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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – LONERS INTERNATIONALISTS – RS 06414.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-loners-internationalists-rs-06414.mp3 Duration: 01:14:27
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This mic is on, right? Yeah. My name is Phyllis Masbach and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm very glad to be here this morning and to see all of you and to welcome you to our Loners Internationalist meeting. I feel very privileged to have this opportunity. I know that you're going to enjoy our speakers and I'd like to begin in the way that we're supposed to begin. We'd like to have a moment of silence and gratitude for all of the AA recoveries in the past 50 years. And then I would ask you to join me in the serenity prayer.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. There may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and film.
Thus we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. This morning we're privileged to have three members of our loners internationalists meeting by mail.
For those of you who may not be too familiar with this service, I'd like to just very briefly tell you a little bit about it. It's my privilege to be serving on this assignment the second time around. When I first came to GSO about 14 years ago, it was one of my first assignments. And now things have sort of come full circle for me, and I find myself again at the loners internationalists' desk. Not much has changed. We're still carrying the same message, and we're still carrying it the same way with love and with the benefit of our program, and by writing letters to one another, and also by sharing a lot of your letters through our bulletin, which we prepare every other month, which is made up of excerpts from letters that come to GSO, so that we really have a little meeting by mail. And at the present time, there are over 2,500 members of our loners internationalists' meeting by mail, and I like to say sometimes that I'm a member of the largest AA meeting in the world.
There are loners who are, as the word describes, AA members who live in places where they can't get to meetings because there aren't any meetings, or they may be incapacitated in some way and not be able to get out and go to meetings. There are internationalists who are AA members who live in parts of the world where there are no meetings. They may be at sea. They may be at ports. There are also loner sponsors who are AA members who have an opportunity to attend meetings and like to share their experience, strength, and hope with others by writing to them. And all together, along with the homers, which is our most recent description of what we used to call limbs, these are AA members who can't get out because of physical or emotional problems.
We make up this group and we write to one another, and the important thing is we all stay sober. In my group, leaders lead and speakers speak. So I'm not going to take up any more of this precious time. I'm going to introduce our first speaker, who is a member of our group from New York, Robert See. Let's give him a good hand.
[00:05:00]
I don't mind the crowd, but this microphone scares me. You've got to talk right into it, Bob. All right, I'm not used to it. First ship I was on, I asked the old man if I should telephone the bow to give him some instructions. He says, telephones are not for ships. Talk to the man. I went to sea for 48 years. And I started as a common sailor. I ended up captain for the last 10 years. I put six years in the Navy as a young man. I was on the kids' enlistment.
I thought I was going to pull a fast one on the Navy, sign for an extension, get my 30 days leave, shipping over money, and then plead sick and get out. But they made me do every day of the two years, plus 90 days bad conduct time. Now this bad conduct time should have been a message right there, because it was all through drinking, assaulting other people in the naval service, overleave without permission, various little infractions.
I did a little better than 60 days what they call cake and wine at solitary confinement on bread and water. It's the only time I gained weight while I was in the Navy. It's not saying much for their food. When I came out, it was early 41. Being a typical alcoholic, I paid off in San Diego's naval destroyer base. I had $400. I won the crap game on the way from the Far East. And I had $300 payoff money.
And I went out for a drink. When I come to, I was in Flagstaff, Arizona. I still had my monkey suit on and I had no money. That's a long way from New York. I don't know. I guess I knew I was an alcoholic, really, in 1941, because at that time the national emergency was on and you had to either re-enlist or you registered for the draft. And I registered for the draft in Flagstaff and when I got home, there was a notice waiting for me to be a soldier. I went over to Governor's Island, 1st Army Headquarters, and when I got over the battery, the ferry wasn't running. I had met an Italian boy that was in my neighborhood and he had a couple of bottles of striga.
We proceeded to destroy it out on the subway and then when we got over there and the ferry wasn't running, I offered to buy him breakfast. We went into the bean pot down at the battery and started drinking cross-stairs and beer. It should have been fall downstairs. By the time they got the ferry running, it didn't matter because we could have walked across the channel. I went through the examination in good shape.
I was in good shape then. I was boxed in. And I come to the last doctor. He asked me, have you any money in the bank? What are you doing? I said, well, I'm working in a shipyard. He said, you're making good money? I said, oh, about $85 a week. That was good money in 1941. He says, have you got an overcoat? I said, no, it doesn't get cold in New York. And it doesn't. If you come out of the subway into a gin mill to the next gin mill to the next gin mill, you can make it.
And he asked me if I had any money in the bank. I said, yes. He said, how much and where? I said, a dollar down at Benson High Savings Bank. Well, believe it or not, they gave me a classification of 4F. Meaning you wasn't fit to enlist in anything except the Salvation Army. And I think they would have turned me down. At any rate, I insisted on going back and seeing this doctor. It turned out he was a nuthead doctor.
