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Source: DICOBE-00026 – Clancy I – AL-ANON FRIDAY – 1980-06-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00026-clancy-i-al-anon-friday-1980-06-15.mp3 Duration: 01:25:23
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I would like to welcome all the Al-Anons, AAs, especially all the guests from different states and cities and many foreign countries that are, I understand, are with us tonight. I know you're going to have an enjoyable evening and a fine weekend. I talked to a young lady the other night and she said, she had talked to God and he said the weather was going to be fine and I'm so grateful she's in so tight with him because it's turning out beautiful.
I would like to welcome all of the guests, especially our guests here at the podium. I have to be on my best behavior tonight because I'm seated between, in my book, two of the finest and I'm going to let the chairperson introduce Emma, I'm not going to take her job away from her. But I hope you enjoy it and if you have any complaints or any grievances about the conference, see me if you can find me.
Have a good weekend. At the far end of the table, I'd like to introduce Barry L. from New York and to Ralph Wright. We have with us tonight, again, Lois W., who is the wife of one of the co-founders of AA and one of the founders of Al-Anon and we're so happy to have Lois with us again this year. The next two people at the table are our speakers for this evening and they are Mary and Clay B. from Bedford, Ohio.
Mary is a member of the Solon Hope Al-Anon and Clay is a member of the Newberry AA group. And without further introduction, except to say I'm very glad that they are here with us tonight also and we'll all get through this together, we'll all be nervous together and we'll all be okay together, I'd like to give you first Mary who will share with us. Good evening everyone. What a beautiful bunch of people you are.
All of you. You'll have to kind of help me along a little bit, I'm nervous as a cat. The more people that walked in here, the more nervous I got. Usually before I say my lead or anything, I manually go over it in my mind. So I kind of get things in order. My mind's a perfect blank, I hope you know that. Whatever comes out, you're in for it. My name is Mary Berkey and I am a very, very grateful Al-Anon.
They say to begin at the beginning and I've got to go way back to when I was a child. I can remember my mother grabbing me by the hand and rushing me up through town looking for daddy. It was Friday night, payday night, and daddy hadn't come home yet. This was a ritual every Friday. We only had a small town and my dad wasn't very hard to find. He was in the nearest beer joint just where he worked called the Dew Drop Inn.
Everyone's got a Dew Drop Inn, right? My mother was the type that she wanted everyone to know just what a rotten bastard she was married to. And she made sure of it. She would throw open the door of this bar and start yelling at him. Look what you're doing. Your poor little child's going to starve to death. They're going to take the house away. Look what you're doing to me. And he would very, very shamefaced look down at his toes and follow her out the door
[00:05:02]
and all the way up through town. She'd keep this up to make sure the rest of the town knew that he was drunk again. When we got to our street, her voice would raise just a little bit louder. And when the poor man tried to go up onto the porch where we lived, she would push him down off the porch and say, What in the hell did you come home for? Why don't you go back to where I found you? Well, when he turned around to go back, she'd grab him by the shirt and say, Go to bed.
Well, he would go to bed. And she followed him every inch of the way up to the bedroom, yelling and screaming at him. And it would either stop when he'd go to sleep, pass out, or she'd just plain shut up. Growing up like this, I decided right then and there, when I get married, my husband's going to be king of the family, and if he wants to get a drink, well, that's going to be fine. He's going to be boss, and I'm never going to do like my mother did.
Little did I know that I was going to become far, far worse than what she ever was. But I loved my father. I loved him very, very much. He didn't compare me to an older sister that was pretty and smart or a brother that was popularity plus with black curly hair. That was just me, and he loved me. And I accepted him for what he was, and he accepted me just the way I was. And when he died, I was lost.
I never felt so lost in my life. When he died when I was 13, up until just a few years ago, it wasn't to know that I was lovable or that I could even love anyone else. I didn't like me after he died. He's the only one that gave me my hopes. Well, my mother did remarry, and the man she married I hated with a deep, passionate hatred. I hated that man for everything he stood for. He used to like to beat my mother and I around.
He'd come home and beat us, and I was trembling on that hate. All through school, I never had friends at home because I never knew what to expect. If I came home, they'd be standing out in the middle of the road fighting and screaming and the neighbors calling the police, the police hauling him away and her running right up behind the cruiser to bail him out. And that's the way my life was with them.
And, God, I was so embarrassed. I'd gone to a couple of girls' houses a couple of times, and I saw the family sit around the supper table together, and they ate together, and they talked their day out. They laughed with one another. They went on picnics, movies. My family didn't do that. And I knew that we weren't a normal family, and I sure didn't want anyone in my school to know exactly the way I was living.
The whole town knew, but if I wasn't around them, then they couldn't hurt me with their little digs. So I stayed away from them. And my hatred of this man grew. Seventeen years old, and he came at me one time to hit me again, and I was choking on that hatred. And I had a butcher knife in my hand, and I was going to kill him. With everything that was in me, I was going to kill that man. And when I came after him with the butcher knife, he brought his hand up, and all I managed to do was cut his hand very, very badly.
And it didn't eliminate my hatred at all for him. But that night, my mother beat me so badly because I had turned on him and defended myself, and I learned to resent the hell out of her. I couldn't imagine why she was choosing this darn drunk over the kids that she had. I couldn't understand why she put up with it. I didn't understand her going back for these beatings all the time. Because, see, when I got married, my husband wasn't going to do this kind of thing.
I wasn't going to permit it. When I was 18, I found a man that I married. I know today I didn't marry him because of love. I married him to get out of that house. And he was one of those good police drinkers, you know, the kind that doesn't drink too much, Christmas, New Year's, baptisms, confirmations, weddings. But it was fun drinking. We could sit back and look at him and say, gee, doesn't Daddy look funny? He's drinking.
He's drunk again. And it was funny. Then all of a sudden, it's not fun anymore. He's stopping at the bars after work and drinking up the money that we needed for the bread and milk. But I wasn't going to say anything.
[00:10:00]
And I didn't say anything. I kept it all inside, just eating at me. Just squirming inside so badly. But I wasn't going to say it. I wasn't going to be like my mother. And he kept it up and kept it up, and it got worse and worse and worse. And he drank more and more. And all I could do was take it out on my children. I made those kids suffer so badly. I never had time for their worries or their hurts or their problems.
They didn't exist for me. I was so tied up, so involved with worrying about why he was drinking. What can I do to make him stop? How can I be a better wife so that he won't have to go out and drink? I didn't know that it was an illness. I hadn't the faintest idea it was an illness. I thought it was a deficiency in me. I thought I was the cause of it. I think at that time, if the world would have come to an end, I would have said, I'm sorry.
No, it's my fault. I had that feeling. I didn't know he was suffering. I didn't know that. I knew my kids were after a while. I'd make plans for them. You know, gee, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And then he'd come home drunk and I'd say, no, we can't go. He's drunk. I didn't know you could have a good time because or even if he is drinking. I never did like these things. They attack you.
