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Source: DICOBE-00599 – Mildred M – FELLOWSHIP BY THE SEA – 1980-10-11.mp3 File: dicobe-00599-mildred-m-fellowship-by-the-sea-1980-10-11.mp3 Duration: 00:57:06
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Fourteen years ago, when I married Cornel and went on my honeymoon to St. Simon Island, and he'd been sober over 15 years, and I knew nothing about alcoholism, I met this lovely lady. She and Jerry were there, as well as some others in this auditorium, and I was immediately accepted and loved, and I felt that love, and I have through the years. I've shared much with Mildred. To me, she walks the walk. I really don't hear her talking the talk, and I've never heard her tell a story, but I'm looking forward to it this morning, and I'm sure that you will get from her what I have been able to receive through the years when I have the opportunity of being with her. So now I give you my friend, Mildred M.. Thank you, Virginia. I hope I deserve that. My name is Mildred, and I'm a grateful Al-Anon. I belong. Hi, everybody. I'm a member of the High Noon Al-Anon group in Atlanta, Georgia, and I think many of you more know Jerry. This is the reason I'm here, sitting right over there. Most of you know him more than me, but we do. We've had so many beautiful experiences in AA, and this has been a very, very special place to us.
We were here at that first meeting in Ocean Forest 12 years ago, and I'm like Virginia, little did I dream that someday it would be like this and that I, little me, would be standing up here talking to all of you. But we continue to grow, and we continue to attend all the meetings that we can, and it's just really, it's just a great way of living, I think. The only way I, not long ago I heard an Al-Anon talk. She made a beautiful talk, and she used to be a World Service delegate, and they had something new that they tell, that they say.
It's not exactly the same words that the alcoholic uses when he tells his story, but I've forgotten what they were, but so I'm just going to say what the AA says. I'm going to tell what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. I was born and raised in a lovely little college town in Arkansas. I had a good childhood, except for one thing. I was a very frail child. I had many serious illnesses when I was three years old. They didn't have any better term for it.
They called it brain fever. I think perhaps it was spinal meningitis. But anyway, at this age, I lost all ability to talk and walk, and I had to learn all over again. And due to this, my mother had a tendency to overprotect me. She would say, well, poor little Mildred can't do this, and poor little Mildred can't do that. And somehow or other, I grew up feeling that other people could do things better than I could, and that I was very inadequate. And to some degree, this has plagued me all my life. But in spite of this, as I said, it was good. I had a lot of friends, and I had a lot of good times, and this was really a good time to be young. Life was much more simple in those days. When I was a little girl, I spent a great deal of time up at my grandmother's, and I was first exposed to the disease of alcoholism, although I didn't know at the time that's what it was.
They would have my Uncle Carl closeted in an upstairs back bedroom, and I could hear these tortured,
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languished cries coming forth from that room, and they would have a male nurse up there to restrain him. And the family was so secretive about it. It was all very mysterious, and I just couldn't imagine what on earth was wrong. I thought perhaps he was insane, or it was just something awful that had happened to this man, and they just wouldn't tell us. But in a few years, I was to find out what was wrong.
But this time, Uncle Carl no longer had a wife, and he would come and live with us for long periods of time. And his room was right next to my room, and I could hear this man getting up in the middle of the night, going out searching for a drink. And the next day, I would see him all sick and all hungover. And as young as I was, I sensed that this man was sick. He was a fine man. He didn't want to be this way.
We had a neighbor across the street, and her husband was also an alcoholic, although in those days they didn't call it alcoholism. They called it a weakness for strong drink. And she and my mother used to commiserate with each other all the time. And they'd say, well, other people have trials, and they have things that come along in their lives and all, but they're problems for which there's some solution. But she said, this problem that we're trying to deal with, there's no solution to it. And I listened to those words, and they were to come back and to haunt me in later years.
Well, after college, I went over to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was working as a legal secretary. And I needed some dental work. And I had a brother in dental college, and I asked him if there was any dentist in Tulsa he could recommend. And he said, yes, he knew a very fine young dentist there by the name of Dr. Jerry M.. So I made an appointment with Dr. M., and I went, and he gave me a very professional examination.
And when he finished, he said, young lady, I can advise you two things. He said, either marry a dentist or a wealthy man, because with all of your problems, you're going to keep some poor guy broke all of his life. And I kind of filed that away. I thought he was pretty cute, but he didn't even seem to know I was around. But much to my surprise, after my bill was paid in full, he called and asked me for a date.