And he knew what he was doing. And I asked him what the hell was going on? He said, well, you, my friend, are an alcoholic, and I will not put somebody else's life on the line for your decisions. And I told him, I said, doc, I'll put one hand behind my back, we'll go outside the barracks, and I'll whip you. He said, you might do it. You're in good shape physically. And you might be a rough customer. But you're still not going to get
[00:10:00]
in the Army. So either get out of here, or I'll have you removed. Discretion being a better part of valor, I left. At this time, there were torpedoing ships right off the coast. And the requirements for the Merchant Marine was if you could hear thunder and see lightning. So I made it. I obtained a third mate's license, and I sailed all through the war. I had very little trouble. Got hit a couple of times, but not too badly.
I ended up out in the South Pacific toward the end of the war. We were in convoy going up for the invasion of Biak. I made nine invasions in New Guinea. And at this invasion, they had a little trouble. The Japs were in a cliff, and they couldn't get them out. And they held us up at a place called Berlinhofen. And we were anchored up. I was the officer of watch. And on this trip, I had reefed 25 gallons of alcohol off an Army doctor. It was great stuff.
We used to mix it in a big water pitcher, put it up to about an inch at the top, and then drop some grapefruit juice in it. It would keep it from taking the skin off your tongue. Well, we had a few drinks that night. And after everybody passed out, I thought I'd sit down for a moment. And the first thing I knew, the captain was shaking me. He said, are you asleep? I said, no, sir. I just closed my eyes for a moment. He says, oh, what's that out off the starboard beam? There's a tremendous big circle of white water in the ocean. I said, oh, it looks like an underwater eruption. He said, an underwater eruption?
All right. He said, the ship's guns have been going for the last 10 minutes. We've been strafed and bombed. And you wasn't asleep? He promised me a jail sentence when we got back to San Francisco, which I really deserved because we had troops on board of ammunition. But as luck would have it, on the invasion of Philippines, we got hit by a kamikaze. And apparently I did some work to his satisfaction because he ripped up the charges.
The only request that he made was I never ship with him again. I got married in 45, and being a wily alcoholic, I picked a very naive girl. I had to have her home by 12 o'clock, which I religiously did, and then I went out and did the serious drinking. And I used to go in when I'd have a Saturday night date, I'd be rolling in just about time for everybody else to be going out to mass. And my mother would say, my God, I don't know what kind of girl you're going with, but you're coming in this hour. I'd say, you're right, Mom.
Now, I was going to swallow the anchor at 45, but there wasn't many jobs on the beach. I wasn't fit for much else, so I kept going to sea. I advanced my licenses. I was Sailing Chief Maid for 25 years, but it was a very patchy career because I was joining a company as third officer, worked my way up to navigator, then chief officer. And I'd say, well, you're doing a good job, Bob. Let's have a drink. And there was a case of we like you, you're a fine seaman, we'd like to keep you, but… And I'd go get another company.
I ended up with 28 of them. The last one I was with, apparently the operating manager, port captain, knew what was happening because he sent for me one day. I got all dressed up in uniform and went up to his office and he said, we have a problem, Mr. Corcoran. I said, really? Anything I can help with? He said, yes. He says, now I've got 48 freighters and two passenger ships and we have to make a decision here.
Either you have to stop drinking or I have to build more ships. I can't transfer you anymore. I kind of got the message that he was a little unhappy. And I stayed sober for a year. Not sober, sorry, dry. I didn't take a drink. And I was known as Bucko Bob. I was dry, but everybody else on the ship was going to be dry. was gonna be dry, and I made a trip down to Australia, they seemed to think that the
[00:15:03]
further away I was from New York, the better the company was, and on the way back we picked up twelve lovely young ladies, come to the States to marry millionaires, all you Americans are millionaires, and I was playing cards with this young lady, very, very nice woman, no hanky-panky, we'd just play cards every night, and when we come through Panama, we're down in Port of Spain, Trinidad, offloading frozen cargo, and she come to me and she said, my roommate is being escorted by the first assistant, would you mind escorting me tonight?
I said, not at all, it would be a pleasure. I got all cleaned up, got dressed up, went over and knocked on her door, and she said, come in, we're having a drink before we go. Now this is many, a long time before AA, but to show you I was aware of it, I said, I'd better not, I said, one is too much and a thousand isn't enough, I have the Irish virus. She said, oh, one won't hurt, I said, you're right, one won't hurt, and I mixed myself a scotch and soda, an Irish two fingers, and then we went ashore to the Queens Hotel, I had a couple of zombies there, then we went from there down to the Anchor Store Caves, anything with bitters in it is free, so I switched to Manhattan's, and then I have a vague recollection of being somewhere up in the mountains, I could hear the drums going, and we were dancing up a storm, and I can't dance.
