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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Conf George C.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-conf-george-c.mp3 Duration: 00:27:21
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We have a speaker today who is a newspaper man with a strong background in religious and in alcoholism work. George N. Collins, during 25 years with the Boston Globe, has been sports writer, news photo editor, news editor, assistant financial editor, and religion editor. He has served as a union officer, been elected to public office in three different communities. He has been heavily involved in Boy Scout work and youth work.
He is a United Church of Christ layman, serves on Christian unity and alcoholism committees at local, state, and national level. He serves as advisor to the North Conway Institute for Alcoholism Education. This is a joint effort supported by a wide representation of churches. Although we are not affiliated with Mr. Collins, we are delighted that he is cooperating so wholeheartedly with us here today.
Mr. George M. Collins. Applause Thank you, Mark, and ladies and gentlemen. The general procedure at a small gathering such as this is for the speaker to attempt to establish a quick rapport with the audience by telling a story. The other night in Chicago, I flew here from an assignment in Chicago and I must return this afternoon. I'm sorry to say, I didn't know exactly how friendly this group was. But then again, when I'm through, perhaps I'd better leave.
Maybe this yellow light up here stands for OK, coward, you've got two minutes to get out of the hall. By the other night in Chicago, at the Religious Newswriters Association annual awards meeting, a world-famed novelist, not Mr. Miller, attempted to establish a quick rapport with this group of religious newswriters. He opened his speech with this line, quote, I once knew a cab driver by the name of Crooked Neck Zeckel.
And then he waited for the last. And they didn't come. And so he plunged on for 45 minutes of torture. This almost made me change my plan to start with a story. But in as much as there ought to be one amateur in the group following Mr. Kahlborg and before Mr. Miller, I'll try it anyway. There is a tendency at meetings of any kind to give the impression that the speakers are all experts in their field.
As a newsman who has attended hundreds of meetings, I know this isn't a fact. And after this talk is over, you'll all know it too. But I've always studiously avoided becoming an expert. It's too confining. I won't talk about the newspaper business today because one of my bosses is sitting in front of me. I think I've had him fooled for 26 years. I don't want him to learn how little I know. But we once had one of the greatest experts of all time at the Boston Globe.
He's dead now. And we revere him, but we can't refrain from telling the story. And if the story is an actual happening, that has been one of my credos as to why never to become an expert on anything. Or at least not an expert's expert. He was our Harness Force writer. The most aptly named Harness Force writer that ever lived. His name was Trot. Frank wrote Harness Force Racing for 35 years. He started every story he ever wrote with the words, breed a mare, and finished every story with the line, raise a colt.
I don't know whether this is Planned Parenthood or 100% success. But in those 35 years he became such an expert that he knew of every horse, its sire, its dam, its time of running, any given distance. He could tell you this, and this is what he wrote. But somewhere along the line he forgot that he was a reporter.
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One day at the Brighton Speedway, which no longer exists in Boston in the days before parimutuel racing,
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they were having a friendly little race as they had every Saturday. And they used to get quite a few people out in the stands. And one day a rather fractious horse went through the rail up into the grandstand and put 27 people in the Massachusetts General Hospital. The Boston Post, the Record American, and the Boston Herald came out Sunday morning with page one headlines. Twenty-seven hospitalized as horse bulls track, etc., etc., etc.
In between the lines, breed a mare and raise a colt, we didn't have anything about it. Our city editor was, of course, of the first mind that once again the Post, Record American, and Herald had missed the boat. But then he thought they couldn't have done it all together at once. So he assigned a young reporter to call up Mr. Trott on the phone and ask him if it had really happened. So the young fellow called Frank and he got him out of bed.
It was at least 9.30. And Frank came on and he came from upcountry and he still retained the accent. And he came on and the young reporter said, Mr. Trott, the city editor wanted me to call you. There are three papers in here, etc., etc. He told him what the other papers said. The city editor would like to know if this really happened. And Frank said, hang out. So the kid was a little flabbergasted and he said, well, Mr. Trott, the city editor would also like to know why we don't have it.