Well, we just hit it off right away. And after a fairly short courtship, we became engaged. And I thought that his friends drank too much, and I thought he drank a little bit too much, too. But I thought, well, we'll fix that after we get married. And I could see that this drinking meant an awful lot to Jerry. And you see, I wanted him. I really did. But I just could not drink. It had an adverse effect on me. It just didn't do a thing.
So I would just go around with ginger ale in my glass or real, real weak drink and pretending that I was drinking more than I was. In fact, I envied these girls and these people who could drink, because it just seemed like they were having so much more fun than I was, and I was just missing out on something. But I was determined I was going to get that man, so he thought he had a drinking partner. And we were married, and we just thought that we had a lot going for us.
We were very much in love, and Jerry was building up a good practice, and we just thought that the world was our oyster. And after we'd been married a few years, Jerry had a real good friend, a West Pointer friend, who was stationed down at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
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And one weekend we went down and visited them, and we were so impressed with this Army life that we decided that we would like it. And we said, well, why not? That summer they were giving competitive examinations down at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. And so we went down there, and out of 350 who took these examinations, Jerry was one of the seven who was chosen to be commissioned in the regular Army. And we were so thrilled and so excited over it.
And our first station was at Fort Riley, Kansas. Now this was in 1938. That really dates me. But it was the tail end of the old peacetime Army. And that was just a world of its own. Those days are gone, never to return. But it was an old cavalry post, and they would have the hunt balls and the hunt breakfast and the horse shows, and the officers would dress up in their pink coats, and oh, we just thought it was so glamorous.
And there was a lot of drinking, and there was a lot of partying, but Jerry drank like an officer and a gentleman. And I look back on those now as our Camelot years. But this bubble soon burst, and World War II came along. And we were sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. We were at Columbia. And from there, it was in 1942, Jerry went overseas. And after he returned from the war, we were stationed in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Well, actually at Fort Eustis. We were living in Williamsburg, Virginia. And by this time, Jerry's drinking pattern had begun to change. And I could see many symptoms there that I'd seen in my Uncle Carl. And I was becoming very worried and very much concerned about it. And for the first time, at least it was the first time I'd seen anything, there were articles beginning to appear in magazines, Reader's Digest and different ones.
And I'd leave these articles lying around, opened up in just the right place, in strategic places for Jerry to read, which I don't think he did. And so I thought, well, I'll just talk to him about it. I tried to talk to him. But for some reason, I was not getting through to him. So I decided that I wasn't putting it right. He was an intelligent man when he sees what he's doing to me and to the family.
By this time, we had two children, a little boy named Jerry and a daughter, Judy, that he would just remedy the situation. So I would rehearse speeches all day long. And when he'd come home that night, I'd be ready for him. And I'd start to deliver my carefully rehearsed speech. But see, being an Army man, the best offense is to go on the defense. And inevitably, I would end up on the defense. And I'd find myself saying, well, I didn't say this or I didn't say that.
No, but you're thinking it. And, you know, I would be thinking it. It seemed that he just kind of had a built-in radar. I don't know how they know what we're thinking the way they do. Things were going from bad to worse, and I was ready for a change. And the change came in 1953. We received orders for Germany. And I had mixed emotions about Jerry's going over there because the children and I would not be able to join him for six months.
But this time I was beginning to feel very guilty about the drinking. And I had good reason to feel guilty. His mother came and visited us. And she said, well, he didn't drink this way when he married you. And Jerry was saying to me that To me, that I'd married him under false pretences, which I had, and he said, I thought I had a
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good drinking partner, and all I, you are is just a nag and a wet blanket, and if you get off my back and leave me alone, everything would be all right. I can take it or leave it any time I want to. So, I thought, well, he'll get over there in Germany, and he won't have me to be bothered with, and perhaps he can straighten all this out. In six months, the children and I joined him, and we just had a grand reunion.
Oh, we were so glad to see each other, and Jerry decided at this period that he would go on a period of controlled drinking. So, this controlled drinking started, and I thought, at last, well, things are better. They're going to be all right, but soon, it was just like it had been, except it was worse. Jerry could sense my increasing desperation, and he warned me in no uncertain terms to never tell anyone what I considered to be a problem, to by no means to go to any chaplain or anyone, because he still said that he could handle it, and that's exactly what I would have done.
