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Source: 1970 Miami International Convention – 1970 Miami Int Clarence S. chairing Panel members over 25 Yrs Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1970-miami-international-convention-1970-miami-int-clarence-s-chairing-panel-members-over-25-yrs-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 01:06:46
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Well, let's all get seated and get this show on the road. We're going to have a lot of long-winded people here. I suppose I have 25 people here who all have 25 or more years of continuous sobriety. I'm counting about 40 of them up here already. If there's anyone out there who wants to come up, you can lie on the floor up here. Let us open this meeting with a moment of silent meditation. And while we're in prayer, let us remember all of the AAs who have gone before us and are in that big meeting up there.
And also let us have a prayer for Bill. He's very ill. Amen. Let us all join in a serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I'm not going into a lot of announcements here or anything like that tonight. We have too many people that you're going to be anxious to meet, I know. So I'm going to start right out with introducing people as soon as I get the little say myself.
Somebody says three minutes. They're going to put the red light on me. I am Clarence Snyder, and I live in St. Petersburg, Florida. I originally came into this fellowship in the Old Oxford Group in Akron. Dr. Bob was my sponsor. Five years ago in Toronto, it was discovered that next to Bill Wilson, I am the oldest AA in point of continuous sobriety. You know, people are very good to me, and they invite me to different places to come out and join them in anniversary occasions and retreats and all sorts of AA activities.
And I get some very odd introductions sometimes. I always wonder what's going to come next. So someone had heard about me being the oldest one next to Bill, and so one fellow is introducing me one evening at one of these dinners. And he says, I want to introduce you to the second oldest man in the world. So anything may happen here tonight, too. And it will, someone says. There's a couple of fellows around here I don't see on the platform.
I don't see Dave Ray. Where are you, Dave? Here. Stand up, Scotsman, and take a bow. How about Dick Green? He's around here somewhere, too. Dick ought to stand up now. Dick was here. Huh? I don't know if Sylvia is here tonight, but Sylvia lives in Sarasota, and she is the oldest girl in point of sobriety in AA. Are you here, Sylvia? Where is Sylvia? Sylvia came in way, way back in the beginning of things in Cleveland.
She's the one that started the Chicago activity. Well, she's not here tonight. Wish she were. I'd like you to meet the oldest living woman in the world. No wonder she didn't show up. Now, this august body that you see up here, I'm going to introduce them as best I can.
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I hope I don't miss any of them.
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But they're all supposed to only take three minutes. And after that, they get the hook. I can't imagine any of these people, 25 years and up, can make a three-minute talk. But I'm going to see what happens. If they are, this is going to be a first in AA, believe me. Right off the bat, I'm going to start off with Ed B. of Akron. You hear Ed? Hi, everybody. You know, I finally made the big league after 26 years.
That's something, too. There are a lot of people out there having an idea that I would ever make it. It's like that woman driving on the highway. She was going up 90 miles an hour. And the highway patrol got after her. And she saw them coming after her, so she pulled into a gas station. She went into the ladies' room. And the two gentlemen waited outside for her. Finally, she came out, patted her new nose, and she said, I bet you gentlemen didn't think I'd make it.
There are a lot of gentlemen out there that don't think I'd make it. But I always maintain that our value in AA is measured by our donation rather than duration. And I think, too, that one tree will make a million matches, but it only takes one match to destroy a whole forest. And in my case, I know that if I took that drink, even after almost 26 years of sobriety, I would destroy everything that I built in that time.
And my sobriety with each year is becoming more valuable, and my friends are becoming more valuable. And I know this, if I would take that drink, I would really destroy everything that I built in all those years. And I would like to leave this with everybody. It doesn't matter how many years you're in AA. You're always an alcoholic, and remember that, because you can destroy everything that you build.
It doesn't matter how many years you've been in this program, because I've saw that happen over the years. I know this can happen to anyone. I didn't see the red light on yet, because we have, and even for old-timers, because I lived 80 years now on this earth, and almost 26 years in AA. So I feel like this. I feel like this, that you people planted the flowers for me, and now I'm picking the roses in December of my life.