Well, I blacked out then, and the next morning I come to, it was a bright sunny day, a Sunday, and I went over to her, I said, pardon me miss, I no longer follow the religion, but I know where the cathedral is, and if you'd like, I'll escort you to mass. She said, Mr. Corcoran, you was absolutely right, one is too much, don't speak to me again the rest of this trip, you this and that, and we went from there to Savannah, to St. John's, to Boston, to New York, and that lady didn't speak to me again, kind of sneered at me. This was an indication that maybe I was in a little trouble with booze. I was being treated for a back, I'd broken my back when I was younger, very fortunately I recovered, and I was being treated by this Jewish doctor. When he was treating me one day, I said, Doc, I'm drinking a little bit too much, I want you to treat me. I read about antabuse at this time. He said, you're drinking a little bit too much? He says, Bob, you're a drunk.
I said, right, I'm a drunk, I want you to treat me. He says, I won't, there is no treatment. He said, what you want to do is become a normal drinker again, you never will see that day again. He says, now if you want to stop, I can help you. I said, all right, say I want to stop. I didn't really, but I wanted to see what he had. He went to his file cabinet, and he got out a man's name and address and telephone number. He said, get in touch with this man. I said, who is he? He says, that is AA. I said, hey, Doc, I don't want any psalms singing, Bible thumping, or anything else. I don't want any AA. He says, for once in your life, listen, put that card in your wallet. When your wife will no longer stay with you, when your friends are all gone, when you are topped out, when you're ready to go over the side, call that man up. They must have had a crystal ball, because I only went on two more drugs, and the last one I think was either in Chicago or Philadelphia, I'm not sure which. But when I came to, I was sucking on a bottle of scotch. I was sitting in a dark apartment. My wife was in the usual position, in bed crying, and I honestly felt like going off the roof, but I didn't have the guts. I, for some reason, pulled out my wallet and started riffling through it. I knew after two or three days there wouldn't be anything in it, but I did come across this man's phone number, and I called him up. A normal AA call, two o'clock in the morning, and he didn't ask me my race, religion, color, or anything else. He just wanted to know how he could help me, and should he come to me, or could I get to him. I said, I can get to you. It was quite a
[00:20:07]
distance, almost a half a block. I made it over there, and he had a pot of coffee going. He took one look at me and turned the coffee off, and give me a shot of bourbon about that big. He said, there's no sense of talking to you to shape you in now. He said, just keep one thing in mind. Don't drink until this evening, and I'll pick you up for a meeting. Well, I went down to the local gin mill and had a couple more heave-aheads, and he threw me out, and I did go to a meeting that night. I went to a, I forget how many, three, four, five, before my vacation was up, and I had to go back to sea. When I went back to sea, they put me on a whiskey ship to Glasgow, the American manufacturer, and I went to my sponsor, a man who was later to become my sponsor, a big turkey, about six foot four, from County Kerry, named Paddy. I asked Paddy, what in the name of God am I going to do? I'll be up to my butt in whiskey. He said, let me ask you something, Bob. When you was drinking, could anybody stop you? Your mother, your father, your priest, your sister, your wife? I said, no, nobody on God's green earth. He said, by the same token, nobody can make you drink, and he solved it for me. I made that trip, and I didn't drink. I picked up 285,000 cases of the best scotch in the world. I had to get down and inspect the holes. I was wading in the stuff. When we come into the west side, down at Pier 58, I was discharging, and I went down the hole, and the offshore boss said, the ice is in the bucket, the whiskey's on the beam, there's the cups. I said, I'm not drinking, John. He said, you're not drinking? He yelled up, hey, the mate ain't drinking. First thing I know, there was eight gangs stopped. They were all around the hatch looking down to make sure I wasn't drinking. I guess I was a little infamous. But I didn't drink then, and I haven't drunk since. And it's all through this program. It's all, I remember Phyllis the first time around. I remember getting her letters with a signature. And it's all through the internationalists and the various meetings. I've been to meetings all over the world. And I especially loved the one in Glasgow. We had a little meeting up in Nile Street in the center of Glasgow, up from George Square. And they were a rough group. They were real down-and-outers. And I remember when people misbehaved, they'd throw them out the door, and it was lovely because it was the third floor, you could hear them go all the way down. They had real tough A.A.s. And I saw the same thing in Boston. We had a 12-step house over there. It was a great place, on Dover Street. I was there one night, and after the meeting, I was leaving. And one of the fellows I had carried to a meeting said, you better let us walk you down and get a cab. I said, hey, I don't need any babysitters. I'm fine. He says, yeah. He said, you know the other two guys that was in the cab with you? I said, aye. He said, well, one of them's a murderer. The other guy was in for bank robbery, and I was in for larceny. He says, now I know that diamond on your finger is worth $2,000. I saw you flash your wallet. You got at least $200 in your kick. And I saw you write a check. I says, you're right. Walk me down to the stairs. But it doesn't matter. We have them from Park Avenue to Park Bench, and they're all one thing. They're all alcoholics. And any time they want sobriety, as bad as we do, the folks who are at this convention, the folks who are at the regular meetings, it's there for them to pick up. I know I'm restricted in time. I just wanted to mention, I had a younger brother who was a retired policeman. And about five years ago, he gave me a call. I was in Lake George. He needed help. He was in Florida. I flew down to help him. He was on a full police pension. He was an engineer in three different condominiums. Had a lovely family, but he was up to here in booze.