Anyhow, we'd been living on this little farm. I didn't drive. We were miles away from the nearest neighbor. And I allowed myself to become a fat, gross, dirty pig. I figured no one comes out here and I don't go anywhere, so who cares? I wouldn't wash for weeks. Maybe if I was going to go to church, I'd wash. I'd wear the same clothes, a cast-off pair of blue jeans that he had in an old sweatshirt, and I'd wear them until they stunk so badly that even I couldn't stand them.
I only cleaned my house when I thought my mother was going to come to visit. And I never washed dishes until I got down to the very last dirty dish and I had to do them. And about this time I found out that my husband had a girlfriend. And I was so indignant. How dare he do that to me? I was his whole life. And it upset me. I couldn't understand why he would turn to this nice, petite, little, clean-smelling person.
I got a look at myself in the mirror one day and, boy, I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. And I started to clean up and I started to lose weight. And I started to want to feel better about myself. About this time his sister came down to visit us. And she was from the Cleveland area, and at this time people were begging for help up here. It was like a manna from heaven, you know, Shangri-La.
There's work and there's money up here. And it's the first time in my whole adult life that I made a decision of my own, and I said, we are moving to Cleveland. And he put a stipulation on it. We will move there if I can get a job. If I can't get a job, we move back here and we continue living like we have been. Well, God was with me. He gave him a good job the first day and me a job the second day, and we found a nice place shortly after that to live.
And I thought, everything's going to be changed now. He's not going to be around this bar down in West Virginia and his old friends. He's going to make new friends, and he's not going to drink anymore. Well, on the way home to where we lived, there was a little bar that he used to like to go to, needless to say, the drinking continued. And it got worse. And I got colder inside and more dead and more unliving.
There was just no emotions. I didn't hate. I didn't love. I didn't like. I was scared to be happy because if you're happy one day, God is going to get you. He was going to give you two days of really good miserableness to get rid of that one day of happiness. So I didn't want to be happy. So I made another decision. We are going to live out in the country. That way he's away from all these men that drink and talk him into drinking and getting drunk.
So we moved out into the country right next door to a beer joint. Well, see, this was better. Well, see, this was better. This way, he could waddle across the yards and he wouldn't get a DWI this way, see, and at least if he passed out, he'd be in between the two buildings and I could find him real easy.
[00:15:08]
But the drinking got worse. And by this time, he was going to doctor to doctor, trying to find something physically that would explain away his alcoholism. He wanted to find something physically wrong with him where he could say, gee, I have this wrong with me, that's why I'm an alcoholic. And he started taking drugs. Doctors are so very, very annoying. They give them drugs, they give them tranquilizers and sleeping pills and high blood pressure pills and they never ask them, do you drink?
Or if they do say, do you drink? Sure, one or two, you know. So anyhow, he started the pill spell and the drinking spell. And one day, I came home from work and my two little girls were locked in the garage, screaming and crying. And I said, what's the matter? And they said, Daddy said he's going to die and you're going to die and we're going to be orphans. And I thought, now's the time I better step in. I hadn't said too much about his drinking up until this time.
And we sat down and we had a long talk. And he told me, he said, I'm going to take an overdose of pills and kill myself. There's nothing more to live for. And he walked into the bathroom and I heard the medicine chest open and close and I heard the toilet flush. And I thought, now he's going to tell me he took an overdose, right? And he came out and he said, I took an overdose of pills. And I thought, well, big deal. And he went into the bedroom and very melodramatically laid down on the bed, folded up his hands and kept yelling at me.
Hey, I took an overdose of pills. Are you going to call the rescue squad? If I die, it's your fault. And it was the hardest decision I ever had to make. I just sit there. And I thought, gee, if he dies, it's not, you know, I didn't know about him. I could always tell the police. I didn't know that he took them. Well, he wanted to make sure that I wouldn't let him die, so he called my son in and he told him. And my son came out and he said, Mom, if Dad dies, I'll hate you the rest of my life. And that was the only reason I called the rescue squad. The only reason.
They did come after him. By that time, they got him to the hospital. He was in a coma. And while he was there, it was recommended that I have him committed to a psychiatric hospital. No matter how you feel about someone, it's not easy to sign those papers. Putting them behind walls when you don't know when they're going to get out, what they're going to be done to them, what medication, are they shock treatments?
You get visions of the snake pits like on TV or in the old movies, and you don't know what's there. And it's a scary feeling. But I signed them. I really, truly did hope that he would get help. And even if he didn't get help, the time he was in there would give me some release from all this tension and worry. Five days later, I got a phone call from the social worker. She said, Your husband's admitted to being an alcoholic and he's been going to AA meetings. And because he has admitted it, we're going to let him go home with the understanding that he has to go to meetings. Will you come after him? I didn't have any choice. I had to. So I went after him and I brought him home.
On the way home from the hospital, he said, Stop and get me a six-pack of beer. And I said, I thought you weren't allowed to drink anything if you're an alcoholic. He said, They told me in AA I was allowed to drink beer, but I wasn't allowed to drink whiskey. And if you think he was sick, I believed him. I was sicker. But I didn't stop for that beer. He went over and got it himself. I said, What about these meetings you're supposed to be going to? He said, I'm supposed to go once a month just to show them that I'm going. He said, Otherwise, I'm okay. I believed that also. I didn't know anything about AA.
And they didn't tell me a word about AA at that time. I don't know if I'd been ready for it at that time or not. I don't think so. But anyhow, he did come home and he did get drunker, drank more, more abusive. And again, my kids were put in the background. No compassion for them. No feelings for them. They existed. They had clean clothes. They had food. No moral support. No mother to put their arm around them and just say, I love you. Nothing like that. One day I came home again from work and my husband wasn't acting the way he should be acting, a little bit differently, a little bit more hopeless.
And I told my kids, I said, Go to your room. No matter what happens, don't you dare come out of that room until I tell you to. And I went ahead and I was doing some things around the house and he called me. He said, Please come here. And I went in and he had a gun pointed at his head.
[00:20:16]
He said, Please help me. He looked at me with such hope, with such misery, so pathetic. And my only answer to him was, I'm sorry, I have no more to give. And with that he shot himself. It took him eight hours to die in the hospital and the only thoughts that went through my head the whole eight hours is, you rotten bastard, you couldn't even do that right. I had no compassion for that man. I was dead inside. I felt nothing. I felt nothing at all.
I would feel more for a dog laying along the road that had been hit by a car than I did for this man that was the father of my children, the man I'd been married to for 17 years. I had no feelings. Later I was to have such a sense of release. It felt good. There was no tension in my house. Now I could devote my time to my children and to me. I could start living. I could start caring about me. But at the same time, this place where I worked, there was this slightly overweight, smelly, talkative drunk that kept coming around and talking to me, trying to make me feel a little bit better about myself, trying to bring me out of this depression that I was in.
