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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Tom I Source Review 11049 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-i-2011-02-03-tom-i-back-to-basics-huntsville-r-up-his-story-tx-aa-2011-archive-11049.mp3 Duration: 00:58:56
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I'm Tom, an alcoholic. I'm a member of the Primary Purpose Group in Southern Pines, North Carolina. And by the way, that two-hour phone call was on my nickel. It is great to be here. The last time I was, I don't know if it was the last time, but one time when I was here, I didn't get to go through Huntsville, they sent me through Decatur. But what an interesting place. It's really great. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's a great place to visit.
I was delighted to see people that took some pride in their heritage and were really trying to make that community go. So it was neat to see it. It's good to be back. Good to be back where the real Americans are. We're strange, but by golly, we're real. And it is just neat. I thought I'd seen everything today. I've never seen a 20th ever. My brilliant mind has been trying to figure out, what does that mean?
Congratulations on 20th ever. I am delighted to be here. He's right, I did. My sobriety date is February 2nd of 57. And I know when… Thank you very much. We applaud the program, not me. I know way back when I first came in, there was a guy one day, one of the old greybeards was talking with me. And when I came in, I swear to God, I thought I was the only young guy on the planet. I mean, I went for years, and I was the youngest member in every meeting I attended.
Remarkable things happen. Now I'm the last dude standing at almost every sobriety countdown I go to. I think, come on guys, where are you? So the wheel turns. It's been a remarkable thing. I'm going to tell you as much as I can about that. But it's been a remarkable thing. I know when that guy was telling me 54 years ago that I could be sober as long as 50 years, he thought he was saying something wonderful.
And while he was just oohing and aahing and drooling over 50 years, to myself I was thinking, my God, what if it works? And here we are. I could have never imagined, nor would have wanted to, that I thought sober was next to dead. I got a phone call the other day, and somebody asked me to come somewhere at the end of 2013. And I said, do you know me? He said, well, I've heard of you. I said, you know how old I am?
He said, oh, you'll make it. I said, well, good luck. I said, I hope we do. I said, I am delighted to be here, and I want to tell you as much as I can. Do you all mind if I take my coat off? You won't be insulted. Smile, Clancy, smile. It lets me know you're awake. Free at last, free at last. He took me shopping today. Now, my wife, in her busyness trying to stay uninvolved, let me pack up without a shirt, without a dress shirt.
What am I going to do? I'm going to go buy one. So we go. He is the shopper. I'm the consumer. He's the shopper. And he came out with a tent, I mean a flat tent. This sucker is a 46. I've got it tucked in every place you can tuck a shirt. And it's barely hanging on. We're going back to his haberdashery tomorrow, I think. But anyway, it is just a delight to be here, and I am going to try to tell you as much as I can about that.
I was a guy, I don't know which way it would go, but it would go somewhere. And so I walked into my first meeting on the 2nd of February, 1 o'clock in the afternoon in 1957. And I had never before, just a few days before, I had never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd never heard of anybody helping alcoholics. I knew a lot of people that captured them, because I was one of them. But when they captured them, there wasn't much to it beyond that.
[00:04:59]
We had detox back then, but they called it jail.
[00:05:03]
And it was very effective. I guarantee you if they go upside your head with a blackjack, you will get sober. I don't care whether you want to or not. And it may not stay that way, but it's very good temporary stuff. Not a heck of a lot different than now. Just a different method. And so I'd never heard of AA. And when I walk into that meeting at 1 o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday, 2nd of February, Groundhog Day, I had just sort of a dim notion of what it would be.
I thought it was going to be some kind of a religious hootenanny of some sort. And that's what I'd been frightened of as a child and ran away from religion, because I'd see those people running up and down the aisle screaming, beating guitars at each other and everything else. I didn't find that to be a warm, welcoming kind of an environment. And so I made up my mind as a kid before I started school that I would quit that as soon as I got a chance.
As soon as I could get my hand out of mama's, I wouldn't be going there anymore. Now, I was serious about that. That wasn't just a confused youngster. I drew a line in the sand before I started school that if I ever got big enough, I wouldn't go back. And I didn't go back into a church until I was sober 11 years in AA. So I was serious about that. I wasn't just a confused, aggravated child. I was somebody who simply could not buy into what folks called organized religion.
I think it might have been a bizarre introduction, but that was exactly what I carried. When I walked into the rooms of AA, that was exactly what I feared, that I was going to walk into one of those sort of revolving things. Well, I was expecting that. And the first thing they did was pray. First thing. I knew it. I knew it. And it was that serenity of prayer that we opened almost every meeting with.
And while they were praying, I said to myself, yep, just what I thought. Just what I thought. They'll be in here with the snakes any minute. But, you know, I did. But I finally got back to it. And so that was my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous. I've never, honest to God, I've never felt more out of place anywhere in my life than I felt in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, granted, I was younger by far than most of the people in the group.
Most of them, there were 300 members in that group, and most of them in that group had drunk more years than I was years old. And so I felt tremendously out of place in there. I didn't identify with anybody. Most of them were older than me, uglier than me, and a bad-looking crowd. And so I didn't identify with any part of it. I'd hear them tell their stories, and we don't lie in AA. We are extremely honest people.