And he wouldn't accept AA. He wouldn't accept spiritual or medical help. He wanted me to get sober for him, get him sober. And I told him I couldn't do it for him. He had to do it for himself. He wouldn't have anything to do with AA. Now, my intention was to fly him north, sober him up, and then let him make up his mind. But as luck would have it, the last minute we got to the airplane, he dug his heels in. He said, I'll follow you. I'll be up in a few days. I tried calling him after I got home, and the phone was dead. I couldn't get through
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to him. He ended up putting his gun in his ear and blowing his head off. That, but for the grace of God, could be I or any of us in this room. It's a matter of accepting and wanting. Willpower has nothing to do with it. And I'm sure that I would have went that route if I had kept drinking, or possibly worse, if there is anything worse. Now, since I've come in AA, I used to have a, I was only two years sober, and I bought a piece of land and built a cabin on an island in Lake George. I had that for 22 years, 23 years. I sold it two years ago. I had motorboats. My wife is driving a Cadillac right now. I've had bad health. I've had good health. I've enjoyed life thoroughly, 24 hours a day since I came in AA. I never lived before I came in AA. I existed. I was drink, I was from one drink to the next drink, going or coming. I was never happy. I was never satisfied. I was envious of everybody I ever met.
Today, I'm envious of nobody. I don't want to be crude. I could tell you what it feels like. But I'm triply blessed. I have everything in the world I ever wanted. I have six lovely grandchildren. I have a wonderful wife who's been with me for 40 years. And my two daughters have turned out wonderful. I can't express how much this program has given me. And best of all, I'm at peace with myself. I owe no man except for my sobriety. I owe everything for that. Thanks ever so much.
Thank you, Bob. What a wonderful message. One of the joys of working with the Loners Internationalist is to have an opportunity at a time like this to get to meet people whom I've written to and whose names I've known. You really feel as though you get to know somebody by writing back and forth, but you haven't met them in person. Our next speaker is a lady with whom I've corresponded for a while. And she responded to our call for help for speakers for this session. And I'm very happy to introduce Heather Hugh as our next speaker. Heather?
Hi, everybody. My name's Heather and I'm an alcoholic addict. That sounds good. I'm a little bit nervous. I'm glad this podium's here. You can't see my knees shaking. I'm really excited about being here. As you can see by my hat, I'm in the Navy. And right now I'm on board a ship, which is how I came into the loners group. But I guess I'll start from the beginning, how I got here. I've been in the Navy 10 years now. And I joined when I was 18. I signed my own life away. I didn't have to have my parents' permission. I just did it myself.
But before I came in, I wasn't making enough money to do any drinking or anything like that. I was just a pretty straight person when I first came in. But when I came into the Navy, I think God gave me two feet because I jumped in with both of them. And about a year after I got into the Navy, I started drinking. And my first tour of duty was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And the people that I hung out with were all really heavy drinkers. So even from the beginning, I learned how to drink heavily. I never learned how to drink socially.
But even today, as back then, the Navy is really accepted when it comes to drinking and even using drugs, which I got into a year later. I'm really nervous. I'm having trouble thinking of things to say. I was in Hawaii for about four years.
[00:30:14]
I used to meet my husband up on the lanai at the barracks, and we'd like stay up all night and drink and party and play cards, and that's how I met him. Hawaii was probably about the worst period where I was into both drugs and alcohol. It was real easy to get there. It was very easy to get. I had a good time there going to the beaches, and everybody had marijuana plants on their lanais, along with the palm trees. There were almost as many marijuana plants as palm trees. About a year before I left Hawaii, I got out of drugs and stuck with alcohol. I came really close to being busted.
I can remember getting off a 12-hour mid-watch early in the morning and having one of my friends come running into my room telling me they were bringing the dogs through, the sniffers that could sniff out the drugs. I managed to get everything out of the room before they came through. I didn't get busted, but that scared me enough to get out of it. I held a going-out-of-business sale and just switched to alcohol.
After my four years in Hawaii, I re-enlisted for another four years in the Navy, and I got transferred to Norfolk, Virginia. I was living in Virginia Beach with my husband, and there it was shooting darts and drinking. We'd go to a bar, shoot darts on Tuesday nights, and have all-you-can-eat shrimp and just drink until we were well-looped. I've never spoken in front of this many people before, so I am a little bit nervous. Virginia was a nice place, but I think I missed a lot of it because I spent so many nights drunk.
