10 times. There weren't 10 people on that list. There were much less than that, maybe five or six. But he started to turn away. I did what I said I would. Isn't that what you and I say?
And he saw the last name on the bottom. He thought, there's a, I really shouldn't leave without getting rejected by Walter Tunk, for Christ's sake. So he called Walter Tunk. Told him his story, and Walter Tunk said, fine. Turned out to be the only man in Akron that could have helped him. AA is just full of those little funny little coincidences. Just a lot of them. And Walter said, it's funny you should call. He said, I have a wealthy parishioner out west of Akron, and she was telling me yesterday that this week at their Oxford group meeting, their doctor had confessed he was a drunkard and couldn't do anything about it. And they've all been praying for him, but he seems to stay drunk. She said, maybe I could call her and set up some kind of a deal. Wait in the phone booth. So he called the lady, Mrs. Sieberling.
She said, yes, yes, Dr. Smith. That's right. I think we should get these two men together. Let me call them. So she called the Smith residence. And here was another funny little coincidence. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. She started to hang up, and the voice said, hello. I'm sorry I was out in the yard. That little split second saved our life right there. She says, oh, yes, the doctor. Yes, I'm sure he'd like to talk to this man. He's drunk on the floor now, but he can't do it today. Maybe we could do it tomorrow if you could. So Mrs. Sieberling said, why don't you come out and bring the doctor out to my house tomorrow. We'll have a little meal, and if you could get the two guys together. So all right. So she called back Walter Tunk.
Walter Tunk then called back Bill Wilson, who was just about to leave that phone booth. He'd been standing there. And the music coming out. So he found out how to get out of the streetcar the next day. Mother's Day, like tomorrow, took the streetcar out to her home in West Akron. Dr. Bob and his wife and two children jumped in their car and drove out there. Dr. Bob was too
[00:40:02]
sick to drive, so his son Smitty drove. He was 16. You know, that was a big moment. Some of you might have been there. In 1980, the International Convention, the chairman said, we have a surprise for you. Dr. Bob's son is here. Nobody ever heard of Dr. Bob having a son. And we jumped up and cheered, and he became a very good member of Al-Anon. Not because his father was an alcoholic, because he married two alcoholics. Died in self-defense. But he was a good friend of mine.
He and I used to talk and laugh. Many times he's told me about that trip out there that day. His dad was so sick, and Smitty drove, and his sister, and the mother and father in the back seat. And his father kept saying, Ann, I'll go out there, but I'm not going to listen to any more damn lectures about bad drinking. I can't stand it. I'll give them 10 minutes, because it's Mother's Day, and I've ruined Mother's Day for you. But I don't want to hear any more lectures. I just got to tell you that, Ann. I'll give them 10 minutes. So they got out there, and they had a bite to eat. Then these two guys went in their room for their 10 minutes, and came out four hours later.
And the doctor said to his wife, my god, Ann, that's the first man I've ever talked to who seems to know how I feel, and why I drink, and what a drink does for me. It's, I can't believe it. He said, Bill, is there any way you could stay over for a while with us? And Bill thought, let's see. I have nowhere to get out of town. Yes, I can. So they stayed, and they talked for two weeks about the Oxford group, and how to enhance their religious feelings, and how they could get closer to Christ, and how they could exalt in the love that was found to be found there. And then in two weeks, the doctor said, Bill, I have never felt better. This weekend, there's going to be a national convention of the American Medical Association Association in Atlantic City. I was there last year, and I was drunk, and they ridiculed me, and taunted me. Now I'm going to go there this week, sober, and I'm going to show what we found.