And I thought, oh God, I don't need him. I sure don't need him. I've just gotten rid of one drunk and I don't need another one. But he kept talking. He kept coming around and I started to laugh a little bit. He started to tell jokes and it felt good. And one time, one weekend, my sister was coming up and I asked him, I said, where can I take these couple of couples out to show them a good time? He said, well, if you play your cards right, I'll take you. So we went and we had fun. We danced and had a few drinks and a lot of laughs and it was great.
I didn't know that you could go out drinking and have fun. The next day he called me, first thing in the morning, and he said, you're going to marry me. And I said, the hell I am. I did. But see, I married him knowing he was a drunk. But see, I'd gone through all these drunks before in my background and I knew exactly how I was going to handle him. And he was going to do exactly what I said and he was going to have a couple drinks when we went out and we were going to have fun. And at first it was. But then after a while, I'm telling him, now we're going to this wedding reception, you're not going to drink tonight. Or we're going here, you can have one drink, but that's it.
And we're going to my class reunion, you can have two drinks. That's it. I'm going to be watching you. Well, you know how long that lasted. So he'd start going out without me. And he'd drink all he wanted to. He didn't need a nagging, bitching wife around him. And the drinking got worse again. And I closed up inside again. And again, I pulled away from my children. I didn't want to be involved with their problems because I had to keep track of him. You know, the games we all play, you know, looking out the window, wondering where he's at. Did he kill somebody? Did he run into a telephone pole or a whole carload of people?
And then when he came in with that stupid grin on his face, I think, why didn't you at least get a broken arm out of it? Maybe I'd feel a little bit better about him coming home. But thank God he didn't get hurt. But mentally, I'm planning his accidents. I wanted him to have an accident where he wouldn't hurt anybody. He wouldn't run into a telephone pole because I'd have to pay for that out of his insurance. I just wanted him to have a nice, clean accident. And I already had the money spent on how I was going to act at his funeral, the pallbearers I already had picked out.
Nice, clean thinking, right? Nice, sick thinking is what it is. But after a while, I pulled away from him. I didn't love him. I didn't hate him. I just, he lived there. That was the extent of it. And he had left one Saturday night, I guess it was, and he stayed out all night. And I had already made a declaration, if you stay out one night, you're not coming home.
[00:25:14]
So he stayed out all that night, and Sunday morning I got up and I packed all of his clothes nice and neat in boxes, did all of his laundry up, ironed all of his shirts and everything. If I'm throwing him out, I'm throwing him out nicely. Not like other women do, you know. It's going to be all organized. Everything's packed up sweetly. So he called me this Sunday, and he told me he was at work, and he said, can I come home? And I allowed myself to be talked into him coming home. So he stayed that night, and Monday when I came home from work, he's sitting there all cleaned up, by the phone, shaking himself to death, and he said, I'm going out tonight.
And I thought, so what? He said, yeah, but I'm going to an AA meeting. And I thought, sure you are. I wonder how long it's going to take. I wonder if he's just going to drink beer and not his bourbon that he likes so well. But he did go to that meeting, and when he came home that night, he came in on the edge of the bed, and he told me all about that meeting, and he told me all about the lead, and the people he talked to, and some of the things they said, and what the man that had taken him to the meeting had said.
And not knowing anything about AA or Al-Anon at that time, he said, and I'm never going to drink again. And he said it with such conviction. And I thought, God, he's found something he wants and needs, and he means it. And from that night until this very day, I have never had any doubt in my mind that he meant exactly what he said, and I've never worried when he's been a little bit late coming home that he's out drinking. I've never had that worry, because I know he's found something that he wanted so badly.
Well, after a while, he's going to meetings every night. And on Saturdays and Sundays, it was known to maybe go to five and six meetings on Saturdays and Sundays in the morning, noon, night, and boy, I hated that. Here he is. It's a cop-out, right? We've got painting to do. He says, I'm going to a meeting. I asked for help on the car. I've got to go to a meeting, and oh, damn how I hated that AA. Couldn't stand it. And I started yelling at him. What's at these AA meetings now? Who are you meeting there? Well, God loved his sweet little sponsor, the greatest man in the world. He said, you know, there's such a thing as Al-Anon, and if you go to this meeting at this church and talk to this woman, just see that you get some help.
Well, I did go to that Al-Anon meeting, and I did meet the woman. And I sit there, and I listen to all these women talking, and I thought, you damn phonies. You're sitting there with that smile on your face, and you don't mean it at all. You haven't suffered like I had. If you did, you wouldn't be sitting there smiling and giggling like you are. And I hated that. But I went, because after all, they're patting him on the back and saying, God isn't he doing good in his program. And not one soul has patted me on the back and saying, isn't she a brave little thing. Not one.
Well, a few meetings, and I heard my first woman lead. And I sit there, and the resentment was choking me to death, because they hadn't asked me to lead. This woman couldn't tell anything that had bothered her like it had bothered me. She hadn't gone through all these drunks like I had. And I thought, why didn't they ask me? And I waited and waited and waited for someone to ask. I just wanted to make a comment, but nobody would. No one would ask me. They kept telling me to shut up. So I went to these meetings for about a year, not hearing a thing. The only thing I heard, or I read out of a little pamphlet, is you're as happy as you choose to make yourself. And by God, I was going to be happy.
But where I went about being happy, I'm not proud of. I thought it was happiness. It's the only way I knew to find happiness. But it's not happiness when your kids look at you and say, Mom, what are you doing to yourself? Or, Mom, I hate you. Why are you my mother? Why can't you be like other mothers? Or to see the man you're married to cry and hurt and the look of pain on his face. That's not happiness.
It was a Sunday morning and I woke up. No one was in the house. The kids had long gone away for the weekend. The kids had long gone away for the weekends, you know, every weekend they could possibly go out, or the evenings when they could, they were all pretty well grown-up teenagers.
[00:30:05]
And my husband wasn't home. It was the morning of one of the AA breakfasts, and he had gone to the breakfast. And boy, was I lonesome. I was so lonesome and so scared. And I got a phone call, and it was the safety center, and it was the sheriff's office saying, we have your youngest daughter here. We've picked her up for delinquency. Do you want to come see her? I made plans on going out to see her, and the whole time I'm thinking, my God, what have I done to my kids? What have I done to them?
So to go to the safety center, you've got to pass what AA breakfast was, and I stopped, and I left a note in my husband's car telling him where I'd gone, because this little girl was his favorite. They meant a lot to one another. And I started to get out of that car, and something made me stop, and I got back in, and at the bottom of the note, I put, I need you. It's the first time in my life I admitted to needing someone or something.