One night, I was home. I just got off watch at about 10.30, and my husband was out shooting darts. I was waiting for him to come home. I was sitting next to the phone with a glass of wine in my hand, waiting to see how late it would be before he came in. About midnight, a little bit after midnight, I got a phone call from one of the hospitals telling me that he was in the emergency room. They wouldn't tell me what kind of shape he was in.
So, I finished my glass of wine, and I grabbed the car keys, and I ran out the door. I got into this big old Mercury we had. We called it the White Whale because it was one of those really square cars with the electric window in the back. I hopped in, and I put the key in the ignition, and I put it in reverse and tried to back it out of the parking lot, and it wouldn't go. So, I put it in neutral, and I got out and walked around the car, and it turned out that I had a flat tire.
So, I ended up running back to my next door neighbor. It's like almost 1 o'clock now. I knocked on their door, and they handed me the keys to their car. I speeded to the hospital, and I got pulled over for speeding once on my way over there. When I got there, I found out that my husband had gotten into an automobile accident coming back from one of the nights he was shooting dogs. At first, I was really mad at him, and this shows how sick I was. I was more worried about my car than him because he was driving my Triumph Spitfire, which was my dream car.
I didn't really realize until I saw the car a couple of days later how lucky he was to make it out alive. That's when it really hit me that I was really grateful that he made it out alive.
[00:35:08]
That was one of the last things that happened before we left Virginia. About two days after that accident, I got pulled over for speeding, and it turned out to be the same cop that pulled my husband over for the accident. So, we got to have a pretty good name among the policemen there. After our two years in Virginia, we both accepted orders to do two different spots. My husband went to Holy Lock, Scotland, and I went to Naples, Italy. I spent two years in Naples, and I spent a year drunk and a year sober. That is where I came into the program.
I was really grateful when I got a call from Quig telling me that he was being ordered to the Alcohol Rehabilitation Service. They were going to send him, I think, to Rhoda, but there was one in Naples, so I managed to talk him into sending him to the one in Naples. Around about December, about two and a half years ago, he came down to Naples to go into the rehab. That was the first time I ever realized that anybody could possibly have a drinking problem, and I couldn't understand why they picked him.
But anyway, his command ordered him to go, and so we started going up to the hospital. I checked him into the hospital, because you are a patient when you go through it, and I had no idea what was going on. I was totally in the dark. The first time that I met one of the counselors, I thought he was a real bad guy. I couldn't think of some other names, but I didn't like him right off. But as it turned out, about a week or two later, my husband dragged me into my first AA meeting, and I was very scared, and I remember as his wife, not as a co-alcoholic, not as an alcoholic.
And I was really scared, and I can remember him dragging me in there. It was clear as day, and all I could do was just sit there, and I think I said who I was, and that was all I could get out. But I kept going to meetings with him a couple of times. They had to go to like four meetings a week required by the program, and the more I went, the more I realized that I should be there myself. And it took a couple of weeks for me to open up my ears enough to start hearing the things, the similarities and not the differences, because I spent a lot of time with the yets. No, I didn't do that yet, so I'm not an alcoholic.
I myself was admitted to the ARC in Naples, Italy in January, about three weeks after they admitted him, and I had a fight with my command to make them realize that I had a problem, because they looked at my past record, and they looked at my evaluations, which they write every year that tells the people that I work for how well I do, and they didn't see any black marks anywhere, and they couldn't figure out why I had a problem, because I had really good marks, and I was doing my job well.
And it took about a week worth of argument with them, and some push from the doctors at the hospital to let them admit me for six weeks, and I finally won my battle, and I showed up there on a Monday morning with my PT gear in hand, because they told me I was going to have to run a couple of miles that day. And even though I kind of volunteered, when I walked in there, I kind of figured I made a mistake, and they still dragged me in with my fingernails on the walls, because I was really scared.
But it didn't last long, and I found out through going through that program, that was the first time in my life that I allowed a crack in my bubble to happen, because I had one all the way around me, and it was keeping me in and everyone else out. And it was real scary at first, because I just allowed a little crack, and all the love and the caring that was in the group started seeping in a little bit at a time. And I finally realized that I could give it back, and I started doing that a little bit at a time.
[00:40:16]
And by the time the seven weeks was over, I had this circle of really close friends that I could run to whenever I had some problems to talk about, or whenever I needed a hug. I think we started a fad there. We started hugging each other all over the place, and it spread. You know, so hugging is a contagious disease, and I like it. After I got out of rehab, I went back to work, and it really flipped me out when my boss, who was a senior chief, offered me a promotion in responsibility, and I, with much misgiving, accepted it.