But we… Will you anoint me a little bit? We don't lie. But sometimes a story is dull if you just tell the bare facts. And you've got to sort of put a little curve in it, you know, to fill in the blanks and to make it a little bit juicier. And so I'd listen to people tell their stories. And I heard one guy say he had been drunk for 40 years and never sober. Well, now, that's a lie. That's a lie. And I don't care how big a drunk.
You can't be that big a drunk. And I thought, gee whiz, how am I going to identify with that? One guy said he married the same woman seven times. That's a lie. That is flat a lie. There's not a woman on earth dumb enough to have married the same clown seven times. No way. No way. So I'm listening to that. You know, and I've listened to all this kind of stuff, identified with absolutely nothing. And the only reason I ever stayed at AA, I've been solid in attendance for all of the time, even when I wasn't sure what it was.
But I've been in attendance. And what brought me back to AA, the second meeting, was the guy who spoke at the first meeting. The guy who spoke at the first meeting later became my first real sponsor in AA. I had one sort of an adjunct sponsor before I really got serious and got a real sponsor. But I had a good, solid guy that was helpful to me. I didn't call him sponsor because we were in the same crib.
And so the guy that spoke at my first meeting, thank God for that man. Yeah, I'm a true believer in open speaker meetings. I think they're the most vital, valuable thing in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I draw my sermon from the text of Dr. Bob. Why do we call him doctor?
[00:10:00]
Didn't he know about anonymity back then? Anyway, Bob. If you take a look at his story, that position, Help Thyself, right at the end of the story, he wrote a little thing, just a little paragraph, and he was basically going back to that moment of menace meeting that occurred between him and Bill, and most of you are aware of that. If not, by all means, find out. It was the meeting where the absolute principles of Alcoholics Anonymous were formed, the basic principles.
I think the basic tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous was formed that day that Bill and Bob met. And what Bob wrote about, he was a physician, a trained man, a well-read man, knew lots of people all over the world. And the way he described that, something happened to him that day. He came in, had declared he didn't have but about 15 minutes, and he wound up staying five or six hours, something like that.
He stayed a long time. And our world of alcoholism has never been the same. And so he was asking himself, what was it about this man, Bill Wilson, a decrepit stockbroker from New York, what was it about him that was different from all the other people I had known and spoken with and read about? What was different about Bill? Then he answered his own question. He said it was because he talked with me of his own experience, not philosophy or theory or scientific facts.
He talked with me of his own experience. And what formed right then was the basic tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous. We don't educate each other here. We may have a little fun, and we may get a little profound once in a while by accident. But we're not teaching people anything. What we basically do is share that experience, and that's what we connect with. That's why open speaker meetings are doggone important to me.
One of us, I'm doing it tonight, and Edith, she spoke and ran. But she did the same thing. She told the story. And so that's what we do. And what happens when I tell you where I was broken and healed, you can identify with that and say, yeah, I was broken and healed there too. I think they're tremendously important. Tremendously important. We hear from that. And not only that, but I think it's also a vital thing because, and I won't ask for a show of hands, but I guarantee you there are some couples in this room tonight who are having their first sort of social experience together since sobriety started.
And it's an awkward, clumsy time, eh? An awkward, clumsy time. If you're anything like me, in those early days of recovery, the pesos are hard to come by. And for many young couples that are just starting out, the Saturday night open speaker meeting and hopefully some donuts are the big deal of the week. That's going out to dinner. And so I think they serve a vital, vital function. We can not only fellowship together, but we can cement that relationship.
And so I'm a great fan of that. I also think, and I'll get off this in a minute, well, not quick, but I'll get off when I get finished. I also think that it's the basic premise for why singleness of purpose is so important. So important. Because if you don't have what I've got and identify it like I identify with, my God, man, when we tell somebody you're going to find that in Alcoholics Anonymous and then don't deliver, what we're doing is false advertising.
And so when we let Alcoholics Anonymous just become a collection of people with problems and the commonality is misery, that's not enough. And so I think there's a real pledge of honor to assure that – go ahead and clap. That's good. I personally think that if you believe that, that we have an absolute honor-bound responsibility to assure that that's the environment there for the next alcoholic who walks in.
And it's tremendously important. I think we need a worldwide group conscience. We'll never have it. But I guarantee you, even though this is a wonderful group of people gathered for the first ever in 20, if we did a vote right now and everybody voted what they honestly felt, it would be a split vote. unless you're remarkably different from most groups that I've dealt with. And so that was what was tremendously important, and why we tell the story.
I'm going to tell you mine. And so I was sitting in that meeting. That guy who spoke at that first meeting, I didn't identify with him.
[00:15:03]
He was as different from me as any human I ever met. I mean remarkably different. He didn't look bad if you didn't get too close. And he had on the obligatory blue Cretan suit, kept his coat on the whole time. And he told his story. And I thought, my God, why is he telling that story? I mean it just seemed bizarre to me that a decent looking man in a suit was going to come in there and bare his soul.