And, you know, they're getting more beautiful all the time, and they smell more better as I pick them up. And I want to thank Clarence here and all of you for listening to me. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Ed. Now, it's Gladys B. from Texas. My name is Gladys Barn, and come October I will have had 30 years in AA. Thank you. When I first came into AA in Philadelphia, I was told I could never take a drink as long as I lived, and I thought it was poppycock.
But I knew I couldn't possibly do that. But I took it one day at a time, and that is how I've acquired what I do have, which is, to me, very, very valuable. I can say one time, it isn't the quantity of sobriety you have, it's the quality. And I hope I have a good one, and I certainly am not talking three minutes, but I'm so glad to be here. Thank you all. We'll have another girl now. Rosa B. from San Diego.
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Thank you. Welcome to the Medicare meeting. When I complained about how late this meeting was, I was told by someone of, shall we say, unquestioned authority, that the bleeding deacons were apt to attack the establishment, and it was better to put them on late at night than early in the morning because they were apt to be too tired. But it is great to be up here. I sometimes feel that all those things that happened before AA must have happened to someone else, because I don't seem to identify with that gal who walked into a Philadelphia club on the 13th of June, Class of 45.
I do know this, that the same things that I was told when I walked in are the same things that were told to the newest person. Too close? In this room, all of the simple little gimmicks of AA that work keep the plug in the jug, keep an open mind, keep your mouth shut, pick up the ice trays, and all of these things. Well, I did most of them the first year or so. Then I learned how to talk, and I haven't stopped yet.
But this I do know, that there are people up on this platform tonight whom I've known for many, many years. There is one man particularly, Hart, way down there, who is one of the most fabulous men that ever lived. Clarence, I don't know as well as some of the others. I've met him a few times. But I would say that longevity in AA is the result of two things. The determination to stay sober for your own sake and, new people, please don't listen to this because I wouldn't want to upset you, the other determination to stay sober despite the people in AA.
Thank you. Thank you, Rosa. Thank you, Rosa. That's the surest speech I ever heard her make. I have an old friend now from Cleveland. I'd like to introduce Wilson B. I'm Wilson B. of Charlotte, North Carolina. I've lived in Charlotte about ten years. I originally went named AA in Cleveland. And my friend Clarence here was a big help to me in the early days. I can still quote a few things that I heard him say that I've always remembered.
One of them was that any alcoholic that's affiliated with AA that lets anything become more important than his sobriety, he says he's headed for trouble. Another thing that Clarence said that I always remembered was that anything that bothers our conscience or disturbs our conscience, he says we've either got to correct it or eliminate it. He says these things don't take care of themselves. And he says nobody else is going to take care of them for you.
He says you have to get up and do something about it. But Clarence was a big help to me. And being up here tonight, I just wonder about all of these so-called, this gathering of so-called old-timers. Where we would be if it hadn't been for AA coming along at the right time when it did. We would have all been laid away in drunken squares years ago, unmarried and unsung and forgotten. But here we've had a wonderful life for all of these years.
Everything that we have is due to AA. Due to AA, everything that we've got, we would just have nothing, and just the fact that we're sober doesn't mean so much as the fact that we found such a wonderful new life that we never thought was possible before.
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Well, I just got one little quote. I've learned things from, I'm still learning, I still need AA just as bad or maybe more than I did when I came in. But not too long ago I heard a speaker compare our sickness of alcoholism with people that have other sicknesses or diseases. And how easy it is for us. We have a deadly disease and it will surely kill us if we stick to it, if we don't do something to control it. And all we have to do to control our alcoholism is to just not take one drink for one day, for one person, and that controls it.
He says how grateful a man that had been blind all his life would be if he could cure his blindness by simply not taking one drink. Or a person with diabetes, or a person that's crippled, if they could restore their health and become whole again just by simply not taking one drink. Just think what a wonderful thing we have here in this area. I'll let the next speaker take over. Thank you, Wilson. Next speaker we have is Art C. of Sarasota.
And what happened to him? You're coming up later. I'm looking for another guy. You can still get confused. We'll have one from out of the country now. We have a chap here from Holland. Edward D. from Holland. Well, my name is Ed Drum, and it seems to me every time I come to a convention I'm from a different place. Because a year after I came into AA, which was 29 and a half years ago, I was fortunate enough to get back in an industry that I had been in for many years.
