AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
May 13, 2024
(0:00 – 0:45)
I’m going to make this opening just as short as I can because I want to give our speaker
all the time that she needs or wants. It is my great pleasure to be asked to introduce this
alcoholic woman. I’ve known her several years now and the first time we met I chaired a
meeting in Hot Springs at the Arkansas State Convention and I introduced her on Friday
night as the Friday, she was the Friday night speaker and I met her at the airport here in
Little Rock and we drove to Hot Springs together and spent the weekend together off
and on and to know her is to love her.
(0:45 – 1:05)
She is, she is one of those people who is just a very, very special person. She has a
distinct, I feel, honor in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. This takes me back four
years ago because I didn’t know what to say then and I’m not real sure what to say now.
(1:06 – 1:38)
Back then I wanted to say and I thought I can’t say that and I got up there and said it but
this year, tonight you’re going to hear the little old lady from Pasadena and here she is,
Sibyl, but I’m not wearing tennis shoes. Pasadena with tennis shoes. Hi everybody, my
name is Sibyl Doris Adams Stratton Hart Maxwell Willis Corwin and I’m an alcoholic.
(1:41 – 2:57)
When I say I love Little Rock, you know why I love Little Rock. This is my third or fourth
time here in a couple of years, third maybe, maybe I’m stretching it when I say four, but I
do dearly love the AA members in Little Rock. Friendliest bunch of people I’ve ever
known anywhere, the lovingest, the kindest, the best and I expect soberest, soberest, I
don’t think that’s a word is it, but that’s what you are and you’ve been so good to me
and I think of you, I have never forgotten my first trip here when Margaret met me and
we went to Hot Springs and that’s where I first met Beth and Gene and I’ve made friends
that had the privilege of meeting Gene and Gerald in Los Angeles a month or two ago
and I hope you folks, any of you who come to Los Angeles will give me a call when you
do get there and give me at least an hour’s notice so I can clean up my house and let
you come over and have coffee and we’ll go to a meeting or something because you
heard me tell what a rotten housekeeper I am and if the doorbell rings I just break out in
a sweat if I look around and see all the litter I’ve created.
(2:57 – 3:25)
I’m not an orderly person but like I say all AAs are welcome if I just know they’re coming
and Bob my husband and I love to be with our own people and it’s one of the big reasons
that we’re sober. It’s four o’clock in Hawaii and in four hours he’ll be doing the same
thing I’m doing, he’s talking at the banquet there at eight o’clock and took me quite a
while to figure out the difference in the time, took two watches really. I’m just not that
bright.
(3:27 – 3:49)
But that’s what he’ll be doing and uh we’ll be talking these things over uh tomorrow
night he’ll be home about 10 30. I leave early in the morning and uh I’ll go home but I
won’t need a plane really uh to go home I feel like I could just fly. It’s been it’s been the
best weekend that I can ever remember having.
(3:50 – 4:34)
It just all just is so perfect. The little gatherings that we had, the lunches and the
daytime meeting today with the women and uh the thing about Clancy and his birthday
cake which to me was um beyond anything that I had expected because I’ve known
Clancy ever since he got sober. I was working in the central office when Clancy got sober
and and he wasn’t so macho and cool then and he was a little timid and the phone would
ring and I’d answer and I’d say alcoholics and alcoholics can I help you and he’d say oh
this Clancy Emmerclin uh and he’d ask for whatever it was and make it as brief as
possible and and his voice would be timorous and a little shaky and and he was new and
it was just a telephone voice at first.