I just happened to be in finishing school at the time. Most of you know I was in a maximum custody penitentiary. And this guy was visiting from Detroit to speak to this wonderful group of people. And so he lays that out. And the enthusiasm was just palpable. The guy just charged me up. I didn't identify with one sound he made. But what drew me back to Alcoholics Anonymous was that spirit that he communicated.
That absolutely contagious spirit of enthusiasm. God knows I value enthusiastic people. Deliver me from sad sacks. Man alive, if you've got nothing but a sad story, it'll be a short conversation. I mean I'll listen if it's real serious now. But anyway, you know what I'm talking about. And so that's what brought me back. I'll always be grateful for that. And I did think that guy was a fruitcake. A year later he was my sponsor.
But I guess he changed remarkably in a year. And he kept me coming back. I didn't believe I was alcoholic. I didn't. The other thing I got from open speaker meetings was when speakers came in, they would, and by the way, I know there are a number of people in here just like me who do a lot of service work correction, that the speakers who came into the institution I was in, every one of them came in at the invitation of one of us.
Now if you don't think you can learn how to win friends and influence people, you start being the guy responsible for getting speakers when you've got 300 hard-headed convicts there to hold you to it. You're going to get good at finding people. And that was a tremendously good kind of a development, a good kind of a service for me to perform. And so I did that. And when speakers come in, they tell stories.
What it sounded, I know it wasn't what they said, but what it sounded like they said was that they were alcoholic because when they drank, they got in trouble. Well, my God, if that's the definition of alcoholism, I've had that all my life. I had that before I could walk. And that's certainly not a classic definition, but it was enough to keep me in the seat, eh? Enough to keep me in the seat. It's long enough that something could make some sense.
So I identified fragile identification, but it was enough to keep me there. And thank God. I lived in that place, if you can call it that, for three and a half years, never missed a single meeting. When I commit, I commit. Like I'm a home group guy now. And if you want to find me in my town on Monday and Thursday night, go to the First Baptist Church of Southern Pines, North Carolina. If I'm not there, something's wrong.
Call 911. The man ain't there. But I'm that kind of dude. I believe strongly in the sense of belonging that comes with being in a solid home group. And that's how I felt there. I started out that way, I was reared that way, and I've stayed that way. And so I got going. Now, I was fortunate in that this was a fairly rough situation. It wasn't like the way this holiday is, welcoming this conference. I mean, they welcomed us there very much.
They wouldn't even let us leave. It did its job. But I was blessed in that that group, the recovery group at Jackson Prison, Michigan's maximum custody penitentiary, was one of the best AA groups I've ever seen, a solid three-legacy group of alcoholics and honest. Now, I wouldn't have known what that meant. They might have said that in Farsi if they had said that to me. But what it was was a group that practiced not only recovery, of getting what I need personally so I can function, but to unity of learning to function with other people, to develop teams, to pull with people, to work together, and in service.
You know, I'm one who fully believes that alcoholism is essentially a self-centered condition. I'm also one who strongly believes that you don't get rid of a self-centered condition by working on self. And an awful lot of people spend the entire time working on me and analyzing me and do inventory number 19. There is a place for going to work. And so that's a blessing for me was that that was the kind of group I went in.
[00:20:01]
I didn't know how it worked. I learned because I got to be part of it. But it was a group. In a group, there's a sensitivity. You pick up on stuff. And nobody trains you, but you just do. I had a girl in my home group last night that, I don't know, well, anyway, I won't go into the whole story, but she just moved from California, escaped, and came to my group. She's going on to Washington, D.C., and I just had a hunch.
So I just went over and collared her a little bit and said, let me hook you up in D.C. That is no place for a tender child from California to go unprepared. But there's a sensitivity in a group, eh? It's not like strangers. There's a closeness there. And so that's what I found. How I got started, eh? The guys just never, nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be a member. Folks would just say, hey, Tom, we've got to set up the room.
How about helping? I'll tell you something. I've been setting up chairs for 54 years, and I'm good at it. Honestly, God, if I'm not good after 54 years, man, better get somebody else. But I am good. I know how to set it up. You set it right for a speaker, then you set it for this guy. I got trained at the recovery group in Jackson, Michigan. And back then, there's a very fallacious rumor that back then we did a much more pure job of taking people through the program.
Well, if we did, we hid it from me very effectively. Because I never saw anybody take anybody through anything except, you know, cross-order drill or beating up 101. We used the big book a lot, but mainly to beat folk over the head to get them in the meeting. Not a heck of a lot of study. I never went to a big book meeting the first 15 years that I was sober. Good reason. There weren't any. There weren't any.
We hadn't quite gotten around to that yet. So it was kind of a rough and rustic time. But I was in a good group and got involved in it. I'll give you one example of a thing that happened in that. And one of the things that has some real compelling value for me. The guys in there, they didn't do like you take people through a newcomer program like we often do now. But the guys had to be about a half a dozen of the older members, leader types.