And I want you to stay home with my wife and kids, and I'll be back Tuesday morning. Great. Away he went. Tuesday morning, the phone rang. Mrs. Smith answered it. A woman on the phone said, oh, Mrs. Smith, I'm so sorry. They carried the doctor off the train this morning, so drunk he couldn't walk. And the station agent knew that I worked for him as his nurse. And so I came down, and the cab driver and I had him on the floor of his office, and he's crying. And I'm so sorry, because I know he was trying so hard. I guess it doesn't work. So Mrs. Smith said, okay. She got Bill and went down there, picked up this crying drunk, took him home. I don't know very few things in the world more disgusting than a crying drunk. I'm so sorry. Now you're sorry.
But they put him to bed, and I guess Thursday morning, as I understand it, he suddenly sat up, says, my God, what day is this? They said, Thursday, Bob. Oh, my God. I've got to do a cancer surgery today. I can't put it off. I put it off before. And look at my hand. I can't hold a knife. My God, what do I do? So his new friend, Bill, bought him some beer to steady his hand. And he went off to the hospital, said, I'll be back about two o'clock. They waited for him. Two o'clock, he didn't come. Three o'clock, didn't come. Four o'clock, didn't come. Five o'clock, this son of a bitch is drunk again, obviously. Six o'clock, the door burst open. He said, I'm just feeling great.
He said, where have you been all day, Bob? He said, when I was doing that surgery, it suddenly struck me. And the Oxford group said, you should make amends to people. But I never thought a doctor should have to make amends. But I'm a human being more than a doctor, so I've been all over Accra today making amends to people. And I feel wonderful, feel great. And that was June 10, 1935, and we consider that our birthday, of course. It wasn't a birthday of anything to them, just two guys staying sober. But they realized one thing out of that experience, that talking about religion had not kept Dr. Bob sober, like it had anybody in New York. What it helped was trying to help people. So Dr. Bob had a friend at the hospital here. At that time, you couldn't go to the hospital for being a drunk or drunkenness. You had to have gastritis or some physical condition. And he called up this nun, who's pictured over here, and said, have you had a drinking problem? She said, yes, ma'am.
There's a girl that looks like she has a drinking problem, and she said, yes, we have a man, a man named Bill Dotson, who's the end picture here, and he's a lawyer from Louisville, who moved here a few years ago, but get away from his drinking, but his drinking is terribly worse, and I'll tell you, in 1960, I was thrilled to sit in the audience and have Sister Ignatius listen to her talk, tell that story, and afterwards, I thanked her, of course, that was a long time, I can't remember much about it, but I remember, it seems to me, that I kissed her on the cheek,
[00:45:21]
and said, oh, is it all right to kiss a nun, and as far as I can recall, she said, as long as you don't get in the habit, I don't, I mean, 60 years, I can't remember every little detail, but anyway, so they, she said, I'll see, I'll talk to his wife and see if she wants you to talk to him, and I heard Bill Dotson talk years later, years ago, too, and he said, I was laying in that bed, in Akron, Ohio, and my wife came in and told me two men wanted to talk to me about my drinking, and I said, absolutely not, I've talked to all the people about my drinking I intend to ever talk about, I'm so sick of being talked to about my drinking, I don't, can't stand any more of it, he said, but my, my wife's a pretty strong woman, so I talked to those two fellas, and they never talked about my drinking once, they talked about their drinking, and I never heard anybody describe me better than that, I thought, my God, these people have been inside my head, I was so impressed, I stuck with them, fellas have been with them ever since, he became number three in the chain, then they had a tough time getting many people, because the only place they had to take it was the Oxford group meetings, and you try to talk to them about getting through that wall, but when you got to Oxford, you used back to spirituality, religion, not spirituality so much, and had a quite a bad time, in 1963 or thereabouts, I was in New York on a project for a company I worked for, I thought, I think I'll go see Bill Wilson, that sounded like fun, so I went over to the World Service Office on 44th Street, I'd like to see Bill Wilson, he said, well, he's booked up, he is, he's booked up for three weeks in advance, I can get you to see him in three weeks, I said, that's all right, I understand, and I went over to the archives, and pawed through some things, and all of a sudden, here comes Bill Wilson, he said, are you the young man who wanted to see me, I said, yes, sir, he said, well, my 11 o'clock didn't show up, come on in, so I went in, we sat and talked for an hour, and you know what he said, I don't remember, I was so worried about what he thought of me, I didn't pay attention to what he said, well, not my fault, I was not nurtured as a child, but I remember one thing he said, it was such a pang, I said, Bill, the one question I want to ask you, now, last week at our book study in Los Angeles, we were going through, you wrote in the big book, how to talk to alcoholics, we were talking about working with others, what do you say to them to identify, and so on, but you never talk about taking them to meetings, didn't you people ever take them to meetings, he said, young man, when I wrote that, there were no meetings, you had to take them to the Oxford group, and hope they didn't get carried away from the message you've already sent to them, and then talk to them afterwards, and try to recreate it again, and they got a few people, not many, but a few, I just want to tell you one little sidelight, in case you don't know, if you live in Akron, they got a young guy, got a young guy, 29 years old, they said, well, you can't be an alcoholic, you know, you're only 29, but you drink a lot, so you can come run around with us, and he ran around with them, and he fell in love with Dr. Bob's daughter, and brought our organization its first relationship.