But all the while, inside me, I was saying, I've never done this before. I don't even know if I can handle it. But I was too scared to let him know that. And I just finally took the job, and after about three months, I ended up going back to my senior chief and telling him that I couldn't handle it. It was just too much, too soon. But he ended up firing me. I didn't admit it until I had already gotten myself into so much trouble that there was no way he could keep me in the job. So he put me back on the watch section as one of the supervisors, and I stayed there for the rest of the time I was in Naples.
While I was in Naples, there was a lot of guys off some of the ships that pull into Naples down in the fleet landing, and they would come up to meetings. And most of the ships aren't like mine. We have meetings on board. Most of them don't. So getting AA when they could was whenever they pulled into port in Naples. They would come in a van or a bus up to the hospital and go to meetings with us. And it was really neat being able to share some experience, strengths, and hope with them.
I spent a year in Naples sober and a year drunk, and I missed some big opportunities about seeing Europe and stuff. I did take a week vacation and went to Paris for a couple of days, and I was able to go to some meetings there. And I too can say I've been to meetings all over the world, and the feeling in the rooms, no matter where you go, is the same. And I've also been to meetings where I couldn't understand them in foreign languages. But even then, you can still get what they're saying, even though you may not understand them, you can still get the feelings that they're talking about.
So please don't be afraid to go into a foreign speaking meeting if you have a chance. Just go there and listen, and you'll hear what everybody's saying. After I did my two years in Naples, I got all excited because I received orders to my first ship. Right now I'm home ported in Alameda, California, and I'm on the USS Sammy Gompers. And we are a tender, a destroyer tender, and part of our job is service to the fleet. We help repair other ships, and one of the things that we do is we repair people too.
We have a counseling and assistance center on board with a couple of trained counselors, and we also have meetings. And in June of last year, I flew from San Francisco to Yokosuka, Japan to pick the ship up. And when I got on board, I found out that they had meetings, and it was like, wow, they gave me what I needed. Because I had meetings every day, and I had counselors that I could go talk to if I wanted to.
And, you know, I was like, I tried to become prepared to the ship because I had no idea what they had available, so I brought everything I could with me. And that's when I started getting into the loaner's internationalist meeting. The very first person I wrote was a neat lady named Caracas Lil, who was an ex-merchant marine. And she and I had been corresponding. And she and I have been corresponding now for almost a year. But I went through a seven month Westpac. We left on, the ship left on June 1st and we came back into port in December 22nd and we were underway for the majority of the time.
[00:45:12]
We hit a couple of ports. We hit Hong Kong. We were in Subic Bay, Philippines. If anybody goes to the Philippines, they have some really good meetings there at the Serenity Shack. The first thing they wanted to do was get off the boat and go get drunk. And that was all I heard. Every time we pulled into a port, that's what everybody talked about. And I had a couple of close calls there. I started feeling really uneasy about it.
But I hung out with a couple of other alcoholics and together we managed to stay sober. And in numbers, we always went on liberty, you know, together. So we kept each other sober. But one of the things that really helped me was writing letters. I was able to talk about things in letters that I couldn't to some of the people on my ship. I'm tighter with some of the people I write with and I can talk about anything on paper.
But I've gotten so much good sharing from the people in the Loaners Group that even today, even though I can go to meetings every day because right now I'm tied up, I still write them and I still get some really fantastic sharing. If you want to, please write. It's a real neat support system for my program and it's a valuable part of it. Along with going to meetings and doing everything else to get involved in the program, I feel really good about it because I can help someone else that can't get to meetings.
Plus, I can identify with a lot of them because a lot of the people that I write to are either underway or ex-Merchant Marines and know what it's like. And that has really helped me so much. The Westpac was a unique experience and I don't think I ever would have made it without the Loaners Group. They just helped me so much. One of the things that the people on board the gompers couldn't understand was even though the longest time we were underway was 90 days between ports and they couldn't understand why we needed meetings underway because you can't drink out there.
That doesn't include the three people we had in the brig for making alcohol on board. But there was a whole bunch of newbies on board that would come to meetings while we were out and when they were in port they would go out and get drunk and then afterwards they'd come back, which is okay. They came back to where they needed to be. But I finally explained to them that I go to meetings to learn how to live, to learn how to cope with the emotions that I have now that I'm sober. And all the meetings that I went to, all the letters that I've written have helped me do that.
It's just been an outlet to let out some of the emotions that I couldn't dump on a lot of people on the ship. So I'm too really grateful for this program and I'm real honored to be up here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Heather. It's a wonderful example of what we're all about and how no matter how long we've been sober, AA is all about learning to live and learning to live the AA way. I don't know about any of you, but the last couple of days walking around town, I've been so aware of how many of us there are. These little blue tags every place you turn around on the street, on the metro, in restaurants, in hotels, every place.