And this is a national company that became international, and they moved me from the city I came in, Chicago, to Seattle, to Boston, to Amsterdam. And so it's been my privilege to meet some wonderful people in AA in many different locations, and to find out that there were many different ways of explaining this program to new people, and that while they might be different than the place where you came in, they all were very successful.
It doesn't make much difference whether it's in the United States or Europe. The alcoholic that suffers gets the message in the same fashion. He needs the help from a sponsor in the same way. He isn't so interested in the particular way the language is explained to him. He just wants to know that there are people who are interested in helping, and will be there when he needs them. When I first went to Europe, I went into some meetings where I didn't understand the language.
And one fellow came up to me after the meeting, and he said, how could you get anything out of the meeting? He said, you didn't understand that language, did you? And I said, no. But I said, I knew what they were talking about. And I said, besides, I knew that those people understood me, and I understood them. And this is what we get in AA. I think that we get the strength of people around us when we need it.
And many times after a day when you're exposed to the pressures of people who are civilians and living a normal life and drinking in a normal fashion at lunch or an abnormal fashion in the afternoon,
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it's pretty nice to be with people in the evening who are not interested in offering you a drink or disturbed if you do not take it. So it's been my wonderful privilege to have been in AA in a lot of different localities and to meet a lot of wonderful people and to have got back in an industry where a company has paid me to move around the country and move into a lot of AA meetings. And for this I thank God, and for AA I thank God. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker will be Don Heff of Omaha, Nebraska. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Don Farrell, and I'm an alcoholic. When I got a notice from the office to participate in this meeting, I thought it would be a bunch of old people up here tonight, but I find it's not so. The youngest people in the room are right up here. Last September 7th, I completed my 26-year sobriety. I came into AA when I was 32, and prior to that I was drunk for about 8 or 9 years.
And I was in hospitals and taking many cures. Then I went to jail, Ron. You've heard of arrested alcoholics. I'm probably one of the most arrested alcoholics that you've ever seen. And then I came to my first AA meeting when I was 32 years old, and at that time I was, I think, considered a little bit young. And I was treated just great. Nobody told me to go home, and, well, I got a little older. They treated me like most people are treated when they come into AA, and I knew before the first meeting was over that this deal was for me.
I found, first I found hope and a real warmth and a great fellowship that I needed so badly. And I think it's just great tonight. I looked around this room, and I think on a quick guess, on this podium up here, there must be at least a thousand years of sobriety. And I can remember back 25 years ago when we used to have the first anniversary in Des Moines or in Omaha or any of the towns in our particular section of the country.
We had a great speaker then. He used to come through, and he talked quite often at anniversaries. Austin R. Most of you have probably seen him, heard him. And I remember the first anniversary in the Des Moines group. He'd come in, and he looked around the room, and he said, You folks realize in those days to get an anniversary group for Des Moines of 150 people, they'd come from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Kansas City and Des Moines and Denver and Chicago, and Waterloo and Davenport and all around the country. And we'd get them all together, and there'd be about 150 people.
And I remember Austin one day, and it was a very inspiring thing. He said, Do you realize there's over 72 years of sobriety in this room today? Well, we have, I'm sure, over a thousand years of continued sobriety on this podium tonight. And I'm deeply honored that I could be with such outstanding people, the oldest man in the world. And I'm sorry the oldest girl in the world isn't here, because I knew Sylvia back in Chicago, and she may be the oldest gal in the world, but she was one of the most beautiful gals in the world when I knew her in Chicago.
And if she's here and don't feel like coming up here, I'd sure like to talk with her. To me, AA's have been a tremendous thing. I found it necessary two years ago to call across the country, 1,726 miles, to a complete stranger, and ask him if he could do something with my son-in-law and daughter, who lives in California. And they did a tremendous job. And I'll be eternally grateful to the AA's all over the world, and particularly in California, and of course all over the world, for what it's done for our family.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
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Ed F. from Oklahoma. My name is Ed Fry. I went in AA in Houston, March the 10th, 1941. Not had a drink since. I am convinced more and more that this is an extremely simple program, if you can follow directions. I was fortunate in falling into the hands of a group in Houston, Texas, that believed in sobriety, and tried in every way they could to help me to keep this sobriety. During these years that I have maintained my own sobriety, I have come more and more to the firm conviction that the book itself for the individual is the most important item, because this was the thing I had to believe in.