I don't know a word that sends a shiver down a sponsor's spine worse than that one, I want to talk to you about my new relationship, what you really need is a phone on your, it just says, uh-huh, uh-huh, they say things like, oh, I know Clancy, I thought the last one was that, but when I saw Joanne walking out of detox today, well, they fell in love, and they got married, which is nice, doesn't that sound nice? That happened in my family, my youngest daughter, Susan, fell in love with a guy five years sober than I sponsored, and I was not in favor of the relationship, but all the daughters in my house know more than I do, so I said, just get out of the way, daddy, we'll take care of it, so they got married, and I'll tell you the absolute epitome of mixed emotions,
[00:50:02]
watching your daughter go down the aisle to marry someone whose fifth step you've heard. You can't really say anything, because it violates the sanctity of the fifth step, but you can give clues, let me know if he ever brings a sheep home, but he was kind of a bad man, and he got drunk and died, and turned her kind of against him for 50 years, wouldn't you think, something like that, but anyway, it grew little by little, but they had learned one thing, talking about religion was wonderful, but didn't keep alcoholics sober, you had to get through that wall, and the thing that makes Alcoholics Anonymous unique in the treatment of alcoholics, because it's alcoholic talking to alcoholics, getting through that wall, and that is why in 1958, a friend of mine named Jim Willis, he was a gambler as well as an alcoholic, and he would bring his gambler friends to AA to see things, and they'd hear those juicers, my God, they'd all been in jail and drunk, they're terrible, so he wrote to New York, and became the first one to get permission to use the 12 steps outside of AA, and formed Gamblers Anonymous, then some guys of the North Hollywood Club the next year were trying to get narcotics addicts sober, and they did not have any luck, so they got the 12 steps, permission to use the 12 steps, and formed Narcotics Anonymous, and some guys out in the marina near where I live, got some 12, permission to use the 12 steps, and formed Cocaine Anonymous, and a woman down in the mid-winter district got permission to use 12 steps, and formed Overeaters Anonymous, which are still the big four, there's thousands of these things now, but those are the big four, and then for one reason only, so that people could identify with what was going on, as has been said by all of our speakers, that great breakthrough when somebody says, makes you think, my God, I know he knows how I feel. I never really understood how it worked, I mean, I knew intellectually, because I'm not dumb, but when I was about two years sober, I was talking at the club one day, I had still no front teeth, but I was happy to be sober, and I gave a talk on obsessions, not how to recover from them, I didn't know how to do that, just the obsession themselves, and that's where some old lady came up, she says, that's just wonderful, I never heard that described, she says, I've got a little organization called Overeaters Anonymous, we meet over in Christ the King Church on Olympic Boulevard, could you come over on Sunday and talk to our girls? I said, sure, I weighed 130 pounds then, sure, I'll give them something to shoot at.