(4:34 – 52:10)
I was telling some people today that you make friends over the telephone and they’re
real friends good friends and you love them but you might not see them for a year or two
when you work in the central office but their voices that you know so well and that’s the
way it was with me and Clancy his voice I knew a lot better than I ever knew the man
that came later and the longer that I’ve known him the more I love him because I see
people I see people all the time there when I go to the Pacific group that would be dead
now they couldn’t possibly have gotten sober anywhere else under any other
circumstances. He takes on the helpless hopeless rejects that some of us have tried to
help and we fail to do it and uh and he has that and that’s a great gift and I’ve only
known one other man that had that great gift of being able to help those that other
people have given up on or will say well he can’t make it he’s too far gone or she can’t
make it and my brother Tex who came in a shortly after I did uh had that knack of being
tender with those that needed to be uh to be very very tender with or to be tough with
you how you get here in the morning if he thought they needed that and whatever
method it takes they seem to have they seem to have a knack of knowing uh what to
say to these individuals and I I I blunder along and do the best I can but I I don’t have
that knack of knowing how to handle all the 12-step calls that I go on I do the best I can
and some of them get sober and some of them don’t I don’t get many 12-step calls these
days um I used to make them I’ll tell you about that I was fortunate enough to come in
Alcoholics Anonymous in March of 1941 as a result of the Saturday evening post article
uh you have the cover uh framed back there and I was I had the most terrible hangover
you ever heard of I’m sure you had your own and it was the worst too but I was dying
and I knew it and I I had given up hope and when I had a Turkish bath to get over the
shake so that I could go home and cook up some lies to my family and I’d used them all
all the lies in the world I I didn’t know what to say to them when I got home and I
dreaded it so much I dreaded seeing my little girl tiny little beautiful girl uh because my
guilt and remorse was so keen at being that kind of a mother that would take off and get
drunk leave my real estate office and and maybe get in a car as I did that time on my
last run up to San Francisco uh where I didn’t know a soul and get there at daylight uh
and hung over and still drunk in the bottle in the car and cry a while and and throw up a
while and then get back in the car and try to drive home and couldn’t and and I picked
up a hitchhiker on the ridge route which uh to Californians it’s a familiar thing it’s a
bunch of mountains you go across to get back to Los Angeles and at that time the roads
were really bad we didn’t have the freeways and I picked up a hitchhiker and crawled in
the back seat and went to sleep next thing I know he said lady we’re in Los Angeles I’m
leaving you now nice man he did a good job of driving the car and I crawled out of the
car and saw this sign Turkish bath and I thought that would give me time to to get better
and then go home which I did but the miracle of it was that I picked up that Saturday
evening post to read it to get my mind off my problems and on the cover it said
Alcoholics Anonymous I can remember right now I get goose pimples when I think about
it I really do and my hands get wet with sweat I remember what a shock it was for me to
see those large letters at the bottom of that cover saying Alcoholics Anonymous because
I’d heard of it in 1939 and needed help then small article in Liberty that didn’t amount to
a thing really it was it was okay it was two paragraphs long I think it was by Fulton Osler
and it was called Alcoholics and God and he wound up this small article about that there
is help for some people in the east where a small group of men are meeting together
regularly and they call themselves Alcoholics Anonymous and when I read that that was
terribly impressive more impressive than any pamphlet that we have today and I
thought a group of men in New York meeting regularly to talk together and beat together
and try to quit drinking and they’re doing it and they call themselves Alcoholics
Anonymous I want to find them and stay drunk for another two years and when I found
that magazine two years later I thought I’ve got my chance I thought I’d lost it forever
and if I’m going to do anything it better be now and so I rang the bell for the attendant
and wrote a very pitiful letter saying I’m a desperate woman alcoholic please help me
and I’ll come back there immediately on the next plane please write me let me know
what to do I went home made it up with a family one way or the other have no memory
of any the only memory I have is that I waited eagerly for an answer and it came uh
quickly the drama of that is far greater today than it was then because now I know
personally and well I know this lady personally love her to death and see her on quite a
few occasions Ruth Hawk to any of you who have read A Comes of Age Ruth Hawk the
little 24 year old girl that had worked for Bill Wilson our founder and his partner Hank
Parkhurst who didn’t get sober to stay sober but was terribly important in getting Bill to
write the book uh she worked for them both for 25 a week at that time no AA you
understand and so when they began to work with drugs um well she was right there and
if there was a call or anything Ruth took it and if there was a letter to write she wrote it
and they didn’t have any money to pay her and then eventually when they decided
they’d had to have a name and write a book uh they uh offered to sell uh instead of
paying her $25 a week they offered to give her stop in this new thing Alcoholics
Anonymous and she came out and and she came out to California to visit her daughter
who is a member of AA and that’s the reason she came out and she said I’ll give you one
day to me I’m very shy and I’m afraid of crowds so don’t overdo it I’ll give you one day
she said I haven’t been out in public I retired in Marietta Ohio with my husband who’s an