I didn't believe in anything else. And next to this big book is the group. Meetings to us in those early days was a 24-hour proposition because we needed each other so desperately, and meetings weren't carried on in a regular fashion as they are today, but just as we came in contact with each other each day. And these problems that were constantly brought to our attention were discussed among us, and we had no experts.
And today, when I am fortunate enough to get a pigeon, I try to give this pigeon all of my own resources, and when I feel that I have run out of resources, I turn them over to the experts. This has been a wonderful experience to me to be here, to see so many people all together that are striving in some way to find what all of us apparently were looking for all of our lives. And I am particularly grateful that the man that showed me the way to my own sobriety is here tonight on the platform with us.
Thank you. Thank you. Is Clifford G. from Montana here? There you are. Thank you, Clarence. I'm Clifford Glick, alcoholic and an advertising man, which is a tough combination. My entrance into Alcoholics Anonymous is still vivid in my memory. I came into the 41st Street Clubhouse after having made a decision the night before that I would investigate and see what you good people had to offer. So I dressed, shaved, made myself as presentable as I could.
I had a little money, and I had a fairly decent wardrobe, and I had a car. So I drove into 41st Street, and I presented myself at the door shortly after 10 o'clock. The intergroup office opened at 10. I was greeted by a rather gruff character by the name of Jack G. I don't know whether Jack is still alive. And he said, what can I do for you? And I said, well, maybe you can help me with my problem. Help me with my problem. He said, Have you got a drinking problem? I said, Yes, I have a drinking problem. He said, Are you an alcoholic? I said, I don't know what is an alcoholic. He said, How do you drink? I said, All the time. He said, What kind of a drinker are you? Are you a daily drinker? I said, I'm an around-the-clock drinker. Well, he said, You don't look very much like a drunk.
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Which was the nicest thing that had been said to me in a long time. He said, Where do you live? I said, I live on Long Island. He said, Have you got a job? I said, No, but don't let that worry you. I've got a little money left yet. He said, Are you married? I said, Yes. He said, Is your wife still with you? I said, Yes. Well, he said, How did you get here? I said, I drove here in a car. There's a Packard car out there.
Well, he said, If you're married, and you still have your wife, and you still have a home, and you're not too worried about a job, and you own a Packard car, what the hell do you want to stop drinking for? This was the feeling of many of the old-timers in those days, that you had to go down pretty far. I was down further than they knew. On the surface, it didn't appear that way. But that was my introduction. He gave me three pieces of literature. I still have them. Took me inside, sat me down, and introduced me to my sponsor. God love him. He's dead now.
A great big fat guy by the name of Henry W. I, and maybe some of the people who were around 41st in those days, will remember him. He died of cancer. But he was a kindly, wonderful man, and I shall be eternally grateful to him. And I thank God for my association with him, and with you. Thank you. Now, I have a very pleasant introduction to make. First of all, I want this couple to stand up before either one of them does any talking. Now, I want to tell you a few things about them.
Dodd and Vernes, stand up. I guess they're both over 30 years sober, and this happens to be their 29th wedding anniversary. I well remember this couple. I shall never forget them. They came in in Cleveland. Dodd came in first, and he brought Verne in. The next thing you know, she got him all sewed up and got him to marry her. And we used to go over to Dodd's house after meetings. In those days, we didn't have any sense about going home at all.
People nowadays, when they have a meeting, they want that cut off in an hour. Boy, you better believe it. But we used to go to meetings, and they'd last all hour, and then we'd go out to someone's house. We used to wind up in Dodd's house over at his mother's place. Many, many nights. I will always cherish those memories. Dodd, will you give us a few words? Well, as far as I'm concerned, there's no doubt about me being an alcoholic. I started drinking when I was 18. I was 21 in 1919, a month before election day, and I voted dry. I could already see where I was going.
Ten years later, I ended up in the Neal Institute. Seven months later, I was back in there. In the meantime, I got my job back, and the boss gave me a new car, and I had to sell the car to get back in Neal Institute. The third day I was there, I tried to drink myself silly, because they give you some dope that made you want to get rid of your toes about ten minutes after you had your drink. So I kept asking for drinks all day, and that night, the doctor told me I was nuts. I told him he was nuts. He called me a pig.