And I keep thinking, you know, this is a fantastic phenomenon that's taking place. I mean, the count yesterday afternoon, and I guess this isn't final yet, but there were 42,500 of us registered here. I mean, that's an awful lot of people. And 50 years ago, there were only two. I'm very excited about introducing to you our last speaker. There are AA members here from all over the world.
[00:50:23]
And it was a slow process. In the beginning, there were the two. And little by little, AA grew in the United States and in Canada. And I guess somewhere about, I'm not sure of the exact number of years ago, but close to 40 years ago, an AA member who went to sea had the idea of taking some of our literature and leaving it in different ports as he went around the world. And I believe, and I know you all believe, that our next speaker was very instrumental in carrying our message from one end of the globe to the other.
We certainly credit him with the beginning of our loners internationalist group. And it's with great pleasure that I present to you now Captain Jack. Thank you very much. I'm Jack. Remember the internationalists and of the local groups in Portland, Maine, where I'm retired. I'm no chicken. But it's a great privilege for me to be here today at the 50th. I came into AA the first meeting at the Boston group at 306 Newbury Street in 45. There was one group in Boston at that time.
I'd returned from the war five years on the tank, as this man knows about it. Lieutenant, in the Navy in World War I, I carried 100 octane in the Korean from the Persian Gulf to Japanese ports. And by the grace of God and the help of you people, especially GSO, the 14th of this month I will be sober 39 years. And on the same date, married 59 years. I was born in Maine, the son of a clergyman, educated at a private school and college.
And I look back at it today, I went ahead too fast. At 20, I was a signal officer on a troop ship running from Hoboken to Brest. Before your time. And… I'm blacking out. First time that long. But, if it hadn't been for AA, I know very well, I would have lost my job. I would have lost my pension, I don't mind saying it, because they were very good to me. I'm retired now from Mobil Oil. And…
[00:55:00]
I came into Bill's office, October the 20th, 1947. I had… 15 months sobriety on the coast. I was to be assigned on an old ship called the Algonquin. For around the world. There were two girls in Bill's office at that time, Barbie and Charlotte. And I was given, I came up there looking for advice. They told me that letters might help. And Charlotte guaranteed me a letter a week on that long voyage.
And Barbie said if I had AA, and really wanted it, I could go around the world, any place, and stay sober. On that day, there wasn't much literature at the time. Bill helped me pack my sea bag with what literature there was at that time. And the next day, I started out for San Francisco. Fortunately… I was there for 12 days, 12 good meetings. And I picked up with the next hobo. I had a few bucks, and he knew where the meetings were.
So we had dinner every night, and then we'd go to meetings. And those meetings helped me on that first long voyage, which… Today, I'm told, was the beginning of the internationalist group. After 12 days… It was under the Panamanian flag. I had a Panamanian license. Five bucks it cost those days. I think they're a little high. Twenty-five. Twenty-five now. But… It was on that first voyage… We ran into a terrific storm in the North Pacific.
And the steering gear was about ready to give away. The chief engineer was an alcoholic, not a member of AA. The chief engineer was an alcoholic, not a member of AA. And I gave Mac a bottle of whiskey, and I sent him down to the steering engine room. And I said, keep this thing going, Mac, or it's curtains. So we rode out the storm, and right afterwards, there was a near-mutiny between the Arabs and the Filipinos.
And it was at that time that I accepted step three, where I turned my will and life… I don't recommend it… over to the care of God. In my case, the ship and the crew. And that was the beginning of a voyage that lasted for 14 months. I was in Hong Kong… Christmas Eve. And I didn't know at that time, when the quarantine flag comes down, when the quarantine flag comes down, the girls from the sandpan come aboard the ship.
And they lined up outside my room, with permission to stay aboard. And the old man was supposed to get the pick of the crew. But I looked the situation over, and it didn't look too good. So I went ashore that night, and I had the flu. And I said to the agent, I said, what do you do in a case like this? He said, oh, do nothing, he says. Let them stay aboard, they won't do any harm. Let them stay aboard, they won't do any harm.
So stay aboard they did, and I came back in the morning, the ship was still there, and the crew was still there.
[01:00:02]
Palomang, New Year's Eve, Sumatra. And it was there that I met my first AA contact, given to me from the girls in GSO. Frank F., three-letter man from the University of Michigan. He answered a blind ad one time when he was drunk. The next thing he knew, he was over there in the jungles of Sumatra. And Frank and I held meetings in Quonset Huts over there. It's the only contact I had. Later on, letters started to come in from New York.
I carried this on for four years. And then I couldn't do it and run the ship at the same time. So New York took it over. Thank God they did. Ann McFarlane, who I met last night. I think Ann saw the possibilities of this group. Because when you're all alone out there, no meetings, no nothing, you put your faith in God as your understanding. Although a clergyman said that I'd lost a lot of faith, because as a young man I was brought up in the café society of France, if any of you people know what that is.