I became one of them not too long down the road. Where the leader would take these newer members into a separate room and just basically tell them what AA is. You know, not getting into trying to work the steps and do all of that, but basically have them understand what is alcoholic, what's anonymous, what's a group, what's a sponsor. Simple operational stuff so you can be functional in a meeting. And a thing happened, that's 54 years ago.
One day a guy, we don't have him here tonight, but we normally have to shave the cards up with the step. A guy one day was doing a thing on the steps and he said there are 200 words in these steps. I never have counted them. I don't want to ruin my trust in that guy. I've never counted them. But I hope he's right. It doesn't matter. I'm going to believe it anyway. But there are 200 words. And he said if you'll take the actions laid out in those steps as honestly and thoroughly as you know how to do, when you get through you'll be a different guy.
And it doesn't even matter what your motives are. And I thought, come on, man. I'll be good. I operate on the street. Yeah, I know better than that. But you know, the boy was absolutely right. I fumbled my way through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with absolutely little to no help. I had one buddy in the group. I didn't have a sponsor yet, but I had one buddy in the group that was a good, solid, sound, sensible man.
And he and I would talk about steps. That was the closest I came to anything. And when I got through with those 12 steps, crude as it might have looked, I had an absolute transformation. Hear that. Absolute transformation. I was a different guy. Now, I didn't look any different, didn't talk any different. Well, I probably talked a little different. But I didn't look any different. I was the same old dude.
I was a different man in that I had learned to function how human beings are supposed to function. I learned how to be a citizen when I'm locked up like a wild animal. And I learned how to be a citizen to keep the community intact. I learned how to have some respect for other people, to be considerate. I learned how to operate with dignity, with integrity. Meaning if I told you to do something, you'd count on it.
It was going to get done. I learned that. And it was just in that thing of fumbling my way through those steps and fumbling into a brand new way of life.
[00:25:01]
And so, you know, talk about back to basics. Now, I don't want to go back that far. There are easier ways to do that. I take people through the book. Now, I do it in groups. Well, just for a lot of reasons. I just don't have time to do it individually, so I do it in groups. And it does just as well. If I had to choose between groups or individual, if I had time, I would choose groups. Because that way you don't get a magical mentor who's irreplaceable.
And you learn to function in a group because that's where we're going to spend the rest of our lives. And so I would do it that way, even if I had total freedom to do it either way. So it's been a tremendous thing for me. Now, I got into doing that. I got doing those steps. When I took the steps, I won't go through all the steps. I'll glide over them. And, by the way, if you got any thoughts about what you'd like to wrestle with a bit tomorrow, the only thing I'll tell you is it's going to be solution-oriented.
And it won't be Drunk-a-Log 101. It'll be how we can be effective in our work in the world. So if you got anything else you'd like to put on that plate, we only got an hour. But we'll load that plate just as much as we can. So just let me know after the meeting, and we'll do it. So that's what I did. I dug into that first three steps. I did the steps mechanically. I developed a belief and a power greater than myself, and thank God for the way we approached that.
I knew the man who put it in the book, one phrase that made it possible for me to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I described that torn-up young fellow who was just absolutely done with anything and even smelled like religion. I'll tell you what happened to that guy. And what I'm so grateful for, a guy by the name of Jim Burwell. I knew him. He came into North Carolina quite a bit. He had some connections there.
I saw him a lot. And Jim Burwell was the guy that put it on the table to put it in the book because the warring over religious stuff and how much of this and how much of that. And Jim introduced that thing, God as we understand him. Thank God for Jim Burwell. And thank God for that kind of God, that it didn't have to be some stratified kind of saying, you know what I mean. Had it not been that way, I would have never stayed in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I couldn't have. And so I'm deeply thankful for that. And so I went through the first three. I still wasn't thought about that. I didn't really deal with and surrender at depth until I did the inventory. And when I did the inventory, I took a look at the beginning of the causes and conditions and took a look at this guy's life. Man, I knew I was alcoholic to the core of my being. Tremendously important thing.
You know, there's a place in the chapter on alcoholism where there's two lines that I'm very much fond of. One says, in talking about alcoholism and dealing with it, we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. That's what I did after the inventory. I fully conceded, not what I said to somebody else, what I said to me, that I'm alcoholic, period, period. And that first step in recovery.
Anyway, that was what really sealed the deal. And I knew that I had this problem. And then from that, I just moved on. The inventory was revealing in many, many other ways. And I know many of you, I'm not speaking to strangers here, many of you know that I was one of those fellows who did what every alcoholic has lived in fear of doing. Thank God, most don't. But most, I don't think there's a person in this room that can't identify with what I did.
But if you were a drinker and somebody had blackouts, obviously you could have done the same thing. Thank God, most don't. But unfortunately, too many do. I was a guy who was driving drunk one night down the main street of the city. I was living in Flint, Michigan. And I didn't even know it had happened, but ran down and killed two people trying to cross the street. And that's what I was in the penitentiary for.
I had five 15-year sentences. And I didn't really, I mean, I knew it just at a haunted level. I mean, I was keenly aware of that. But when I did that inventory and then it got to the point where we were going to deal with some resolutions, and then I got started doing something about it for real. And so that was a huge relief. And that just came from following my way through the steps and doing that stuff and starting to make amends.