And I told him I was trying to make his cure work. And anyway, he told me then that he says, in five days, we can take it out of your system as if you'd never had a drink in six months, but we can't take it out of your head. So the next morning, I went home and got drunk on the way home. About a year later, I tried another cure. I tried getting married. I just played a dirty trick on a nice girl, and eleven months later, she walked out, and I never saw her since. The next thing I read about some doctor in Long Island who had a cure where he had too much spinal fluid or brain fluid or whatever it was, and he'd take you out to this place, and he'd every once in a while tap your spine, take a little of that fluid out that was pressing on your brain that controlled your willpower.
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Well, I didn't have a dime, so I couldn't go to Long Island, so I wrote to him, and he sent me a lot of literature. I said I had a doctor who would help me if he would give me the literature, and he sent me a lot of stuff. I took to the doctor, and the doctor took her to a medical meeting, and the next day, he called me up and told me to come on down to his office, and he jabbed at my spine, and he got about a half a teaspoon full of fluid, and I got a hell of a headache, and I went out and got drunk to get rid of the headache.
But that was the beginning of a ride on the toboggan right down to WPA, bootleg whiskey, right up to the time that Clarence got—Clarence was my sponsor in more ways than one, because he got this fellow Elric Davis to write this article in the Plain Dealer. My mother read those and asked me about it, and I didn't believe it. Well, then, I guess that didn't satisfy Clarence. He didn't know me then, but anyway, he got a preacher in Cleveland to preach a sermon on it.
And the next day or a couple of days after that, I was in a piece in the paper about this preacher preaching this sermon on this new thing, Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was just coming off a drunk, about three days or four days drunk. My mother asked me again. Well, I couldn't say no. I was defenseless then, and she wanted to know if I'd mind if she'd go down and talk to this preacher, and I couldn't say no.
She went down the next day. A man came out and talked to me a little while at noon, and then he came back that night with a couple of other fellows, and I think he'd been sober about a year, maybe a little over, and the other fellow six months, and another fellow three months. Anyway, I got the chance to go to the group that Clarence had started when the other one broke up because of these newspaper articles at Borton's home in Cleveland, and believe me, they didn't have to sell it to me. Whatever they had, I wanted it, and I've thanked God every day of my life since.
And that was in December 1939, about the first week in December. I don't know just what day or what day I had my last drink even, but it's been a wonderful life. Then a month or so later, about two months later, my mother went down to tell Laverne about this wonderful thing that I got in, and her husband needed it. She was getting a divorce, but I tried to help him, even after Laverne had left him, but it didn't do any good.
And so I just picked up where Laverne and I left off twenty years before, I guess, and I found out she had a problem, and I got her sobered up by June of 1940, and a year later we were married. And all I can say is to the new people and the young people, Clarence was the only youngster that I knew there, and he was around in the middle thirties or thirty-five or something like that, weren't you, Clarence?
All the rest of us were past forty or more, and I was just as bad as he was, and he was just as bad or worse than I was. But Dr. Bob didn't think there was any hope for him, because he was too young. But now we get them young, and we like them, and we need them, because this is a program you've got to give away. And I'm retired now, and we go to two or three closed meetings during the day in Toledo, not during one day, but during a week.
We go most of the time to three closed meetings where we meet a lot of young fellows sent there by the courts, and we have a lot of fun. And it's a wonderful life, and we're very grateful to you people and to AA for a life that I didn't think I'd ever see. I thought I'd be dead before I was forty-five. Thank you. Clarence, will you give us a word?
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I'm usually the silent one in the family. Father does all the talking for both of us. But I'm very grateful for my sobriety, for the friends I've made, and for Clarence, who helped us so much in the beginning. And together, Dad and I have had a wonderful life, a wonderful AA way of life, and I hope that it lasts for a long time to come. Thank you. That just goes to prove over our way we taught these women to keep quiet. The men do all the talking. Well, it's wonderful to have these folks here. The next speaker we'll have is Jack H. He's from over in Illinois, but he came in Cleveland, an old friend. Jack, come up here and say a word, will you?