Down over there, about 10 rather plump women sit around the room, and I gave them a wonderful talk on obsessions, they all identified, I think, with you. Then I sat down, and they had a little sharing session, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A woman over here, her son just had his 10th birthday, he was in a military school in Long Beach, she sent her husband down to get him, she took out the cake, took a piece of cake and tasted it, had another piece, by the time they got back, she'd eaten the whole cake, and she felt so ashamed, and just so terrible, and I didn't say anything, because I'm a nice guy, but I wanted to say, just have a piece of cake and forget it, for Christ's sake, what's wrong with you?
You know, woman over here loved ice cream, she couldn't wait for her husband, the doctor, to leave in the morning to get down to Rite Aid and get ice cream, just ice cream, just had to get rid of all these containers, just ate it all, it's the only thing that made her feel like a real woman, and I didn't say anything, because I'm a nice man, I was like, no wonder you're fat, for Christ's sake, anybody would be fat if you eat ice cream like that. Woman over here was my favorite though, she said she ate till she couldn't eat anymore, then she put her finger down her throat and vomited it up, so she could eat some more, and I didn't say anything, but I wanted to say, don't bother shaking hands after the meal, old slimy finger, I mean, I can see doing that for drinking, but not eating, I've done it for drinking a lot, my Saturday afternoon sun's still up, shit, what is the difference? I intellectually knew exactly what they were saying, and I could understand it, but I didn't identify with it, so it was just aberrant behavior, I could not really identify with it, so it meant nothing, they're just strange people doing strange things,
[00:55:04]
and that's the way it is, I think, when you find where you go home to tell your folks about you're an alcoholic synonymous, or you're an alcoholic, that's why they say odd things, like you can't even have a glass of wine at Christmas, because they don't understand, and you're not going to make them understand, the best way, it seems to me, the best thing you can do for them is live so that they're proud of you, that's the best amendment you can make to them, that's what I did with my folks, and I'm so glad that I was able to do that before they died, incidentally, I want to thank Bob from St. Paul, many years ago, when I was working on my parents in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I would come eat west, land in Minneapolis, and he gave me his car to drive to see my mother and father, just a wonderful action, you were much thinner then, Bob, but I never forget a friend, oh, isn't that nice, he thinks I'm number one, but that's the greatest thing you could do, but anyway, that is why, I think, over the years, it's evolved, as we all know, that's the whole story of Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholic helping alcoholic, we've forgotten why, because nothing else seems to help people like us, we take it for granted, and the treatment centers give us all the information, if information could keep us sober, we'd all have been sober a long time ago, if good wishes could keep us sober, if advice could keep us sober, everyone in this room has had enough advice to last them 5,000 years, I'm sure, and you just see a trace of it, thanks a lot, but I know one thing, they don't understand, because my case is different, but when the guy points out that he knows how you feel, God, what a moment of breakthrough that is, that is as great a breakthrough as you'll ever have in your life, then you might start, because it seems to me, and I'm not here to talk about the steps, but I've come to believe, if you can believe you're an alcoholic, really believe you're an alcoholic, the steps are simple, the people who fight against the steps are people who feel they're not really alcoholics, they say they are, they hold their hand up, I did that for years, in and out of the VA, I'm an alcoholic, yes, I can talk about drinking, I got a better drinking story better than yours, but I know I'm not really an alcoholic, my problem has been really emotions and feelings, and alcohol soothes them, and I have to, what I have to do is find a way not to drink so much, and when I get tired of your meetings, I'll go try it again, and so I think that, but we have to remember why the World Service Office and all these organizations stress the singleness of purpose, it's to remember, I do not identify with an overeater, a narcotic addict does not identify with me, it's identification, identification, that is all it's about, and we have that battle on a continuing basis, we, one of the other battles they're fighting now is in the last two or three months, there have been two long letters written to the New York Times and printed about why AA should give up anonymity, it no longer is necessary, we shouldn't have anonymity, it's a false thing, and it's a terrible thing, and we don't need it, and they signed their names, member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and created quite a stir, took it up to intergroup meeting, they've tabled it for the time being, which means they don't know what the hell they're doing, I don't judge them, I don't judge anyone, I'm just telling you the truth, but why should we still have anonymity, maybe in 1936 you had to slink around out of a meeting, but not now, that's, God, people, it's a mark of almost distinction to be sober at AA, right, people tell people I'm in AA a long time, oh are you, how wonderful, and people never seem to remember why we have the thing of anonymity, it's not to protect us, it might have been at one time, it is where we have a place to submerge our egos into the ultimate good of the whole, and I really learned about that in my early days, in 1958 there was a woman named In 1958, there was a woman named Lillian Roth, who wrote a book called I'll Cry Tomorrow.