But it was a privilege for me to be able to go to these places and stay sober. I peddled literature all the way from Shanghai to Cape Town. I know there's foreigners here. Singapore, Borneo, and we were based in the Persian Gulf in a little place called Tangier over south of Singapore. Where we loaded, we were on tank travel voyages. And we never knew where we were going next. And it's in the book, I knew it.
It was a surprise to me to see a picture of the ship there. That wasn't the old Algonquin. But that was another ship. I came back and I went first meeting in Boston. And I looked around the situation. I still had my wife, I still had my job. I didn't think I was qualified for this thing. I didn't realize that the judge of the Panama Canal was going to lock me up for the duration of the war. Little things like that, don't you know.
We lost everything. My wife stuck with me, and I can say today that the wives of men with AA, in my opinion, are the greatest women in the world. We lost everything, and I had to go back to sea with master's papers in my hip pocket as an AV at $60 a month with a wife and two kids. There's my daughter. But I was lucky. I ran into the port captain, and he and I were together in World War I. And promotion came pretty fast.
I came into AA through Christian Science. There was no AA when I first came in, or about the same time that Bill and Dr. Bob were getting together. And I stayed sober for two years in science.
[01:05:00]
And out of a clear sky, I went ashore in Constanza, Romania, when they sat down in the bar room and got drunk. And that was the beginning of years of drinking and drunkenness. If it hadn't been for the war, I know I wouldn't have been retired today because it was… Anybody that carried 100 arctanes in the war zone was crazy anyway. But it was my life. It's all I knew. I had been a newspaper man between ships for six and a half years in Portland.
I covered the waterfront there. And that didn't do any good either, but it was an interesting job because it was the end of the period of sail. But after seven months on that long first voyage, which, according to Lois and, I guess, Bill, that was the beginning of this group of internationalists. It was October the 20th, 1947, when I came into Bill's office. I had a lot of experiences. I was 15 years sober east as it was.
I don't know how I ever did it. But I look back at it today. I'm very grateful to people like Caracas Lill. Some of you people know her. Because she taught me, and I believe it today, that there is something beyond this life. And she says there's going to be a big meeting up there with my Bill and Dr. Bond. And she's convinced me of that. Caller Jim is here today. He and I met each other in Long Beach 25 years ago when we were talking to each other.
And there are others, as I met last night, Eve Marsh and all the other girls down there because they were awfully good to me down there at GSO. I was a lonesome sailor, don't you know, and they fell for that stuff. But my interpretation of God as I understand him goes for years. I looked at the stars and the formation of the stars from the bridge of a ship. And every night they come up in the same formation.
And you can take a section, and if you're four seconds out in timing, it tells you the ship's position on a mile. Today it's different. All you do is press a button. But that is my interpretation. I knew there was something somewhere. Since then, even today, I have a stack of grapevines high on my table by my bed. And I read something every night from those grapevines, because they helped me from way back, almost from the very beginning.
I remember one time there was a typhoon coming up the coast of Japan. And I was anchored in a little place called Shimizu, south of Tokyo. And I didn't know what to do. And I went down to my room and I read the book. And something told me to get out of that place. So it was a decision to make.
[01:10:04]
Nearly half the crew were ashore. And something told me to get out of there. And I got out of there, and we went through that typhoon. It was one of the worst experiences I ever had in my life. Came back the next day. Ships had been blown ashore. The dock was knocked down. And from that time forward, I've left everything in the hands of God, is my understanding. I also want to be very grateful to the people in Australia.
They've been very, very kind to me. I think there are people here, maybe somebody here from Australia. But probably one of the first AA meetings that was ever held aboard a ship was held in Fort Kembler, Australia, where half a dozen of the early AA members, including Clive B, drove 50 miles down to Fort Kembler, and we had a meeting in the cabin of my ship there. And we've been writing to each other all these years.
This program has saved my life. And I know today, if it wasn't for it, I wouldn't be alive. I think one of the worst experiences I had was, I came home on my 31st birthday. In AA, my wife called me, and my daughter called me up. She said, my son had been injured in a license, in an automobile license. He was on a motorcycle. And this man came through a red light, gun. And he was crippled for life. He's still crippled.
I was sitting alone in the house that night. I've been living alone for six years. My wife had been a nurse at home five and a half years. A wonderful woman. I go out there nearly every day. And… That was something that I had… I had booze in the house and everything else. But I knew very well that no matter how bad things get in this world, a drunk or a drink will not help it any. I have a strong religious outlook on life today.
I'm 87 years old. No chicken. And I don't smoke, and I don't drink, and I'm too old to chase women. And I want to thank you all. I want to thank Phyllis for having me here. Because it's been a great privilege. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you, dear Captain Jack.