Yeah, I started doing that. Honest to God, in 6th and 7th, I didn't, honest to God, didn't want to be the village idiot. I didn't want to be the town clown. I didn't want to be the joke at every party. Yeah, I didn't want that. I wanted to be a decent human. I always had, but I didn't quite know how to go about that.
[00:30:02]
And so that started to happen then. In 6th and 7th, I decided I truly wanted something different. And in 8th and 9th, I got into the business of doing amends. You don't have to be, you have free access to post offices, telephones, and all that stuff. You can do amends in any kind of a situation. I knew a man who made some amends in an iron lung. Most people don't even remember what those things were, but they were an aberration.
They were life-saving, but they were an aberration where you put somebody in a tank. I had a good friend who was a good, solid member of the A.A. who was in one of those, couldn't do anything but blink his eyes, but he could communicate amends. There's no limits on where that can be done, anywhere. So I did that. And then got into, kind of like I was talking about earlier, that certainly self-centered condition, but by now it's starting to ease up a little bit.
And then I believe that from 10 on, when we get through with that amends process, and then we'll take a look at those promises that are laid out, and it sounds like you just always either won the lottery or going to heaven or something. I mean, there's some wonderful sounding stuff in there. And then an interesting thing happens. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I sure have. Right after the amends process and the promises, there's some very sobering information in the tenth step.
I can't quote it verbatim, but I will try to find it in a book. I don't have my glasses. What it basically says, okay, we've finished that, and we have entered the world of the spirit. We've moved into the spiritual life. Our task now is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Now, this is just Tom Eye's interpretation, but I don't think that means in just better having more insight about me. I believe it's in understanding the things that I would deal with so that I could deal with it more effectively.
I want to grow in understanding. For example, I've had a lot of dismay, and many of you have, particularly if you've been around much at all. I've had a lot of dismay at the level of failure in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, my God, man, it sometimes looks like it's a revolving door. Where folks come in, it looks like more leave than come in. Now, I can bemoan that forever, but that's not enough, because I want to understand that.
I want to understand that behavior of how somebody can have their life torn apart and walk in the middle of the solution and turn around and walk out. I want to understand that so that I can have insight and then can possibly respond with more effective ways to do it. And they are, and that's what I did with that. That simple thing of understanding effectiveness. I understood that people leave because they don't get in deep enough.
It's the same reason to fall out of a boat. They don't get in far enough. And so I started looking at that, and that's what got me started doing Big Book stuff. I had a good buddy that was doing some of that. I liked what he was talking about. I liked what he said about the effectiveness of it. I had him tell me about it one day. He doesn't have to teach me anything much. It's just basically simple stuff.
And so when he got through telling me about what he did, I said, shoot, I can do that. And so I gathered up a bunch of folks. I didn't gather them up. I just put the word out. And we're going to take some people through the book. I told guys I sponsored, bring anybody you want to, as long as they want to do it, and as long as they're willing to see it through. Now, I don't want some time visitors. If they want to get serious and do it, come on in.
If they don't, please don't come in. And so we started out. Started out with 15 people. No, fired out about 20, and then we had 15 who finished it. I don't know how long it took, several months. It wasn't two weeks, I promise you that. It was a drawn-out process. And it was interesting. I'll tell you this in front. It was the most effective work I've ever done in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've done some of everything that you can imagine, but that was the most effective work I've ever done.
You never know what's going to happen if you don't plan it and control it. But I just turned the guys loose, said go invite anybody you want to. The first night we met, there was a woman who came in. Now, I like women. I really do. I married one, for God's sake.
[00:35:02]
And she's still there. She's doing very well. But a woman came in, and I flat didn't like her. I didn't like her. I mean, I'm not a reverse snob, but she was just an aristocratic New Englander that was educated in Ivy League schools and was stone atheist. I mean, atheist to the core. I thought she came to AA simply to debate with me. And that's all she would do. And so we would get into these foolish skirmishes, and she came in, and my heart dropped.
I said, oh, my God. Man, I'm going to be in the debating society for the next year. I'm not going to throw them out. And we started out, sure enough. She bunched, and I'm not pointing at you all deliberately, but people will kind of bunch up. They'll get their folk here. She got over with two other aggravated cases, and so they started out. And they were typical, sort of sitting there sneering, snoring, skeptical about the whole deal.
And an amazing thing happened. I never did really point anything at them deliberately. I might have snuck something in, but not deliberately. And so we, now I'm a great believer in spontaneity. I love spontaneous things, particularly if they're well planned. And that's what that was. So we're rocking along, and I noticed there was a little change occurring over in that yo-yo section. And so I spontaneously happened to wind up on the third step prayer one night.
And no thoughtful preparation at all. Spontaneity. And I said, now, we're going to do different tonight. We're not going to close to our Father. We're going to close with the third step prayer. And it gives you three options. One, you can get down and take our hands and do it with us. Or two, you can hold our hands while we do it. Or three, you can step back and watch us do it. And she told me later, I won't tell you what she said, but she told me later how she did it.