And she, in there, she talked about how AID helped her so much.
[01:00:00]
And her sponsor said, Lillian, you shouldn't put that in there. It goes against the traditions. And Lillian said, when people know that Lillian Roth is going to AA, they'll want to come. And a couple years later, when she was laying face down drunk in Palm Springs and vomiting up her pills and alcohol, I don't know what people thought. I don't suppose they thought of anything, just there's Lillian Roth drunk again.
The next year, John Barrymore's daughter, 1959, wrote a book called Too Much Too Soon. And she'd taken it a step further. She'd been helped by AID to the point where she now had wine with dinner. And I was going to write her and say, where are those meetings? I'd like to find some. When she died in the Malibu drunk tank, I don't suppose anybody thought much about it. But over the years, I've never seen anyone break their anonymity and profit from it.
The last guy that I saw nationally do it was running for president in 1972. His campaign was faltering. He said, well, I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous, which his campaign ended then. But people do it all the time. And in Los Angeles, God, it's just every day there's some new movie star comes out. I'm sober now. I'm out of the promises. I'm an AA. And then a week later, drunk again, sick, goofy. There's about five or six movie actors who are staying sober that I know of.
And the rest of us are just in and out, in and out, in and out, because we don't understand their case is different. But now, why would breaking your anonymity be such a bad thing? I mean, you know, I don't think God's sitting up there saying, that man broke his anonymity. He doesn't care. What happens, as far as I can determine, and I don't know, this is just a theory of mine, is that it's as though we're under a big tent, a tent of anonymity, of submergence of self.
And when you get above that, you say, look, I'm helping AA now. I'm helping. I'm better than these people. I'm so well. I'm helping them. I'm not going to be in the tent anymore. And then one day, the cold wind blows, and you have nowhere to go, while the rest of us are sitting in our tent. I think that the great, the way they wrote that 12th tradition is very, I just love it. We believe the principle of anonymity has a, since, immense spiritual significance.
It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities, that we are actually to receive, or to practice a genuine humility. We don't, whether or not we can practice humility is a moot point in AA, because some days we can, some days we can't, even though humility is. But the great fact of Alcoholics Anonymous is this, you say, what can we do for the future? What should we change? There are people who want to change the book.
I think it's ridiculous. Show us something that works better, and then we'll try it. We want to let people in who aren't alcoholics, absolutely not. We want to, there's so, every week or month, there's a new method to improve AA. I've been sober here seven weeks, and it seems to me that we should, who cares? Who cares? My counselor at the treatment center said, screw you, and screw your treatment center.
I mean, I don't say that, but I look at. So it really seems that what we can do for the future, my job is to predict the future and make it a good future, is to take care of what we've got, and keep it, and not listen to the siren songs of those who know better. To do the things, to practice these principles in all our affairs, to try to maintain our singleness of purpose, and our belief in the efforts to perception of humility, because the greatest gift of all, you know, I think one of the great lines in all of Alcoholics Anonymous is that last line of the long form of the 12th tradition, and it can, as far as I'm concerned, it concerns the whole thing, this to the end, that our great blessings shall never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.