I would have gone to a chaplain, or I would have confided in a friend. I would not have tried, certainly, to be handling this thing all by myself. I had a real dear friend over there by the name of Virginia, and Virginia's husband happened to be Jerry's senior officer, and I strongly suspected that John was an alcoholic. Jerry suspected it, too. You know, it takes one to know one, and frequently, when Virginia and I would be together, I would bring up this subject of alcoholism, hoping, just hoping, that maybe she would open up and she would talk about what her problem was, and in return, I could talk about what was consuming and possessing me so completely, but you see, at that time, the Army condoned drinking.
We had it in all of our social functions, and that was just fine, unless you became a victim of this disease of alcoholism, and in that case, out you went, and we'd seen this happen to many of our friends, so Virginia wasn't about to expose her husband, and I wasn't about to expose mine, either, and we had just a few years until Jerry would be eligible for retirement, and so I thought, well, I just cannot see everything that we have worked for going down the drain, and since he isn't doing anything about it, it's going to be up to me.
I am going to control it. Well, at this time, the drinking was the very worst on the weekends, and this big operation of control of mine would take place on the weekends, and Jerry would lay out an enormous amount to carry him over the weekend, and on Sunday, that was the critical day. I've told this story before, but somehow or other, it just sort of is typical of a Sunday in our life at that time, and Sunday, but this time, Jerry would drink up everything he had, and on Monday morning, he would be in such horrible shape that he could hardly get to work, or else he wouldn't have anything left on Sunday, and he would be going through a terrible withdrawal problem, and so I would usually make it my business to have a bottle stuck back someplace to withdraw him, taper him off on Sunday.
Well, this one Sunday, Jerry was following me all over the house, begging for a drink, begging for a drink, and I had run out of places to hide.
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That man could find a bottle, I don't care where I hid it. He can't even find a pair of socks now, but he could sure find that bottle. So, I've heard alcoholic women talk about these old dirty robes they'd wear, you know, and everything. Well, I had one of those old robes, too. It was a great big voluminous thing, and having run out of places to hide, I'd stuck this bottle underneath my robe, and Jerry was following me all around, and I gave him a look to see if I thought he was ready yet, and when his eyes would get all glazed over, and I thought he was about ready to go into the dry heaves, I'd give him a little bit, a little bit, which he would call a disgraceful amount, so I gave him a quick look, and I shook my head, and I thought, nope, you're not quite ready yet.
So I went on in the living room, and I was tired of carrying that old bottle around, so I quickly stuck it underneath the sofa, and here Jerry came following me in there, and he sat down by the sofa, and I could see those eyes darting around, and he looked down, and he spotted that bottle, and I knew he had. So it was just a question on who was going to outsit the other one, and finally he got up and left the room for a few minutes, and I quickly grabbed that bottle, and I stuck it back underneath my robe, and when he came back in, I left the room, and he told me later, he was thinking, oh, relief was just a swallow away, and he reached down to get that bottle and no bottle, and he said he nearly died, and another way I had of torturing him, though I didn't call it that, it was all for his own good, was the morning after.