I didn't know if he'd come out to the safety center. He had no, I had no right to even expect it. But he did come out, because he did love this little girl. And we talked to her for a while, and he said, are you going home? And I said, yeah, and he said, let's go home and talk. So we did go home, and it was a bright, beautiful afternoon, and we sat in my living room, and we talked until it was dead dark outside.
I don't remember what we said. I don't think it's really important right now. I know we got out of our insides everything that we'd been bottled up all these years. We got rid of all this garbage. We told each other the way we felt our fears. He said, will you pray with me? I said, I don't have a God. He said, then pray to mine. And in my living room, we knelt, and we held hands, and we prayed. And the only prayer that went through my mind was, if there is a God, please help me. Please help me.
And God, I wanted help so badly. Things didn't get better overnight. But he asked me, he said, why don't you go back to Al-Anon and try it again? And I said, I'll go back to Al-Anon, but if one of those women turned their back on me, the hell with a whole bunch of them, I don't need it. But when I walked back into that meeting, God saw to it that the sweetest lady in the world was standing at the doorway.
And she put her arm around me, and she kissed me, and she said, welcome back. I love you. And I cried. That whole meeting, I cried. Because I knew I was back where I belonged. And this time, I'm going to listen. Because I certainly want what you have. I want to feel good about myself. I don't want to feel like garbage anymore. I don't want to hurt. I want what you have. So I came back, and I listened.
Have I learned anything in Al-Anon? Yeah, I think I have. I don't hate that stepfather anymore. All the hatred went out of me a few years back. See, he died in a mental institution, not knowing who he was or what he was. And he died of an illness called alcoholism. And I can understand now some of the things he went through. I don't resent my mother anymore. I was able to tell her a few years before she died that I understood.
And I really did understand. She did for me what she thought was right. The day she died, I was able to be with her, and I was holding her hand. And I told her, with everything that was in me, mom, I love you. And I really meant it. She wasn't lucky like some of us. She didn't have Al-Anon. She didn't have Al-Anon. She had to work it out herself the best way she knew how and the only way she knew how.
My kids, they're great. They're fantastic kids now. I don't expect them to be what I want them to be. They're being what they want to be, and they're doing a darn good job of it. I had to love my kids enough to allow them to hurt for themselves instead of buffering all their problems, all their pains. I've been blessed with eight beautiful grandchildren. It's been great. And these kids now can tell me, I love you.
[00:35:03]
The letters and all the phone calls that I get from them say, I love you. My husband's big six-foot-five son of mine bends way down, and he doesn't care who's there, gives me a big kiss and says, Mom, you're great, I love you. And I just feel so good inside. I'm starting to feel better about myself. I'm starting to like me pretty well. I've still got a lot of growing to do, one heck of a lot of growing to do.
But I'm starting to feel better about me. I don't go to bed at night and worry about how did I hurt this person or what did I say again. I try to live the best I can every day. I found a God. He's a good God, and he's the one that I can talk to on the way to work, at work, when I'm having any kind of a bad day. I can just say, hey, God, help me, or thanks, God. It's been good. My husband and I have a very, very close relationship.
I had to learn to respect myself, to trust myself, and to like myself before I could expect him to love and trust me again. It wasn't an overnight thing. It took a good couple of years, little by little, day by day, to gain that trust back. But we're so close now. Oh, we still yell. We still scream and slam doors. But when we do, we know that there's love there and we can cope with the problems and we can talk about it.
And it's been fantastic. I'm one of those women that say, thank God that my husband is an alcoholic. We could never have had this otherwise. This has been such an honor to be asked down here. I never ever thought that I would ever be able to stand up in front of so many people and just tell them, to bare my soul to them, to tell you where I'm at and to know that you're there, to know that you love me the same as I love you.
There's so many friends here, so many fantastic friends that have helped me so much. I want to thank all of you. Because without AA, because without Al-Anon, I'm nothing. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Clay. I'm an alcoholic and my name is Clay Berkey. Good evening, everybody. I'm here tonight for two reasons. The best two reasons that I know under the face of the earth. The first reason is because my God loves me.
Second reason, because of the second step of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I came to believe in a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. And that's exactly what happened. Because when I come into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I know without a shadow of a doubt I was crazy. Because some of the acts that I performed, doctors even told me I was crazy. I got to do one thing before I keep going.
This is a set of hearing aids. I'm almost deaf. And I got to tell a little story about it. The wife and I led a Al-Anon anniversary a couple, three months ago. She got done leading and I got up and I took my hearing aids out and laid them on the table. After the meeting was over, one of the nice Al-Anon women come up to my wife and ask her why I wore earplugs while she was leading because I didn't want to hear her.
They're not earplugs, they're hearing aids. And when I stand behind a set of microphones with the speakers blasting, I get a feedback in it and all I hear is a bunch of ringing. So that's the reason I took them out and I want to explain to everybody why. It says in the big book that we're supposed to tell what it was like, what happened and what it's like today. I'm going to skip a lot of it tonight because it is a double lead.
It's quite hot in here and these chairs get mighty hard. But I'll give you a little bit of the background of what I was like. When I was born, I was born in a little town of Pennsylvania and my father was a minister and my mother was a missionary.
[00:40:02]
And I had one older brother. And by the time I had graduated, I didn't remember too much about graduation because I drank most of those years in high school. And I was a very God-fearing person at that time with the training that I had. And when I graduated, we had in our kitchen a nice round table where we had our family councils. And my mother speaks up and says, Clayton, now that you've graduated and you're supposed to be a man, what are you planning on doing with the rest of your life from here to the day that you die?
What are you planning on doing with your life? I just shook my head. I said, Ma, I don't know. I never gave it a thought. I was in school. My parents was taking care of me. Why should I worry about anything? Every two bucks I got, I'd give it to my buddy. He got me a fifth of, or a quart, I should say, of good old moonshine and there'd be a few of us that would split it up and get drunk. So why would I have to worry about what was happening to my future life?
She said, well, she said, your dad and I have talked this over and we know exactly what you're going to be when you grow up. The only thing we want to know is what denomination do you want to be? The denomination of your father's or my denomination? Well, my mother had traveled a lot and with the religion that she was in, being a missionary, meant that she was gone long periods at a time and she was gone far distances.
And my dad was mostly at one position and one place and I knew I could talk to my dad and put a tap on him just about any time I wanted to. And I said the denomination of my father. They said, fine, we're going to send you upstate New York to a theological seminary and you're going to become a minister just like your father and you'll preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people that need it. We have to have somebody to carry on the tradition in our family.
And seeing as how you're the baby and your brother has already gone to the Navy, you are going to do it. Bravo for them. I went to college. You can call me a college dropout. I would prefer you wouldn't. I drank my way out. I didn't drop out. The dean came out one Sunday morning after Sunday morning services and he said, I'd like to have five volunteers, he said, stand over here to go with me into Rochester and we're going to preach, he said, to the county jails, the county home.