I've never been described that much in a Skid Row bar. I mean, that woman talked about me something like a dog. And so we agreed to disagree. But it was a turning point, eh? It was a turning point. From that point forward, she was starting to be a changed woman. She didn't intend to be, but she started softening up. If anybody had told me this would happen, I'd have said, you were drinking. She became my backup.
If I had to be out of town on our Tuesday night, she was my go-to person. I couldn't believe it. I'd come back. I wanted to make sure everybody was okay when I got back. But it just worked out great. Today, she's still sober, many, many years. And she is without question the warmest, most gracious, most helpful woman in my area of the state. If I've got a particular situation with a female, that's who I go to.
So if I hadn't had nothing else to convince me, that was enough in itself. But we had 15. Talk about understanding and effectiveness is just the point of this. When we got through, we had 15 people who continued every meeting. Fifteen people are sober today. And we're talking about a good many years. Now, is that a magic bullet? I don't think so. But what it says to me is that intensive work is where it's at.
And understanding something and then taking action on it that we think might be effective can be applied in a million different ways. To me, that's why I think it's such a departure when we get through with those first nine steps and then see those promises. Then it says, well, let's go to work. And just one other example, what time do we start? Six o'clock? Seven o'clock? I'm going to hurry. But the rest of that, right below that, is where I really think there's a marker on that thing I was talking about.
You don't get rid of a self-centered condition by studying yourself. I think that tenth step, the way it's laid out, explains that very well. They say, you know, if you goof, what we get restored to is human being. We don't transcend the pushing and shoving of life, but we're human. And we're going to goof like humans, but that doesn't mean we need to get Herman Freud to come in and do analysis. It just means that we goof like any human is going to do.
[00:40:03]
And I love the way the book puts it. Don't say it in these words, but it's what it means to a guy like me. Don't make a big deal out of it. You know, that is not the end of the world. If I step on your foot, say, hey, man, I'm sorry. I'll try to be more careful next time. That's not a big deal. Don't need a Rorschach test. I mean, that's just that. And so we deal with it. I'm sorry about that. Then immediately turn myself to what's wrong with him so I can go to work on him.
And that, to me, is the spirit of where this transition occurred, where we get rid of a self-centered condition by focusing on others. And that's where the program goes from there. And then the rest of it is just how to do that. So that's what I did. And I got to that point while I was still in the institution and when I was released. I won't go into a lot of detail. I mean, I'd be glad to, but we don't have time.
When I was released, they told me I had to go back to North Carolina. And I was pretty solid in the program by then. So I made contact with somebody. Now you can't hardly get a world directory, but I got one in the end somehow. I probably stole it, but anyway, I got it. Wrote to a group, and I didn't know if anybody on the outside would want to mess with somebody coming out of a maximum custody joint.
I mean, anybody's going to be a little eerie about that. So I wrote a letter. The first one didn't get answered. I learned why, because the two people that were taking care of that group died in a house fire, and so that's why I didn't get a letter. I thought it was because they didn't like me. And then I found out what the real truth was. I wrote again. This time I got a great letter. All I asked was, is it okay if I come to the meeting?
I didn't want a job or a home or a loan or a girlfriend or anything like that. I just wanted to know if it's okay if I come. Got a letter back better than I could have written myself. It said, You'll be welcome here. We want you and we need you. What a message, eh? What a message. Boy, were they ever right. They did need me. Or somebody did. Somebody, for God's sake. I hit the ground. Thank God I was a good member.
The first meeting I went to on the street was the worst meeting I'd ever been in my entire life. I mean, my God, if we'd had a meeting that bad in the joints, somebody would have got hurt. Nobody putting up with that kind of foolishness. But, I mean, it was pure, pure. And I thought, Good God, man. I lived 25 miles, not thousands, 25 miles from the airport. Got to get off the plane, Tom. 25 miles. And that was the city.
So I said, I'm going to get over there where the swingers are and get out of this Mayberry junk. But then a troubling thought occurred to me. When do you take responsibility, big guy? When do you step up to the plate? Well, the answer was obvious. It said, Take that time now and place it here. And I had the magnificent experience of, if you want to see what it was like, right at the end of 164 where we're talking about that where you, if you get into a place and you can't find the fellowship you crave, create it.
Create it, for God's sake. Make it happen. And so I'm just out at the joint and helped start Alcoholics Anonymous in the city. What a wonderful experience. Absolutely great. And I'm a guy tremendously blessed. I am without question, in my judgment, the most fortunate man in the entire world, I believe. And I hope you feel that way about yourself. But I genuinely feel that way. And I'm nobody special.
I mean, I'm just exactly who you told. I wasn't a French poodle in a kennel. I was a junkyard dog. And so when I got out of the institution, man, all I wanted to do was just be a citizen. I just wanted to take a place in the world for once where I didn't screw things up and wanted to contribute. That's all I wanted. And no big dreams or anything. I just wanted to be a citizen. I wanted to pay taxes, for God's sake.