That was when he was the most vulnerable, as I said, there was an awful lot of parties over there, and the morning after these parties, I would go in, and I'd sit at the foot of the bed, with my mouth all drawn down, and with a smartered look on my face, and just looking like the end of the world was at hand, waiting for him to wake up, come to, rather, and he'd wake up, and he'd look down and see me sitting there, and he knew what was coming, and boy did it ever come, I'd let him have it, I'd tell him what a fool he'd made out of himself the night before, and you know, actually, the things he did weren't all that bad, in fact, some people thought they were funny, but they sure weren't funny to me, but I would always end up with saying the worst thing that I could think of to an Army man, and that was that he was a disgrace to his uniform, and the insanity of this was that on the mornings when he hadn't done anything, I would go in there, and I'd go through that whole procedure, I would sit at the foot of that bed, and wait till he'd wake up, and he'd wake up, and see me sitting there, and he'd say, well, what did I do, and I'd rack my brain, and when I couldn't think of anything, I'd say, well, it's just too awful to tell, I don't want to make you feel badly, and with that, I would leave the room, leaving poor old Jerry Lyon there, wondering what on earth he had done that was so terrible that I couldn't even tell him what it was, we had a beautiful German housekeeper over there by the name of Maria, she was a delightful person to have around, she brought some humor into the household, and she brought some unity, there was absolutely no unity, we were completely fragmented, each of us was living in his own world, the children had their interests, Jerry was so consumed with the alcohol, and I was obsessed, and I was consumed, and obsessed with the bottle as Jerry was, and Maria watched this drama being unfolded before her, and
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one day she said to me, in her broken English, ma'am, the Colonel drank too much, it make him sick, and it make you sick, and how right she was, I don't think it could have been put any better, and in fewer words, and as Jerry grew sicker, I in turn grew sicker, but during this period, as John said, and as I said, man's extremity is God's opportunity, I had started on a deep spiritual quest, I was reading everything I could find, and I found in the way of a spiritual nature, that I thought would help me, I was getting books out of the library, on alcoholism, and I was delving into psychology, and philosophy, and I will say that God sustained me, he did sustain me, but you see, God works through people, and there was no one, no place I could turn. Jerry had a sergeant working for him, we were very fond of Ray, Ray was his name, Ray was an alcoholic, and he was very active in AA, and one morning, one Monday morning, when Jerry was in bed with low back pain, he was unable to make it to work that morning, and I thought, well, to heck with what Jerry said, he needs help, and I need help too, so I slipped downstairs, and I called Ray, and I said, and I asked him if he couldn't come out, and talk to Jerry under some guise, to see if he couldn't be of help in some way, and he said, well, yes, he would be glad to, so he came out, and when he walked in the door, he had the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and an arm load of literature, oh, I could hardly wait, and he went on upstairs, and he closed the door, and he talked to Jerry for a short period up there, and he said he thought that the colonel would be interested in what he was doing over there, since they did have so many alcoholics working for him, of course, he couldn't give him the direct approach on it, and after a short period, he left, and he left that big book, and he left that literature, and needless to say, I read it a long time before Jerry did, and when I read that big book, it was the first edition, and they had the hundred stories, these were the real low-bottom drunks, and I thought, oh, these beautiful men, there's a way out of this, and more than that, they had a chapter to the wives, and I practically memorized that chapter to the wives, and they gave us some real good advice, but the main thrust of what they said was that we could live useful, happy lives, and that we could even be unafraid, and I tried to do every one of these things, but you see, again, I needed people, and I needed Al-Anon, I needed someone to show me the way, someone to help me over the rough spots, but there was no one. In January of 1956, we returned to the States, and by this time, both of us were ready for a geographical cure, although we were not familiar with that term at the time, and I could see that Jerry's personality was undergoing a tremendous change, and my personality was changing, too. If I could, I would have withdrawn from the whole world, but I was trying to play all my various roles. I was trying to be the perfect wife of a senior Army officer.
of a senior army officer with all of its inlays, coffee, teas, cocktail parties, so forth and so on.
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I was active in church and I was trying, let's say I was trying to be a good mother, but inside there was a civil war going on and I was liking myself less and less all the time. I was lying more all the time and I'd become a very skillful cover-up artist. And it just seemed that I was just becoming more anxious and more fearful and more depressed all the time and I was still trying to control the uncontrollable.
One day our little girl, who was about 12 years old at the time, said, Mother, I don't see how you stand it. And I said, Well, honey, it's an illness. It's a disease. Daddy is sick. And she said, Well, if Daddy is sick, why doesn't he do something about it? And when she asked me that question, I had no answer. You see, I had accepted it intellectually, but I had not accepted it emotionally. I read someplace where the longest distance in the world is the distance between the mind and gut level, and I sure didn't have it at gut level.
But things were beginning to close in on Jerry. I don't mean to be telling his story, but I have to tell some of the things that happened in order to tell my reactions to what happened. Things were beginning to close in on him. People below him knew that he had a problem, and worse yet, the people above him were beginning to learn of it, too. And it just seemed as though there was a net being drawn around us, and he was being trapped, and I was being trapped right along with him, and I could see no way out. And in December of that year, I was at my very lowest ebb.
I was completely consumed with self-pity, which for me is the most devastating emotion of all. And I remember my mind going back to the war years. During the war, I had returned to my little town for the duration, and there were a group of us Army Widows who banded together, and we had a close-knit little group. We would share together, and we'd cry on each other's shoulders, but we had a lot of good times together, too. And the people in our town were, oh, they were so proud of our men, and they would come around to us and tell us what brave, courageous little wives we were. And they used to use a phrase that I never did like. They'd say, they also serve who sit and wait. And it seemed to me that that was all I was doing right then, was just sitting around waiting for something to happen, and nothing was happening.