Give small testimonial sermons, etc., etc., etc. And who would like to go? And I was the first one to raise my hand. He said, Mr. Berkey, not you. He said, you stand over here. He said, I still want five volunteers. Five other guys volunteered to go along. Sent them up there in the corner with me and everybody else departed. He came over and talked to us. And he said, Mr. Berkey, he said, it was you that inspired me to perform something like this.
He said, because I have known, noted, that everybody that hangs around with you, he said, what a great inspiration you are to them. He said, they're doing better in school. He said, they're up to age students. He said, and they know just who their God is. He said, and that's miraculous in a place like this. He said, so many people were forced in here, and I know, he said, by the people that hang around with you and the ones that you hang around with, he said that you want to be here.
And with that, I agreed. We went into Rochester that morning. We stopped at the Mahoning County Jail. We were in there approximately an hour and a half, I would say, and we came out and everybody got in a limousine but the dean and I. And I looked at him and I said, Dean, I said, would it be all right if I walked back to school? And this is in the wintertime. He said, Mr. Berkey, that's 18 miles back to school. Why?
I said, well, Dean, and what I told him then, I'm telling you now, and I meant every word of it. I said, I cannot meditate with my God the way I want to. I can't find peace of mind within me. I can't find me. Because my roommate is so noisy and when he reads a book, he has to slam it. He does everything to annoy me. And I want to get closer to my God like I should. He said, permission granted, providing you're back to school before the evening meal.
I said, thank you. With that, he got in the limousine and drove away. With that, he got in the limousine and drove away, and I started walking down to the main highway so I could start walking back. And in the state of New York, at one o'clock in
[00:45:02]
the afternoon on a Sunday afternoon, the beer joints were allowed to open up legally. And as soon as I rounded the corner, one of them opened up their doors, and I had that oh-so-far-distant smell that I haven't had for quite some time hit me right in the nostrils, you know, and I, oh man, that smells so good. I think I'll go in and shoot one game of pool. I don't think an alcoholic did one of anything in his life. I went in and some big guy was in there and he says, yeah, kid, can I help you? I said, I'd like to shoot a game of pool, he says, all right, what would you like to have to drink with that? I had to be here.
I said, so I stuck up my thumb and the first car that came by picked me up. I said, when I got in that car, I said, the smoke was so thick, you could cut it with your finger. He said, is that all? I said, no, but you wouldn't believe the rest. He says, go ahead, try me. I said, well, I said, on the way down, I said, that guy was sitting there with a bottle between his legs. And I said, he was taking a drink all the time. And he did, he handed me some even. But I didn't tell the dean that. And the dean right away, as soon as I said that, he said, see Mr. Berkey? He said, God put you there with that man and put that man in front of you. He said, that's the kind of people, he said, we have to go out and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ too. And the moment that he said that, I just lifted my head and I said, thanks God, he believes my lies. And the next Sunday I lied again and the next Sunday I lied again. And I don't know how many Sundays this went on until one Sunday afternoon, I didn't make it back to the evening meal. I got a little more inebriated than what I thought I was in the car that I was in. When I came to, I was in Illinois and I knew I couldn't make it back to Rochester for supper. So I thought, to heck with it. God doesn't need me for a preacher. So I roamed the United States for about a year, picking up an odd job here, an odd job there. Whatever money I could get, I didn't care what paid. Maybe a cheese sandwich and a fifth of wine or whatever. I didn't care what I drank. I didn't care what I ate. Something, as long as I had a little alcohol in me, that countering, baffling, powerful liquid called alcohol. It makes the weakest man feel like Superman. Yes. I came home in about a year and the first miracle that I ever seen performed in front of me was there. Because at no given time could anybody come to our house and find my mother and father home at the same time. Because my mother was always gone. And when my mother did come home, it seemed like the weekend that she came home or the week that she came home is when my dad had to go to a tabernacle revival meeting or something, I don't know. And he was gone. But I came home that day and they were both And again, we sat down at this little round table in our kitchen and my mother's doing the talking and she says, Clayton, why? What happened to you? Why? My dad looks at me with tears in his eyes and he says, Clay, why? That's all he said. I said, Pop, I got the spirits instead of the spirit.
That's why. I had a year to think that answer over. I knew they were going to ask me this. And my mother again in her sweet tone said, You have disgraced our family. You have ruined the Berkey name. Now what are you going to do with your life, Clay? Please tell me. What are you planning on doing with your life? I said, I'm going to join the Navy. I'm going to be just like my brother. He had a couple bars on his shoulder and a little chicken feet up here on top of his hat. He made it the hard way. He had a lot of education. And I said, I'm going to be just like my brother. I'm the only alcoholic in the world that wanted to be like somebody else. Everybody wanted to be themselves. I've talked to a lot of people. They wanted to be themselves. I was the only one that wanted to be like somebody else. I was going to be just like my brother. Fine, tomorrow morning we're going to take you to Du Bois and see you raise your hand and be sworn into the Navy. They took me over to the recruiting office. I signed up and went through the physical and everything. And my mom and dad is waiting for me. And when I come out, my mother says,
[00:50:03]
when does he get sworn in? And the recruiting officer looked at her and says, well, that won't be until tomorrow morning. You have him here tomorrow morning. And we have to take him down to Pittsburgh. And everybody gets sworn in at one time. My mother says, what's the address in Pittsburgh? I was sworn in that day, believe me. And I became that day exactly what she wanted. Because as soon as I raised my hand and went through the rituals or whatever you have to go through, they looked at all of us that was there and proudly said, you men line up over here. I became a man, an instant man. So my mother was happy. My mom and dad left. They went back home.
But I was a man. And I was going to prove to them that I was a man. I don't know how many of you men was in the service during the Second World War. But if you went in before the Second World War or during it, you went in as an apprentice seaman. I went in May the 1st, 1939. I came out August the 29th, 1948. That's nine years, three months, and 29 days. I went in as an apprentice seaman. I came out as a seaman recruit. That takes one hell of a lot of hard work, the wrong direction.