It's certainly a pleasure to see you here. Pardon me. Is Richard Pinckney in the house? He has a message. Go ahead, Jack. I'm a book-happy, book-happy, research chemist, atheist, know-it-all, and not worth the powder to take to blow me out of the room. Fortunately for myself, I got into with those great people. I was hospitalized in Charity Hospital, the first four-bed ward they opened up. They now have a magnificent thing there. I went back to kind of celebrate my 25th out of sentiments, and we're in Chicago now, and we are back to the horse and buggy AA that they drilled into my hard Dutch head so thoroughly that I never quite recovered.
We started a couple's, as they do in Cleveland and Akron, the husband and wife both attend because it's really a family problem, and it's doing pretty well out in our little village of Oak Park. But it's a matter of me of great and humble gratitude that I was so damn lucky to be there. It's quite amazing to me that three men ahead of me, including Clarence, are from that old Lakeshore group, and sorry as I was as a product with such fine mentors that make our sponsorship today look very weak.
I'm happy as it could be to be here, and thanks very much to Clarence. Thank you, Jack. When you look at some of these fellows today and you think about what they looked like about 30 years ago, it's amazing that they are here at all. I must say a word about that. We were not a bit casual about AA in those days. Believe me, we took the rough road with it, and it certainly paid off, as you can see by these examples.
Well, anyway, let's get on to the next one here. Robert H., New York City, for Bob Hitchens. I'm Bob Hitchens, an alcoholic. About 20 years ago I found myself walking down the street one rainy night, and I was in what Marty Mann referred to earlier this evening as a crisis situation. I hadn't been able to sleep for several weeks. I couldn't eat. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I had a personal, emotional crisis, a problem that I had to try and accept, but I couldn't.
I had talked to my friends in AA, seeking help, and I hadn't found it. I had read everything, all the AA literature I could think of, and I hadn't seen the help either. The literature I could think of, and that hadn't seemed to help either, uh, I tried praying, that didn't seem to do the job, on this particular night, I'm telling you about, suddenly, I remembered an evening, several years before this, when I had been at a meeting, at the old Chelsea Riverside group, and I could see a girl standing on a platform, I don't know who she is to this day,
[00:45:21]
that I could remember something she said, and what she said was, walk with patience, the road that is before you, and for some reason or other, that did it for me, and uh, I've thought of that many times since, it has been extremely helpful to me, it has somehow, uh, embodied the essentials of the AA program for me, the very first word of that, the walk, uh, it didn't say sit down and quit, it didn't say run, it said walk, just keep going, and it said, the road that is before you, walk with patience, the road that is before you, patience is tough for an alcoholic to come by, it was for me, and the last part of it, the road that is before you, was not a road, I chose to walk, that was the only road there was, and when I thought about it, somehow, it made that road a little easier, although I would rather have been on that one over there, or that one over there, nonetheless, it was the road, the only road I had.
Those, uh, nine little words helped me, I thought I'd pass them along to you, thank you. There are many chances Hilda Hahn is in the audience here tonight, Hilda, come on up and say a word, no? Stand up and say, stand up anyway, huh? Stand up, Ed, make her get up too. There are some old friends from Cleveland also, they're living down in Florida now, over near Orlando. Josephine J. from Washington, is Josephine here? Do you want to come up and say a word, Josephine?
Well, when you grow up, come back, will ya? Another gal, a thought I've loved for many, many years, an old friend of mine from Cleveland, Margie Kane. Hi, folks, I'm Margie Kane, Cleveland, Ohio. You hear many, many expressions of gratitude from these rosters in AA, but I think that the alcoholic woman that was fortunate enough to be discovered on February the 14th, 1944, in Detroit, Michigan, where I was not known, has a particular reason for being grateful.
In fact, I can think of nothing greater than that discovery. I don't care who was discovered in Hollywood by whom or what, but this discovery made by Alcoholics Anonymous, of me, knowing absolutely nothing about it, quite a few miles from home, because I was born and raised a few blocks from the first meeting in AA in Cleveland, Ohio. And I was down there and was discovered, as I say, when I was about ready to be put away and incarcerated for the rest of my life as a result of alcoholism.
I certainly didn't know anything about gratitude in those days because I came into AA with a deep resentment. Instead of being grateful that I was discovered at all, I was very disappointed that I wasn't in Cleveland, Ohio and could have been discovered a few months or years earlier. So you can see I knew very, very little about this great word, gratitude, that we think so much of. I also want to say this as a woman alcoholic. Our problem, it basically is the same, but naturally there are many, many things that we must face that the male does not have to face.