Well, the war, after the war, Jerry came home, and he was quite a hero. He was written up in, oh, all the papers. His picture was in the paper, and he was written up in a weekly news magazine, and he was being decorated, and all this and all that and everything. And I thought, well, he's no hero now. They're not pinning any medals on him now, and no one's pinning any medals on me either, and no one's telling me what a brave, courageous little wife I am. And all of a sudden, it occurred to me, well, we're in a war on alcoholism. But you see, in this war on alcoholism, you have to surrender in order to win. And I didn't think he ever surrendered to anything. He was a fighter. He just wasn't the type.
But by the same token, I hadn't surrendered either. And I had one last plan. I had a strategy all worked out. I looked up in the telephone directory, and I saw where they had an Alcoholics Anonymous
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in Atlanta. And they also had a central office. So one afternoon, I got all dressed up. I don't know why I got so dressed up. I did. Hat and gloves and everything. And so I went down to the central office, and there was a dear little old man down there by the name of Arthur who ran this office. And I poured out my pitiful tale of woe, and he heard me out. And I told him what my plan was. I said, surely you must have an officer out at Fort McPherson. We were, I don't know whether I told you or not, but we were stationed at Fort McPherson, Georgia, right out of Atlanta. Surely you must have someone who can, who's an AA, and who can go by and talk to Jerry and tell him that there's a way out of this thing. And Arthur just shook his head, and he said, no ma'am. He said, in the first place, we don't have any such person. And he said, even if we did, that he has to ask for help.
He has to want help. And he said, there's some literature over there on the wall you can read. And I looked at it, and it was literature I'd already read over there in Germany. And Arthur just didn't seem to see how much I was hurting and how much I needed help. But you see, there wasn't any al-anon for him to refer me. There was no place I could go. And so I left that office feeling more desolate and more hopeless and more completely alone than I had ever felt in all my life. Oh, that hopelessness that John talked about. I think that's the greatest message that we have for the newcomer, that there is hope. There is a way out. Well, I drove home and thought the tears all the way back home. I thought I have failed. I have played my last card. There's no place else to turn except to God. And I think perhaps at that time, I don't recall it as being any great dramatic moment of surrender, but I did surrender to some degree. And in my opinion, it seems to me that that's when God moves in, when all human power has failed. We had invited in about 50 or 60 people to a cocktail party. And oh, how I was dreading it. Because the men, during the holiday period, they just worked on a part-time basis. And this was always the very worst time of the year for us. But we went ahead and we went through the party and it went off real well. But after the party, just as I had expected, Jerry became very sick and very drunk and very miserable. But I'd seen him just as sick and just as drunk and just as miserable many times before. And I didn't think that he was anywhere near reaching out for help. But one afternoon, I was upstairs doing some work and I heard him slip downstairs and he was calling Alcoholics Anonymous. He was calling that little Arthur, that little man that I'd been down to see. And that evening, two wonderful men came out and shared with Jerry. And you know, it didn't occur to me until I was starting to put this, my thoughts together, we used to have an army officer. A miracle. That afternoon, that very afternoon that Jerry had called, this man, the only officer, the only military man out at Fort McPherson in AA, just happened to be downtown. And he thought, well I've never been up to the central office. I think I'll drop in and see what it's all about. And when Bob walked in, Arthur said, oh you're an answer to a prayer. I just had a call from this drunk colonel at Fort McPherson and I have no one to send. I think that somebody who's in the military service could reach him so much better than anyone else. And this is part of Jerry's story. This was an
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Art Warrant Officer. He said, is he a full colonel? And Arthur said, yeah he's a full colonel, but he's full of booze right now. So they came out that night, these two beautiful men, and they shared with Jerry. And Jerry soon started going to AA. But he didn't ask me to go along with him. And I don't blame him. I'd been on his back for so long. And this was something he wanted to do on his own. And he wanted to see what it was all about before he invited me to go along. But pretty soon he did ask me to go to a meeting with him. And the first night, the meeting I went to, it was in a very poor section of Atlanta. And it was in an old dingy house. And as I recall it, that speaker that night was pretty dull. But I thought it was just wonderful. And I thought if this is what it takes, I'm all for it. And I'm going to do everything I can to help that man get sober.