Again, due to that cunning, baffling, powerful liquid in that bottle called alcohol. And at this stage of the game, I cared less what anybody did in a bottle. I drank if it contained any kind of alcohol. And I believe some of the stuff I drank was used. It tasted like it. And I come home and my mother said again, Clayton, just what are you trying to prove? What are you going to do with your life? I said, Mama, I said, all that money that I sent to you during the war days, I said, did you save any of it? She said, I never spent a penny. I said, well, I have a little bit. I came through False Creek and there was a bakery for sale. I'd like to buy that bakery. She drew the money out of the bank, give it to me, and I went over and bought this bakery. Nine months later, there was a gang of us fellows that was out drinking one night and I wanted to show them the establishment that I owned. I thought I owned Pennsylvania. And I took them into this bakery and I had a union baker out of Pittsburgh baking for me. And when I went in, there was a little bit of an argument of who owned the place, me or him. He said that he did the running of it and he did the baking of it and he didn't want anybody like me in there contaminating it. And I politely told him that I owned it and one of us had to leave. He said it wasn't going to be him. I knew it wasn't going to be me. And he had a meat cleaver laying on this block where he used to cut his dough up, so I picked up that meat cleaver and he ran out the door and I started on these big coppers that we had and everything else and the pots and the pans. And when I walked out the door, nobody owned a bakery. I just owned a shallow one. I'll show him. He's not going to work here no more. Just what I did. Then I had a couple bakery trucks that I had to get rid of too, because there was no bakery route to run. I didn't know what to do. By this time I was married and I started to work at the East Branch Dam in Pennsylvania in St. Mary's. And I went up, I heard, I was drinking in this one bar one day and I heard somebody over tell somebody else that every night there's a uke driver up there gets killed. I said, hell, they don't know how to drive one of them damn things. That's why. I'll show them. So I went up and I seen the superintendent of the dam and I says, I understand you're doing some hiring. He said, the only people that we're hiring is carpenters. I said, that's what I mean. I'm a carpenter. You hiring? He said, what kind of carpenter work have you done, kid? I said, I've worked for my grandfather, trimming out houses. I didn't know a saw from a hammer. You know something? It took me 30 days until the Union, 1174 out of Pittsburgh was up there. And I wasn't the only one. There was a whole bunch of us like that. And they give us our cards for $105. It was $90 initiation fee and $15 dues at that time. So for $105, I became an instant journeyman in the carpenters trade. It was shortly after that and that damn finished up and that job closed out and I still didn't have a job then. And I had a job
[00:55:02]
offer from the same company to go to Duluth, Minnesota. And there was four of us in our car, in my car, and we started to Duluth. And on our way through, we happened to think a buddy of ours moved to Cleveland a year prior to that. This was on a Friday. Let's just stop and say hello to him tonight. Maybe he'll give us a free meal and we'll be on our way. That was in 1949 and I haven't left yet. It's a long way to Duluth. To make a long story short, I went into business for myself in a general contracting business. I had four other men and myself and I was doing very well, very well in the early 50s. And a big shot walked up to me and says, Clay, I own a lot of land. I have this one other company that works for me and he cannot supply me with what business that I need to have built. And if you could hire a few more men, I would be more than glad to give you the work.
And it seemed like a miracle happened again, which I thought it was at that time. And if I wouldn't have been a drinking man and used all this alcohol, probably I could stay today. It was a miracle. Because overnight, I was no longer a general contractor. I was a subcontractor in the carpenter trade. And I built many, and many, and many motels, hotels, apartment buildings, churches, and what have you. Any place this man sent me because he was a great man, a big man. June the 1st, 1965, when Dun & Bradstreet came out and they had me written up, I was worth six and a half million dollars. July the 15th, 1966, I had three of my men build me a platform so I could stand on it and face everybody. I had 134 carpenters and 29 laborers all in the union working for me. And I stood up in front of them and I said, men, that paycheck that I give you last week was not worth the paper that it was written on. And I don't even have the paper to write out a check for you this week. But don't worry. I talked to the general contractor and he said he would make everything good. You will not lose a penny. It says in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that we're supposed to make amends whenever possible. I've seen a couple of these men and I have made amends to them. One, the guy lost his family. He started drinking over that deal. He had eight children. He had just bought a brand new house and making his payments on it. And the day before that I laid everybody off or went broke, he went out and bought himself a new car. And the next day he found out that he didn't have a job. That's just one of the men. How many more of the 134 journeyman carpenters and 20 men, 29 laborers, did I hurt? I don't know. If any of you is in the room tonight, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the way I was at that time. I was a sick man. I'm still a sick man in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous trying to get better. Trying to get better every day, 24 hours at a time, trying to get just a little bit better. I went to work for a small outfit in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. And this man said that he was going to send me all over the world installing environmental growth chambers.
My job was I'd fly here or fly there. And when I landed, I always had a you-drive-it car, a rental car of some kind. I had a stack of credit cards that made my wallet stick out pretty good. I had a quite a bit of cash on me. I'd go down to the union halls. I'd hire union men to help me show them how to do this. And I slept in some of the best motels and some of the best rooms. November 30th, 1973, I was finishing up the University of Massachusetts in South Boston in Dorchester. We were completely done with everything. And I had beaten my time for something like three months, but the allotted time that I was allotted.
…with the allotted time that I was allowed to have on that. So I told all the people that was there, every crew, electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, carpenters, whatever.
[01:00:00]
I said, tonight is my night. I said, all of you men, tell me where you want me to meet you, and I'll wine you and dine you. Anything you want to drink is on me. Anything you want to eat is on me. I made the statement after I came in the program that I never stole anything from anybody. And I told this to my sponsor once, before I even started leading or anything, I thought I'd get a little bit honest.
He said, was that your money, Clay? I said, hell no, that's the company's money. He said, I thought you said you didn't steal nothing. I learned the hard way. This is the road of hard knocks right here that we're in. This isn't a gravy train. So I took all of these men out, and they kept diminishing and taking a taxi. If they were still capable of walking, they didn't want to drink no more, they'd go home.
Some people were like that. They'd have one or two of them go home. They'd have a steak, some of them would have two steaks, and then go home. But it got to the wee hours of the morning, you know, and there may be a handful of us. And I said, why the hell don't you folks go home too? By this time, some of that, I've heard people call it left-handed cigarettes. I like the term wacky tobacco, you know, was floating around, and I was puffing on those.
And I had some of those little black capsules, and I was swallowing them like candy. Nothing was happening. I couldn't get on that Cloud 13 that I wanted on. I got up to Cloud 9, and I stayed there, and I couldn't get back down, and I couldn't get up. And I went home to my motel room. I seen a movie one time, and I got confronted on this Tuesday night about the name of the movie. I thought it was the story of Fanny Hill or somebody, some madam that in New York City, downtown New York City, one of her girls walked out on the 22nd floor and just dove off on a New Year's Eve and splattered herself on the street.
This is what I was going to do. I took off all my clothes, my glad rags, and folded them up nice and neat and put them on the foot of my bed, took off my shoes and put right up on top of them. I was going to walk out here on my balcony on my 22nd story where I lived, and I was going to jump out into the parking lot. That would be the end of Clay Berkey, and nobody would have to worry about me. And that's what I did. I walked out, and I jumped.
Seven-thirty the next morning, one of the maids come in, one of the housekeepers come in, walked into the lobby and told the guard out there that there was some naked man's body laying in the tree lawn that he ought to go out and see about it. I don't know how many of you folks been in Boston on November the 30th. It gets mighty chilly up there. When this guard come out, and he kicked me a couple times in the backside.