I never had. Voluntary. If they took taxes from me, they had to take them. I never sent anything to anybody. And so I wanted to do something. I wanted to vote. I wanted to vote. I couldn't vote. And I vote now. Sometimes I don't even know who I'm voting for. I find a name I like, I say, that would be a good one. I love pulling that lever and writing that name, whatever we do. But anyway, that was a marvelous experience.
And I'm going to tell you just a few little things. Are we all right? All right. I don't want you to, I gotta be here two more days, I don't want y'all mad, God knows. What, what, uh, I want to tell you some stuff that happened and bear in mind now, I'm nobody special. I'm nobody who's politically connected or who has an affluent family that has a lot
[00:45:00]
of influence. None of that. Just forget it. I'm exactly who I described to you. And then And so when I hit the street, I'm just that. I'm a guy who's hungry for a new life. I already had it, but I wanted to put it to work in the real world. And so I went to work. They, when I left town, by the way, that group had 60 members in it. So all it takes is a somebody who wants to be more effective and who wants to do something. It's all it takes.
And then the rest is history. And so I went to work. Now, I'm a guy, obviously, with a crime like mine. Homicide with a vehicle is not something that you overlook. It's, you know, they call it a casual offense. Doesn't mean it's minor. It means that it was not intentional. And it's all it means. But normally an offense like that, and it was true with me when I was paroled from the state of Michigan, had big letters on the parole papers, this man should never operate a motor vehicle. I accepted that as a fact of life and never intent. I wrote it off that that would not happen in my life again. And amazing things happened. Now, when I'd only been, I'd only been out, I don't think I'd been out, but just three or four weeks.
And my parole supervisor came to me one day and he said, Tom, you're real active in this AA thing. And I said, yes, sir. I'd be concerned. I thought he was going to tell me to slow down. And I knew I wouldn't. Yeah, I knew parole would not keep me out of prison. I don't like order. I don't like rules. Even if I write them, I don't like them. They're negative. Thou shalt not. And so parole wouldn't do it. And so he was talking to me that day, and he said, real active in the AA thing. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, would it help you if you could drive?
And I said, yes, sir, but I can't, as if he didn't know. And he said, let me check it out. Well, that normally means, I mean, some of the government tells you that that means goodbye. But in this case, it didn't. He was a good man. And he called me a couple weeks later and said, can you meet me at the Sears store? Now, this sounds like Podunk and Mayberry for sure. But back then, it wasn't a licensed office. It was a counter in the Sears store.
And so my sister drove me up and walked back there. My guys there talking to a fellow who turned out to be the examiner. They finished their little conversation, and then he turned to me, introduced me to the fellow. And the fellow turned to me. He'd never seen me before in his life. And he said, Mr. Logan, my pro guy, says that you might be interested in having your driver's license. And I said, well, yes, sir, it would be helpful. And don't ask me to explain it.
I can't. But you believe it, because it's the God's truth in every syllable. God handed me a driver's license. He didn't even ask me if I knew how to drive. I mean nothing. No test of any kind, road, written, verbal, car pumping, nothing. I mean nothing. And just handed me the driver's license. It's not legal. Didn't even pay for it. And ask any lawyer that's brave enough to tell you what he is, and they'll tell you. But I've been driving ever since. Amazing. What I truly believe, and those of you who know me, you know, you've heard me say this many times, and I say it because I believe it. I believe that when God has work for me to do, and you too, by the way, when God has work for me to do, not when I want to do something, but when God has work for me to do, the walls come down. I was never supposed to drive again.
And that's very true. I know my own history, but certainly many, many others that I've seen beyond belief. And so I went to prison. The second week I was out. And within the first two months I was out, I was the outside sponsor of that group. Now I'm still on parole from a maximum custody joint. And I'm the outside sponsor in a prison in another state. And they knew it. Everybody knew it. If they didn't know it in that town, they were deaf, dumb, and blind.
Because they couldn't miss me. About as anonymous as a blimp landed. So, banging away. I was DCM five months after I was out. Same person who wondered if he'd be welcome at a meeting. I'm asked to be the trusted servant for my second family in 15 cities of my state. Tremendous thing. What an affirmation. I couldn't have been more affirmed if I'd been elected governor. Tremendous, tremendous affirmation. And then two years after I was out, I was living at my mother's house, and I got a call one day from the state capital, from the headquarters of the prison system. And I tell you again, you believe every bit of this,
[00:50:06]
because no way I could have even made up a fantasy like that. You imagine somebody sitting in a maximum custody joint, you know, said, you know, I'm going to get out of here one of these days and show these people how to run these places. I'm going to run one of them, you know, right on. Yeah, they'll put a net on you if you start talking like that. And so I got a call from the prison headquarters. There's a guy there that I'd met once passing through the unit, and I think somebody told him to pat me on the back because I was working hard.
And so we spent a couple of minutes together. I remembered his name. So he was on the phone, so I answered, and he said, Mr. Ivester, we're expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system, and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position. And I said, do you know who you're talking to? And he said, oh yeah, we've checked you out. And of course they had. But I mean, it's astounding because that had never happened in the history of this planet. Never in any corner of this globe had that ever happened.