So I started going to AA meetings with him. And I would sit there and I'd listen to those men read those 12 steps. And I'd think, well he's not working those steps exactly, right? And someone would get up and tell his or her story. And I'd think, well he's doing a lot better job on this program than Jerry is. And in 1960, we attended AA International Convention out at Long Beach, California. Oh, that was a magnificent convention. Lois and Bill and Dr. Sam Shoemaker and Abby, all of the old-timers were there. Oh, that was so thrilling. And Lois talked to the wives. And she said, you know, said God can get through to the poor alcoholic sinner. But she said those of us in Al-Anon said we with all of our pride and self-pity and self-righteousness says he can't get through to us. And that was me. Pride, self-pity, and self-righteousness. Here I had been looking for answers for years. And I thought that I was so spiritual and so good. And it was all before me. And I could not see that here could be a way of life for me as well as for the alcoholic. And I was a little bit like a little old lady after we finally got our Al-Anon group started who came to one of our meetings one night.
She was a little thin, dried-up lady with stringy hair. And she slumped down in a chair. And she said, for 30 years, I've been putting up with that man. Said I've cleaned up after him. I've nursed over him. I've cried over him. And I've prayed over him. And said for I've simply been living for the day when he'll get sober. And he's been sober for six weeks now. And it simply wasn't worth it. I was a lot like that little old lady. I expected too much too soon. Because you see alcoholism builds up walls in a marriage. And they sure don't come tumbling down all at once.
You just have to keep chipping away. Chipping away. But Jerry was making progress after a few false starts. And he put together a grand and glorious year of sobriety. And during this period, somebody set off for a little packet of literature. And we started up an Al-Anon group. But none of us bothered to read the literature in depth. I'm always ashamed to tell this. We would sit there in those meetings and we would gossip and we would talk about our husbands and we would talk about their faults. And finally, when I was read, well we weren't supposed to be doing that. We were supposed to be looking at ourselves. We were supposed to be doing something about our own lives and our own faults. And one little pretty girl popped up and said, oh shoot, it won't be any fun if we can't talk about our husbands. But we But we were making some progress. But after this year and a half of sobriety, one evening
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we were having company for dinner and Jerry came home drunk. I couldn't believe it. And every little bit of Al-Anon I had earned went right out the window. And when this drunk started, we received orders for El Paso, Texas, down at Fort Bliss. Now those of you who have been in the service know that an early move at best is a pretty traumatic thing. But when you're drunk it's an impossible situation. And I just couldn't do a thing with Jerry without getting him sober up. And I tried to get him to go to a meeting and he wouldn't go.
He was ashamed to go. And things were just going from bad to worse. There were so many things that had to be done that no one could do except Jerry. All this protocol and all this red tape and everything. It was just mad. But one night he did go to a meeting and I went off in the other room to my little Al-Anon group. And after the meeting we joined the A's for their coffee. And I called our good friend Henry outside. And I told Henry, I said, Henry we're going to end this post in complete disgrace. If Jerry doesn't sober up I want you to talk to him and get through to him that he's got to do something about this. And Henry looked at me and he picked up a piece of paper and he drew a line right down in the center of that page. And he said, Mildred, he said on this side of the page is the alcoholic before he starts drinking. And on the other side is the alcoholic after he starts drinking. And said when he's on this side of the page when he's drinking that I can't get through to him. And he said furthermore no one else can get through to him either.
When we went home that night that was the last straw. And I went into a full-blown case of hysterics. I screamed and I yelled and I hollered. And Jerry had never seen me this way and he didn't know what to do. He said, well honey can I get you a drink? He said you've got to shape up. You've got to pull yourself together. We're in the middle of an army move. Well I don't know. Somehow or other I think, I don't think it was me, I think it was God. It got through to Jerry through that alcoholic haze and somehow or other he did. He cut that drunk right off the middle and we ended that post in fine shape. That is to say he was in fine shape. I was as near a nervous breakdown as I ever hoped to be. I laid on the back seat of that car all the way to Texas. But by the time we got to Texas I was beginning to feel pretty psyched. I thought well I have done it. They have been saying in these books that you cannot cut a drunk off in the middle, but I've done it. Well I hadn't. I'd only delayed it. He ended it up in his usual manner, but we started going to AA and Al-Anon down there and they had a good little Al-Anon group down there. They were much further along than we were and they sized me up in a hurry.