One of them is this. Most of us lose our husbands through our alcoholism. So any gal out there who has come to AA in this situation, such as I had at the time, you don't only discover this wonderful way of life, but very often, as I did, you discover a wonderful husband and have a wonderful married life also.
[00:50:20]
All you have to do is put a greater value on staying sober than getting drunk. It's as simple as that in the final analysis. And as a pioneer or an old-timer or whatever you want to call me, of course I don't like any of those words now that I'm a widow again. I didn't resent them quite so much when I was married. But one of the basic things, I think, and the most important thing that I must remember is how sick I was when I came to the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, we have a way of forgetting. And I think that if we forget that one thing of really how sick the alcoholic is when he comes to the doors of AA, completely spent, I think we render ourselves useless to help the new person.
And that is the primary thing that I must remember, the sickness of the alcoholic. Thank you. Al M. from Hollywood, California. Hello, everybody. My name is Al Marinone. I'm an alcoholic. I was all prepared to give my 15-minute speech on humility, but my time is limited. So you'll have to cool it tonight, you see. I came into AA in 1941 on the Saturday Evening Post article, and I'm crowding between 29 and 30 years now of sobriety. Being 48 years old, you can imagine I came in very, very early when I was just out of the crib.
No, I was 38 when I came in. But these fellows look awful old to me. I don't know why, but I… It's the Medicare kids, you know. I was the first professional musician to come into Alcoholics Anonymous in that area. The first meeting I went to, we had 34 people in the Los Angeles area at the one meeting. It was on Friday nights. We're quite proud out there, because we now have well over 20,000 in the Los Angeles area, with over 500 groups.
The women are coming in in flocks. I don't know why, every time you kick a rock, a woman drunk rolls out from behind it. They're falling out of the trees, they're unlocking the closet doors. It's the damnedest thing you ever saw. In the group that I sponsored 25 years ago, they're 52% women. They now want to have organ music, and the light's low at the group. We're fighting them, and we're going to have to form a union of men, AAs, to hold them down. It's terrible.
They get so damned sentimental, you'll be crying all the time. Well, it's been very quiet and nice here tonight, so I think I'll tell one of my favorite stories and get the hell off of here. Being a musician, I like musician stories. And this guy was a little piano player, stood about five foot two, and he had drunk himself practically into oblivion, but he was a wonderful piano player when he was sober. But it finally turned out that he was drunk all the time, and he couldn't get a job, and he lost his family, and he lost everything he had in the world.
So finally he ended up playing in these Class D piano bars for about 45 bucks a week. No car, nothing. He had a tuxedo, two stiff white shirts, and a black tie. So he got a job way out on the edge of Los Angeles for 45 bucks a week. He didn't have a car to get to town in so he could get to another room, so he had to rent a room out there. He got one for $10 a week. And then he cased the area real good like we alcoholics do. We want everything very precise. And he found out that from the little bar over to his room, he could take a shortcut through a cemetery and follow a little path there and be home very quickly. And he timed it and he was home in ten minutes. So every morning at two o'clock when the joint closes, he was drunk as a lord, he'd follow this path through this little cemetery and he'd get home, wouldn't get pinched, no trouble, everything was fine.
[00:55:00]
But one night he is especially drunk, very drunk. And he starts through the cemetery and by golly he got off the path and he fell in a hole that was dug for a funeral the next day. And here's a poor little bastard down there seven feet and he can't even reach the top of the hole. And he's screaming all night like a Comanche. About dawn an old wino come wandering through this little cemetery and he hears this screaming. And he goes all through the place and finally he found a little piano player laying in the bottom of the hole all spread eagled out. And the old wino looked down at him and he says, what's the matter down there? And the poor little piano player says, get me out of here, I'm freezing to death, get me out of here, I'm freezing to death.
And the old wino looked at him a minute and he says, no wonder you're freezing to death, you've kicked all your dirt off. That's a dirty story. Next girl that I have the pleasure to introduce, most of you don't need, she really doesn't need an introduction too, because you've known her as a girl that's worked very faithfully in New York office for many years. She's now retired from that and is living in Florida. I'll give you Eve from Fort Lauderdale.