And Frank gave the expertise of all time when he replied, son, once the horse leaves the track, he's out of my jurisdiction. Well, now, if I can keep you in that frame of mind, I may get out of here. Perhaps you're probably wondering what a religion editor, quote, unquote, or writer is doing sitting with a playwright and an advertising man. Newspaper men are supposed to deal with facts and these men, we are told, often deal more in the realm of fantasy.
Well, in the first place, my being here is fantasy. At least it's fantastic. A few years ago, all I knew about AA was that many of my best friends were in it. And what I saw the program do for them left me a bit envious at times. Why, I used to think, couldn't I find an organization that would help me stop looking for ways to avoid work? The way they seem to be able to handle their biggest problem.
Of course, I didn't know how much work it was for them to handle that problem. But let's look at the public looking in on the AA for a minute, and this is where we get to amateur out. You got the book ready? They may not think of it this way, this is the public, but they see in AA the biggest, most successful do-it-yourself project in the history of mankind. Far be it from me to forget the part that God, or however you see the supreme power, plays in the role of each individual struggle.
But I must emphatically say that I find fewer hypocrites amongst the pillars of AA than amongst the pillars of the structured church, no matter what the faith. I get in trouble when I say something like that to church people. The admission that you must seek help from a power greater than oneself to return to and maintain a sane and happy life is seldom thought of by non-alcoholic persons as needed in their lives except between 11 and 12 on Sundays.
I would like to say at the outset that as an onlooker of AA, I see a highly successful organization with a great potential to perform an even greater service to people than it has to date, and the past 30 years have been triumphant in achievements. Perhaps it's time for another Jack Alexander-type national magazine article aimed at answering some of the unreasonable critics of AA who have been popping out of the woodwork these past few years.
I originally wrote Up From Under Rocks, but I changed it to Woodworks. But we all realize, I'm sure, that any time a person or organization is successful, they become target for the day with all the professional carpers, and human nature makes us want to see the successful fellow taken down a peg or two.
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But I would like to say something which I hope will be constructive criticism. The public also looks upon AA, at least some members do, as a somewhat private secretive body with an admission price and membership charge that they either do not want to pay or find not necessary to be concerned with. I don't want to give the impression here that I think AA should ever consider admitting non-alcoholics to its ranks willy-nilly.
Of course, it is practically impossible for you to keep them out if for some reason they feel it a benefit to join. And here, of course, I'm not speaking of your auxiliary organization. The public also sees other things when it looks at AA. I'd like to speak generally to two of them. They see a tendency for some individual AA people to treat the organization as a cult, and sometimes with accompanying scoffing at the institutional church.
They also see AA as not quite a community organization. That is to say, AA is available in the community, but not always is AA a part of the community. But AA is not the only alcoholism agency guilty of producing this feeling. Let me talk to the thought that AA has a secretive image. We don't have to discuss the need for individual anonymity for an alcoholic attempting to make a recovery. Society sets up this need.
Society's treatment of alcoholics as community lepers is highly frustrating and reprehensible, but it took centuries for society to gain an enlightened outlook about persons suffering from leprosy. So, too, alcoholics have to fight for public and social acceptance of their illness. You know better than I the stigma attached to alcoholism, why this still persists after 30 years of AA success is curious.
Could it possibly be that by carrying individual anonymity to the fine line which you have achieved, that you have hidden too well the fact that with help from AA and or other disciplines, an alcoholic can recover? Society walls off the alcoholic naturally. It's frustrating, but entirely normal. This walling off, to my mind, makes clear the fact that more people would accept alcoholism as a disease and see the need to support alcoholism programs if given more simple, clear, easily understood information about the disease.
By natural means, our bodies automatically attempt to wall off any diseased area. By nature, we all dislike what we don't understand. Combine these two factors, and it's understandable why society reacts adversely to alcoholics and alcoholism. But this can be corrected in time with information, and this information must reach the public through all available media. But how has some of this knowledge been portrayed with resulting polarization of images by the non-alcoholic public?