I lived there for about a year, and he says, Clay, why don't you get up out of there? And I opened my eyes, and all I could see was a nice clear blue sky. I looked at my skin, and it was the same tone. He reached down and grabbed my hand, and he picked me up, led me into my room. Maybe I couldn't get on cloud 13 that night, but there was two things I forgot. That motel was only five stories high, and I was on the ground floor.
Now you speak about a spiritual awakening, I wasn't even in the program yet. And remorse started setting in. So I went over to the airplane, and I caught the plane, and I come home. Walked into the plant, and the president of the plant looks at me, and he says, Clay, I hear you done a terrific job up there. I finished up three months early. I said, thank you. I said, what's my next assignment? He said, well, I'm going to send you to Des Moines, Iowa, but he said, first, you got to work in the plant the next six days.
He said, I'm not sending anybody out during the holidays. I said, wait a minute, I got a three-week vacation coming. He said, go see the paymaster and tell him to pay you for the full month of December, because I'm not letting anybody work. I'm giving everybody the week off between Christmas and New Year's with pay. So take a whole month's pay. And I had a pretty good wager coming in. If you go home with a full month's pay in your pocket, and your wife doesn't know about it, and she's working, and the kids go to school, and you live right beside a beer joint, and you're an alcoholic, what do you do?
You get drunk. Morning, noon, and night. And I did. And I was supposed to report back the first Monday of the new year, and I was supposed to report back the first Monday of the new year, and I did. And I was supposed to report back the first Monday of the new year, and I didn't show up.
[01:05:04]
Tuesday came along, and he called me up. He says, Clay, I thought you was coming in yesterday. I said, I had the flu. I didn't tell him it was the liquid flu, but I had the flu. He said, well, why don't you come in now? I said, I'm feeling a little better. He says, come in now. He says, I got to talk to you. So I stopped at every beer joint on the way down to the plant, went in. I had time to think, and I had a few belts under me, and I threw down the credit cards on the table and the keys to the plant and the keys to the company car.
He says, what's all of this for? I said, I quit. He says, what do you mean you quit? I said, I'm going to quit. I'm going to retire. I'm not going to work no more. Well, he got a hold of my wife, and when I got home, my wife had heard about it. She says, what's this that I hear that you retired? I said, I did. I retired today. The reason I can remember this so distinctly, it was January the 8th on a Tuesday, where I sat and had coffee with the wife in the mornings and watched the children eat their cereal before they went to school.
There was our little daily newspaper laying there and printed up the way printer's ink is, but it has a pencil mark around an ad. And it struck me funny how somebody could print something with a pencil mark around it. And I picked it up and I read it, and it said, The American Society for Metals was looking for a building service manager. I said, boy, that's right up my alley. So I go down there. I stop at all the bars on the way down and tell them what I'm going down for.
Put my application in. They give me about a four-hour interview. And on my way out, this guy reaches over and he shakes my hand, and he says, Mr. Berkey, I'm very sorry, but you're too overly qualified. With that, I hopped in my car and I went home. My wife was there again when I got home that evening, and she says, Where have you been? I said, See that paper with that pencil mark around that ad? I said, I went to see about that job.
She said, What'd they say? They told me I was too overly qualified. She said, Boy, they haven't seen you work for a long time, have they? Boy, that keen alcoholic mind started working right away. You know, I grabbed the phone and I called him up. I said, John? He said, Yeah. I said, This is Clay Berkey. I said, You just got done spending the afternoon with me, and when I left, you told me I was too overly qualified.
I said, How could you make a statement like that? I said, You've never seen me work. He said, Well, you wouldn't be satisfied with the amount of money that we're willing to pay. I said, How much is it? He said, Sixty-six hundred dollars a year. I said, That's fine. I don't need the money. I'm retired. I need the job. He said, Start to work at 830 in the morning. I don't know how many of you folks believe in miracles, but this was the greatest miracle that ever happened to me in my life.
January the 9th, 1974, I started to work for the American Society for Metals. March the 9th, 1974, 60 days to the day later, I got up bright and early on a Monday morning, and I went into that place, and I took care of all the mail, separated the mail, had it sorted out. Everything that the postman was supposed to do, which was one of my departments, and this man worked for me. He's a few years older than I am.
And when he came into work at 730, I said, Ed, step into my office. I have to talk to you. He says, I'm too busy here. He says, How about 11 o'clock when I lock up the doors? He says, I'll be in then. I said, I have to talk to you now. He says, About what? I looked at him with a big question mark in front of me. I didn't know about what. I knew I had to talk to him. He says, What's the matter, Clay?
I said, Well, I said, You're a retired postman out of the city of Cleveland. I said, Surely you know a lot of addresses down there and possibly a lot of phone numbers. And I said, I'd like to have one. He says, And that is of what? I said, Of AA in Cleveland, and I don't mean Automobile Association. He looked me straight in the eyes, and his eyes was about to pop out. He looked me straight in the eyes, and his eyes was about that big around, and his mouth was drooped open.
He says, You mean Alcoholics Anonymous?
[01:10:04]
And that's the first time in my life I affiliated AA with Alcoholics Anonymous. And then my eyes opened up. I said, Yes, that's it. He says, Why? And being an alcoholic with a keen alcoholic mind and knowing exactly what to say, I had the right answer. I said, I have to join. He says, What do you mean you have to join? I said, Because I want to. He comes over to that door, and he leans on the door with me.
He says, Why do you want to? I said, Because I have to. For about ten minutes of having to and wanting to, he found out that he had a pretty sick kid there, you know. He says, Clay, just maybe, maybe I can help you. You see, for 21 years, I have had complete, uninterrupted sobriety. These words, I didn't even know what they meant, let alone pronounce them at that time. I said, Yes, Ed, what's that?
He says, I haven't had a drink of alcohol for 21 years. I belong to AA. I said, How can you? You don't drink. He says, That's just it. We don't drink in AA, one day at a time. I said, Hell, I can go any day without drinking. He says, Listen, Clay, I'm going to tell you something. If you're asking for help, and you accept the help I'm willing to give you, you have something going for you right now that I can never ever have as long as I live.
And I'm looking at him, and I said, I can have something that you can't have? He says, Yes. I said, What's that, Ed? He says, Complete sobriety from the day you enter AA until the day you die, if you want it. He says, I can't say that. He says, I was in the program five years. He said, And being of a good, strong, Catholic, Irish faith that I am. He said, My wife gave birth to a set of twins and I had to go out and celebrate.
He said, I should have 26 years. I only have 21. He says, You don't have to do that. And I swear today, that's the only thing that kept me sober the first two years I was in AA. I was trying to defeat him. I was going to stay here until the day I died, if it took that long. I didn't know how long it was going to take. But the first two years, and I've heard many a people say, I never got AA. AA got me.
I'm one of them. AA got me. I was doing things. I was doing everything that Ed told me to do. I didn't know why. I didn't care why. I wasn't drinking. And in my mind, I was getting a little bit better. I could think. I could make a few decisions. But there was somebody else at home that was mighty, mighty sick. That somebody called a spouse. And he told me about his spouse. And how she was going to AA.