And I never have figured out why they called me. I mean, I'm just one more mutt running loose. And so I told the guy, I said, my God, I'd rather do that than anything I could imagine. To myself, I said, there ain't no way. But I'll say it again, when God has work for us to do, the walls come down, even those, even those. And so I went to work, and I'd only been about two years. And my backward state of North Carolina, they talk about us Southerners being so slow.
You better watch us if you think we're slow. And that's my state of North Carolina. Jesse Heldman was the senator, and he had to be part of it. They bargained with the state of Michigan to release me from parole, from maximum custody, to become an official in the North Carolina prison system. That still sounds bizarre. That still does. And I couldn't believe it. So I went to work. I went to work. And I'll tell you this, I'm no whiz kid, but I wasn't much more than yesterday. I went to work, and I'm standing like we've got a buddy out there, your weight class, that was the first guy that walked on the moon. And I spent some time with that boy, talking about how it feels to step where man has never stepped. Because I could understand that. I was standing where man had never stood. Never. It would have been real easy for me to be a hoodlum hero and been on TV and scandal sheets all over the world.
Would have been easy. Could have been a pseudo celebrity with no effort. I didn't want to do that. What I want to do, that's what I was hired to do. And they had a job for me. I was a rehabilitation officer. And my job was to help try to expand rehabilitation stuff in our system. And my territory was half of the state. And we had 93 prisons the day I went to work. So I was a very busy fellow. But what I decided to do before I went in there, and I'll tell you this, AA traditions are one of my favorite tools. And AA tradition did more for me than any other training I ever had in my life, in terms of how to operate where man's never been.
And they were tremendously helpful. I did finish up my education in correctional administration. Had nothing to do with my mobility in the system. But I just got tired of having such an ugly resume. So I finished up just sort of make it look decent. But my career was taken off like a rocket. And I'll tell you this, I did have a meteoric career. And again, believe it or not, but it's absolute truth. From the day of the first job I ever had, my family got me a job in a mill.
And then I was recruited into the state of North Carolina. And for the rest of my professional career, 39 years of it, I never applied for one single job. Not one. None. I was recruited for every job that I ever had. And I would have kept the first one. I didn't care. I didn't even know what they paid. I didn't know if they paid. But if they didn't, I could hustle enough to make it. But they paid fairly well. And I started getting recruited. And so I guess I tell you the only thing I can attribute any of that to was that I'm somebody who truly believes that what I produce
[00:55:00]
in my work tells you who I am. And if I'm somebody who does sloppy, just sort of catch-as-catch-can kind of work, that's who I am. But I did my job the best I knew how. And there's a hunger for that. Believe me, I hired hundreds and hundreds of people. I didn't hire sore heads. I didn't hire people who couldn't stand their present boss. I sponsored people who were productive and who were creative and wanted to do something. And so that's what I was. And so I just went to work. And I just got moved on up. I got into supervision and management and directed some programs. And then I think it was probably the most surprising thing that ever happened, even though I'm in the system and busy as could be. One day my boss, the director of prisons, called me. We were in the same office building. And he said, come by the office. I want you to do something for me. Normally meant pinch hit, you know, go make a speech for me or whatever. I said, yeah, okay. So I went by. And we visited just for a minute. He said, Tom, I'd like for you to take over an institution as warden. And even though I was in the system, I mean, that's different. And I said, oh, come on, boss, I don't want to be the head screw. I went back to the vernacular. And he said, I don't want you to be the head screw. And I said, well, what do you want? And so he told me. The best developmental training I've ever had in my life. He told me just sort of a, he had a picture in his mind of something he wanted to see happen to a facility or a group of facilities. And he told me what he had in mind. And that was the sum total of my preparation. He said, I think you're the guy to do it. I said, okay. So I did. And that started the largest acre of my stuff was just going. I became the go-to guy for development. My reputation was, if everybody else has got too much sense to do it, get Ivester. And that's how my career went. I just had an absolutely great career.
Went as further than I wanted to. If I'd have gone any further, I'd had to be politically appointed and I had no interest in that. And so absolutely a marvelous career. In the course of it, I'm married and with my wife and I just celebrated 42 years in July and she's doing all right. And it's worked well. She's a good gal. She's a 40-year member of Al-Anon. And we have a couple of kids just like yours. They're real rocket scientists.
One of them's a psychologist and one's a physician. And they're both a little goofy. My son, I guess he got a service ethic from his dad or something, but he's right now, he's in, he's moving between, what is the town in South Africa? Milwaukee? Malawi? Malawi. Between Malawi and Ghana. And what he's doing on his own hook is practicing young physicians there how to come, how to develop the high-risk specialty to deal with maternal fetal medicine. That's his field.
He does it every two years, does that for two weeks every two years on his own hook. Proud of that boy. So anyway, I guess you can see why that in addition to all of that, that here I am almost getting old. And I'm as active in Alcoholics Anonymous today as I have ever been in my life. I've never been busier in my life. I've never had more fulfillment in my life. And I am without doubt the most rewarded man on the face of this earth. And I thank you.