You see I was trying to be so subtle about trying to tell Jerry how to work this program, but he could read me and they said Mildred take your hands off. Said the minute he walked in that AA door said his sobriety is in the hands of the alcoholic. Said he's not going to learn how to stay sober from you. So I started listening and I started taking these 12 steps and when I got to that fourth step I didn't want to take it, but I did. I wrote it all down and I was simply appalled at what I saw.
For the first time I realized that all of my life I had been blaming other people in outside situations and outside circumstances for the way I was. First I was blaming my mother for making me feel inadequate and then when alcoholism entered into the marriage
[00:50:02]
any misfortune, anything that happened that went wrong it was all his fault, all his fault. So I realized that happiness was a do-it-yourself project. It was an inside job and so that's what I started working on and I remember in this literature I was really reading it in depth at that time and it stressed action and service and I knew that I could not be sitting in those AA meetings and in those Al-Anon meetings and just like a sponge and just soaking up all these goodies and things without giving out anything in return. So I started going into action but my self-esteem was so low I just thought that I didn't have anything to share, that I didn't have anything to give, but I found that I did have something to share and I did have something to give. We all have something to give in our each own individual way and so things really started getting better and one of the greatest things I learned also was not to take myself so seriously.
One afternoon I came home and Jerry, he was still drinking Al-Anon, he was slumped over in his big chair and he looked up at me with a silly grin on his face and he said, you're not doing too good on that Al-Anon thing are you? I got drunk but I thought that was funny. Formally that would have sent me into a lecture into a tirade but to me it was uh I could laugh about it and he's asked to take my hands off Jerry but somehow or other I could not take my hands off of our little daughter. She was a beautiful little teenager at that time right and just had everything going for her but I thought she was in the wrong crowd and I tried to force my standards on her and it just didn't work at all and she resented me. Jerry was much he handled her much better than I did but I've had to forgive myself for that too. I think that we do the best we can with our children and Judy certainly turned out to be a beautiful person. Well Jerry got sober in Texas without a bit of help from me and in 1962 due to a heart condition we had an early return retirement and we returned to Atlanta to live and again I started getting nervous and I started worrying. You see I didn't have my Al-Anon made then. I'll never have it made. I thought what on earth is he going to do with himself? He's always been such an active man and I just cannot see him sitting around the house all the time without something to do. Well he had started up this tape recording. It's just sort of a hobby and it soon evolved into a full-time occupation and it has just been a beautiful magnificent thing.
Oh how we have loved all these conventions that we go to particularly over the southeast and life is is really good. These have been happy contended years. Oh we we have our problems living living problems. We both had had major health setbacks but I have found that this program has given me a tool a handle to grasp. I don't care what the situation is. It's all right there for me that it's there. I can handle it if I apply the rules and the if this program the way it's supposed to be lived and people sometimes ask me well do you still go to Al-Anon all these years and I say yes. I need my meetings today just as much as I ever needed my meetings.
I need to be needed and I have found that I cannot store up good thoughts, good behavior, and good good actions that they need to be continually reinforced renewed and restored and recently I was going through a depressed period due to some chronic health problems and I found myself snapping at Jerry and he was snapping back at me too and I hadn't been able to attend the meeting so I went to my meeting that morning and first thing I heard was someone
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said well it's okay not to be okay and I kind of lost that because I sure wasn't okay and then someone else said well said uh it's not where we are but it's the direction we're headed that's the important thing so that day I went home and I was headed in a new direction and it never fails that's the way it works. I want to tell you about Virginia, Cheryl, my friend over in Germany and then I'm going to close. Shortly after we took return from Germany, Jerry was in Washington on business and he ran into Virginia at a cocktail party and Virginia knew that Jerry was in AA and she just poured out her heart to Jerry.
She said she just wondered if Jerry couldn't do something to help John and Jerry was willing to help John and he tried to help John and John wanted help but he didn't want AA. He wasn't ready and shortly after that he died from acute alcoholism and I wonder sometimes I think maybe just maybe things might have been different for Virginia and John if we had had AA and Al-Anon all over the world like we have it now and then I have to think of that uncle Carl of mine. You see he had to die because he had no solution to his problems and then my heart just welled up with gratitude because we do we really do have our ancestors. Thanks all of you.