AA hasn't been as guilty as some agencies in the matter of misinformation and statistics, but it hasn't been entirely innocent. Scare techniques have long since been discredited in scientific circles as a method of educating the masses. Look at cigarettes and lung cancer. Just a week or so ago, the U.S. tobacco industry reported a sales increase of some 20 million more packs of cigarettes this past year over the year before.
And this after all the cancer scare stories. I smoke Winston's myself. Commercials aren't allowed. He talked about CBS. You can plug your last book, J.B. And this after all the cancer scare stories and statistics that the government and other anti-smoking agencies could produce. It would seem that the tobacco people had a better advertising technique. I'm always curious about that Lucky Strike commercial, LSMFT.
Everybody in the room undoubtedly knows it stands for Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. You go look at it, it does. It's chopped up finer than any other tobacco and any other cigarette. Detroit learned long ago that women buy the family car, so they dressed it up for the ladies. Now the liquor industry has quit concentrating on telling men how male they are if they drink their product. Now the agencies and producers are gearing their ad programs and products to the gals.
We know we have a can of worms already under the old push. What lies ahead frightens me even more. Ahead Frightens Me Even More. A week or so ago at a conference of an interfaith, interdisciplinary
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organization geared to stimulating education on alcoholism, several AA members are on their board of directors, a sociologist from the University of Pennsylvania sharply scored scare campaigns and laid particular stress on what he called the G-Whiz School of Statistics. AA has not been as guilty as many in talking about who, what, where, when, and how. Did you hear that, boss? I got all the things the news story's supposed to have.
About who, what, where, when, and how many are alcoholics. But these gestimates are not helping the cause no matter what their source. You may not agree, but as a non-alcoholic, non-scientist, I must stress the need for accurate figures and beyond that for accurate follow-up data on alcoholics if any scientific approach is to be valid on alcoholism. I said earlier that the public looks on AA as a somewhat secretive society. It also looks on AA too often as a professional organization. Why this phenomenon? My experience on this in talking with non-alcoholics who have attended public meetings is that they have too often heard only the old-timers tell their stories, the 20 to 30-year folks. Sometimes they are too professional in the telling of their stories.
Some are geared more to evoke laugh with the timing of an old vaudeville star than to produce a feeling of conviction. I'm not suggesting these speakers aren't for real. I'm just saying some of them have lost their realism. Another thing that has disturbed me at meetings I have attended, and I'm sure disturbs other visitors and hurts AA, this is the reaction of some individuals to a person who shows up at a meeting under the influence. Many people reach out to them and welcome, but for some the walling off takes place right there. To a visitor this looks more than a little contradictory. Sometimes I would suggest we can all get a little too expert. The track doesn't end at the railings. The people getting hurt are always on the outside of the railings.
I said earlier that many people see AA as an organization in the community but not part of the community. There are ads in the paper telling where AA meets. The church and synagogue calendars in hundreds of communities tell of meeting dates and places. Often AA members appear before service clubs, school, and church groups. But too often this is the extent of the public's knowledge of AA and what it offers. This is not a condemnation of the AA public information program.
This possibly is more a condemnation of the public and how the information program is conducted down at the local level. How often are official efforts made to invite people to public meetings? Has AA become too much of a come organization rather than a go organization? The churches fell into that trap and now in the United States there are 75 million persons who listed no church affiliation in the last national census. The churches are now re-evaluating themselves in the light of this information. I look with a jaundiced eye at some of the re-evaluators.
After 30 years of slow uphill slugging, can AA afford to be a come organization? If not, I have no easy answer for reaching out to the public. The newspapers, for instance, find in all their readership surveys that the comic pages are the best read pages inside the paper. Perhaps that's where your public notices should be placed for best readership. But I will suggest one possible area. I wasn't poking fun. I was stating a fact that is the best page to advertise on.