My name is Eve and tonight my heart is very full of gratitude. I think this is indeed a wonderful occasion and an occasion for gratitude on the part of us all. But I can't help but feel extremely grateful to all of these wonderful people who have gone before me because they lighted the way. They showed us how to stay sober and I'm so grateful that that wonderful man in the hospital here in Miami tonight carried the message and shared the program so that you and I would have an opportunity to find sobriety.
And I hope sometimes that younger people as they come into AA and find it all here for them, already made, all easy, don't forget that the greatest blessings in AA, the greatest gifts that we can receive for ourselves are the ones that we get from carrying the message, from trying to help the other alcoholic to try and let AA spread as it already has so very, very far. Imagine when this book was written, when a few of these people here were just getting sober and there were a few, a hundred alcoholics, and Bill wrote that marvelous chapter, A Vision for You, in which he said someday we hope that there will be a fellowship of alcoholics anonymous wherever you journey.
And just think, tonight in that convention hall with 10,000, we had people from New Zealand, from Australia, from South Africa, from Switzerland, from France, from Germany, from Ireland, from Finland, from England. Indeed, Bill's vision for you has come true. Let's never, never let it die. God bless. Thank you, Eve. Next speaker will be Ward M. from Springfield, Illinois. Thank you. My name is Ward Montgomery and I'm from Springfield, Illinois. I don't consider myself a sentimental guy, but this conference, as well as previous conferences we've had, have brought back to me this feeling that Eve just mentioned, this gratitude for this wonderful thing that has been given to us and to some of us who, I'm afraid, didn't completely deserve it. I'm so glad to see some old friends here tonight that I haven't seen in a number of years.
And I hope that you younger people out there will realize just what a wonderful, worthwhile movement this is, and how fortunate we are that this opportunity has been given to us to change our lives and to become, And to become newer and fortunately better people. And as the years go by, we don't cease
[01:00:02]
to need this at all. I need AA as much as I did twenty-nine years ago. And if that higher power sees that I am entitled to it and I want to be around a while, then I assure you of one thing, that I am going to stick with AA because to me it is the greatest thing that can happen to anybody. And thank you. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Tim Dee from the City of Toronto, Canada, Ontario. I'll assure you that it's a great privilege and an honor to be able to come to your country and take part in this wonderful affair. I'm an alcoholic. I was born in the year of 1883 on the twenty-fifth day of May. I started in the doors of 1170 Yonge Street, which was our headquarters at that time, on the eleventh of July, 1945. I was sixty-two years of age.
But one time in my life, during my drinking escapades, that after being the father of a wonderful family and a highly respected and cultured wife, I was alone in the country. After joining AA, things changed. Realizing that the time was limited, in order to describe the sort of an alcoholic that I was, Robert Burns was asked one time to give his version of an alcoholic. He said, I'll tell you one about myself. He said, it was early in October and I was far from being sober. I was packing home mum and a jag, but my feet began to stutter, so I fell down in the gutter.
And a pig came along and lay down by my side. Well, we talked about the weather when good fellows get together, but a lady passing by heard her say, you can tell a man that boozes by the company that he chooses, and the pig got up and slowly walked away. That, ladies and gentlemen, describes to some extent the sort of an alcoholic that I was. However, from the day I joined AA until this present day, I must say that God has been good to me. In a very short time, nearly one month, I'd done the jumping, drank everything from Benedictine to canned heat, was in jail so often for being drunk. A fellow met me on the street one day and he said, are you one of the staff? He saw me crawling into this black Mariah so often he thought I belonged to him. Wonderful things have happened to me. As I told you, I was 62 years of age.
I'm a full-fledged steam cutter and I wrote my exams until I joined AA.
[01:05:02]
I've been successful in every respect. On the 17th of January, 1961, my wife and I celebrated our 50th anniversary. I went to the hall in our parish, got a kettle, my audience was 25 grandchildren, my father and their mothers, and my brother who was a clergy, officiated. When I walked down the aisle, on the isle of my little wife, the thought just struck me, where would I be if it wasn't for this wonderful philosophy of AA.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm deeply grateful. I believe in every part of this program, the 12 Steps, religion, and it's no doubt surprising to think that this program has been the means of maybe 500,000 people walking this God's green earth today. For that, I am grateful. Thank you. Never too late to start, is it?