And at this particular moment, I would like to thank my God for Alcoholics Anonymous. And I would like to thank Alcoholics Anonymous for Al-Anon. Because without Al-Anon, I don't know if I would be sober today. They made a new woman out of my wife. She's starting to get a little bit of sense in her head today. And that's only due to Al-Anon. Now, how far this can go, how far this progresses, I don't know.
I've seen some Al-Anon people around. Boy, I'll tell you, I'd give up two of my wives for one of theirs. But I do. I have a wonderful wife today. She understands me and I understand her. And I have a God of my understanding. I was in the program six months in September. My daughter calls me, you know, from Pennsylvania. And with her mother… Now, I'm not going through my whole story. I've been married more than once, more than twice, too.
But with her mother, we got divorced back in 1963. And if you think I was drinking before then, she stood up in front of the judges. She says, Your Honor, she says, I don't have the tingle in my heart for this man that I had when I married him. I think he has drowned in it. That was her words, not mine, her words. And the judge says, Divorce granted. If you think I drank before that, you should have seen me after that for the next six months.
If you think I drank before that, you should have seen me after that for the next two years. And then I lost my company? Oh, boy. They couldn't make the stuff fast enough. I was pouring it down my throat. But this phone rings this September morning, and I pick it up, and,
[01:15:02]
Father? What church are they calling you? She says, This is your daughter, Cynthia. I'm getting married on the 21st of September, and I would like to have you. Clunk. I hung up. I don't want to hear that stuff. I'm not going to no weddings. I know what weddings are like. I've been to many of my own. I've been married sometimes that I didn't even remember saying I did. I do. You know, it's just one of those things. And I wasn't going to somebody else's wedding and get drunk.
I could get drunk at home. But right now, I was fighting to stay sober. That Friday night, her oldest brother come up. He come pulling in my driveway. I bid him hello, and he gets out of the truck, and he says, Dad, Butch wants to know if you'll come home to her wedding on the 21st. I said, Listen, kid, you're on my property. You're willing to stay here for the weekend if you want. See that big camper? Mom and I's pulling that out mighty shortly, and we're going on a trip, and you're welcome to join us and have a wonderful weekend, providing you keep your mouth shut about any damn wedding. You hear me?
He says, Okay, Dad. We went, and we had a wonderful time. And Sunday afternoon, he gets back in his truck and starts back home. And just before he left, he says, What do you want me to tell Butch? I said, Just tell Butch to forget it. I'm dry right now, bud, and I'm not going to go to no wedding where I can get drunk. About three hours later, he was home, and his sister called me back up. This time, not quite so formal. Phone rang, and I answered the phone.
Dad? I said, Yes? She said, Whatever you do, please don't hang up on me. This is your daughter, Cindy. I'm getting married on the 21st to a wonderful man. I'm having a dry reception in the basement of the church, and I understand you quit drinking, and that's the only reason I'm asking you to my wedding. Would you please come? If you want something hard to drink, Mom's going to have it up at her house, and you're welcome to go up there, but don't let me see you. I said, Sweetheart, only God can keep me from that wedding.
I told my wife about it on the 21st of September. It happened to be the Punderson Conference, and I went to the meeting on Friday night and Saturday morning. I had to miss the double lead on Saturday afternoon, but I threw my wife and her three children in that big station wagon I had, and we buzzed on to Pennsylvania, and I went to that wedding, and I was the first one behind my daughter and her husband when they walked out the aisle.
We got out to the vestibule, and she turned around and threw her arms around me and gave me one heck of a big kiss. She said, Father, this is my husband Jack. I would like you to meet him. I look up. He's about 6'7", 285 pounds. I said, Hi, Jack. My daughter, still holding on to my hand, still has her arm around my neck. She said, Father, when was the last time you seen Grandpa Joe? I had to think who Grandpa Joe was. That happened to be my dad.
I said, My God. I said, That was 19 years ago when Grandma died back in 1955. She said, When was the last time you seen Uncle Skip? I said, When Grandma died back in 1955, 19 years ago, but why? I felt somebody touch me on my back, and I turned around. There's my father and my brother, both with their hands hanging out, and my dad, the tears are running down his cheek. He said, Son, I've been praying for you for better than 50 years that God would touch you somehow to get you away from that bottle.
He said, Miracles cease to happen. This is one of the greatest days of my life. I said, Thanks, Pop. We both encountered one another and had a little cry to ourselves. My brother comes walking over, and there was three of us crying. I had to leave very shortly after that, and I came home. September the 18th, 1978. My dad calls me prior to this by a week or so. He says, Clayton, can I have your permission to get married?
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I said, Why, Pop? You got some young girl in trouble? He says, She's not a young girl. She's not in trouble, but she is a young girl. I said, That figures. How old is she, Pop? See, she was only 75, and my dad was 78. He said, Would you be best man at my wedding, please? I said, Pop, only God can keep me away from your wedding. I'll be there. It almost happened. Friday night on the 16th, my mother-in-law died, and I wanted to be with my wife while her mother was laid out in the casket.
And I went down with my mother, and the funeral arrangements were made, and I spent all day Saturday with my wife. She said, Don't forget, your dad's getting married at high noon tomorrow, and it's a long drive, 500 miles up to see him. She said, God willing, you can make it up there and back. We'll bury Mom Monday morning. I drove all night long. I was up there for my dad's wedding. I met his new wife.
And again, we had a good crying session after that wedding, and I broke his heart. I said, Pop, I have to leave immediately. He said, You can't stay? I said, No. I said, My mother-in-law's laying in her casket, and the funeral is the first thing in the morning, and I want to be with my wife. He said, God be with you on your trip back home. I could go on hour after hour telling you about the goodness that I have got out of this program, but believe me in one thing, it's no bed of roses.
It's not peaches and cream like some people say that it is. It's a very hard rose to hold. And I love it. I love every minute in AA. I had made the statement prior to this in other meetings, I wish I'd have came in AA when I was 15 years old. I qualified for it. I wish I'd have came in AA then because it has been very expensive for me to drink. People pay different dues, and some of you folks out there that haven't paid very much at all, just thank your higher power that Clay paid your way because I paid many a people's ways.
Today, I don't have to have a justifying God to tell me, you did this, now I'm going to do that. The God that I have today that I understand is a merciful God. He said, That's all right, Clay, you made that mistake. Did you learn anything from it? The three biggest words that I know in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is learn, live, and hope. Learn from the mistakes that you made yesterday. Live today, one day at a time, and hope for tomorrow.
And with that, I bid you goodnight. Thanks an awful lot for listening to me. Thank you very much, Mary and Clay. Thank you for being with us tonight. I know you've given me and all of us here a lot of hope and gratitude. I'd like to present you with this gift. Thank you. God 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,
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as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. God is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.