But I will suggest one possible area for AA individuals and officialdom to make a re-evaluation of effort for sharing knowledge with the community. Last spring at Tuxedo Park, New York, AA General Service Board members sat in conference with leaders of other agencies and representatives of Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish faith. They discussed how the churches could help in this struggle. It's taken a long time for that to happen. There are many valid reasons why individual AA members have rejected working with the clergy in the past. Many of you were rejected by clergymen when you or your families needed help. This happened for many reasons. Those of you, and I know there are thousands, who help clergymen aid alcoholics and their families understand the usual reasons. In the first place, most clergymen have never received any training in working with alcoholics and their families. The seminaries just don't
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teach it. Some of the clergy have a habit of saying, oh, I don't have that problem in my parish. I have a very close friend who's an AA, who is a priest, who when he heard this said at one of these meetings said to the, was one of his own, as we say in Boston, who, another Catholic priest who had made this remark, he looked at him across the room and he said, hell, Father, you haven't got a parish. But most clergymen, let's face this fact too, cannot drop everything when a call comes in from an alcoholic or his family. And you know what the reaction is to a one, two, or three hour wait. But now things are changing drastically and hopefully. A recent survey of 7,500 clergymen of the four major faiths picked at random across the US and Canada, completed this month, found 98% of them clamoring for help in aiding alcoholics and their families. Many of them indicated they were now getting help from AA, all clamored for more tools with which to work.
Now they're saying to you and every other agency, we need help. To your people, to your people who have given up on the clergy, I would urge that they turn the other cheek, go back, offer help to the community's clergy. Help them to set up a parish team to work with those in need. You know that you don't have all the answers. They don't either. But those of you who are already working in this type of team know that you have a possible chance for better success in reaching out to people and helping people than when you worked alone. Help them set up a parish team to work with those in need. Tell them who they'll need on the team. Some of them aren't even aware they might need a lawyer. Share with them the knowledge you have and allow them an opportunity to increase their service to your neighbors. Alcoholism, and I speak now as a not-too-long-time religion writer, but a guy who's been interested in Christian unity for a long time, alcoholism is the most ecumenical field in the world of religion today.
Perhaps this ecumenism hasn't reached your town yet, but it can. There isn't any denominationalism in alcoholism. I would propose that AA members infiltrate the churches with an awareness. You like that word? Somebody will probably quote that. I'll digress for a minute. I was covering a Unitarian Universalist international convention a month ago, and a clergyman got up and went into the worst racist anti-Catholic dyad tribe I've ever heard in my whole life for 20 minutes.
Then he turned around, he was standing 12 feet from the press table, he turned around and said, now I don't want to read a line of that in the Boston Papers. So we put it on page one with big headlines. We didn't know he was around under the primeval ooze in that part of Boston, but now everybody does. I would propose that AA members infiltrate the churches with an awareness of the need for responsible use of alcohol and with the awareness that people can be helped. The charges voiced by people such as Dr. Arthur Kane and his national articles of cultism and AA, I feel, are geared more to sensationalism than scientific fact. In his last two articles, the doctor made a strong plea for AA to help in the assembling of valid statistical data. And then he spiced up his article with the attacks based on generalization. I don't think he can have both sides of the cake at once. But right now, he and others can attack AA at will and get away with it. They know that the organization will not defend itself in the same medium. That's why I said earlier that perhaps another Jack Alexander-type article is needed. But if it is written, it should be 100%
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honest in its appraisal. But I think you must come to agreement with the plea for accurate data. Regardless of what was valid when you started this fight 30 years ago, I think somehow you must multiply your efforts manyfold to cooperate with all of the other agencies and disciplines in seeking answers to the why of alcoholism. And somehow the public must be made aware that you were doing this. Well, I've been critical. I hope I've been constructive. You all know now how little I as one of the public know about AA. The basic reason for this may be that AA, while achieving success by group therapy, sometimes gives the impression that a group is always more than two. As the Quakers would say, me and thee. The best lasting work being done with people is still on an individual basis. Several long-time AA members told me before I came to Toronto to say anything I wanted to you folks. Some even said, George, it won't make any difference anyway.
I choose not to believe the latter remark. AA to me has been and still is the best available program today for helping active alcoholics to maintain a happy sobriety. I only ask as a parent and a churchman that AA's sharing of knowledge be continued and expanded. The race of life is a tough one and the track has no set confines. We can't afford an attitude on any subject in life that once the horse has left the track, he's out of our jurisdiction. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Collins. Enjoy.