alcoholic and I haven’t been out anywhere around AA since we got married in in right
after the book was written and she said so I’m scared witless and make it easy on me if
you’re going to get some people together and I had three days to do it and I called up
my friends like I’d say Jean you can bring two people Beth you can bring two people and I
called as many as I could and we filled the Windsor Hall there were 250 there and I didn’t
overdo it but it didn’t wouldn’t held anymore anyway and I had lunch with her and some
other girls and we came in and I got up and said this is not an AA meeting this is an AA
happening the lady that is responsible for our sobriety to a great degree and and and
every degree as far as I’m concerned is here with us today who was there when they
wrote the book and she typed it and she told us that day that Bill would be would work
out a page on a yellow ledger sheet and stand right there at the typewriter where she
was typing saying here Ruthie he called her Dutch and she would type that type away on
that and then he would get the pages together and correct them and so forth and he
would just hand it to her page by page and she did every bit of it and finally they got a
letter from a guy in California on Alvarado in a sanitarium and he said I need help and uh
please please help me I’ve heard of you through I don’t know how I heard but I’m
desperate and I’ve got to have some help but I’m so far away and I’m in a hospital here
and I don’t know what to do and and they phoned there and asked his permission to put
his story in the book they said we have finished our book but we’ll add a chapter if you
will give us that permission and he said sure and he told his story and Bill turned to Ruth
and said I’ve got important business to do Ruthie write up his story it was called The
Lone Endeavor well afterwards uh he got drunk right away and that was the end of him
and they had to take his chapter out of the book but the odd thing was when they
printed a few more odd thing was my brother Tex and I had gotten sober at that time
and we were making close up calls like crazy and we got a call to go see this guy in the
hospital we didn’t know that we didn’t know that he had anything to do with getting his
chapter in the book or anything we went over and gave him our best shot you know and
he he didn’t make it and Ruth told us so many things that day that she talked forever in
a day and then threw it open to questions and the hands just flew up they wanted to
know all kinds of little things and she would tell them that Bill would come up the stairs
with a new drunk and make him kneel down at her desk where she was just trying to
make him pray over him and she said they were very powerful back there then they had
to pray a lot they didn’t like it they were just too bad but that’s what they did and she
told us all these little ins and outs which to me was just precious because here I am back
there in 1941 I know nothing except that the letter was signed R. Hawk my plea for help
and it said you don’t have to come back to New York because you have AA there in
California and you didn’t know it it started in December of 1939 you see that was the last
month of 1939 and here it is 41 and she said they’ve had a terrible time four men got
hold of the book they were in a hospital just the the county hospital is where they were
they were dying men they had to take them in because they were dying and they didn’t
and so they got hold of this big red book passed it around among themselves in the ward
there and uh were discharged about the same day and took each other’s names and
agreed to meet and did in the lobby of a hotel for a while and these four men when they
got out of the hospital and they sat there in that hotel lobby said what do we do now
what the book the book here doesn’t tell us what to do about starting a group or
anything and one of those four men said well there is a chapter in there now and I
remember it well it says how it works so that’ll tell us so here how you read it Hal
Silverton was one of the fellows became one of my great friends and so Hal Silverton
turned the chapter five how it works rarely have we seen a person fail who has
thoroughly followed our path and on to the steps you see and every week that’s what
they did they read that the fifth chapter so from four to eight to a few when I came in
they were still doing it and it grew and it got big because of the Saturday Evening Post
article within 60 days we had moved three times and now there were about 300 of us
and it was happening it was just happening so fast that it was overwhelming but when
she told me where the meeting was I went down there with great hope I had absolute
faith that this was going going to keep me sober I don’t know why I just thought this is it
and I went down there just dewy eyed with joy and very nervous and shaking and I had a
nervous twitch and a red bandana tied to keep my hair out of the way and I was so sick
my non-alcoholic husband who had never had a short beer in his life drove me down
there a well-dressed businessman and we went to the Elks Temple where Ruth had told
us to go and they directed us into a little room a little bitty room or that they just had a
table like as you’re used to a long pine table where you sit around somebody sits at the
end a few men were seated there and I sat down put my head down I didn’t look up
because I was petrified I had concluded they were doctors and that they would have
some uh they’d hand me say yes we hear you go to New York and so you take three of
these a day with a glass of water and you’ll be cured I didn’t know alcoholism didn’t that
word didn’t mean a thing to me I just didn’t want to drink and I figured they had the
answer but after a bit a man got up at the end of the table and said this is a regular
meeting of Alcoholics and Arms in California we’re a band of ex-drunks who’ve gathered
together to obtain maintain our sobriety on an all-time basis with no mental reservations
whatsoever oh isn’t that an awful thing to say to somebody scared to death oh he didn’t
say a band of men and women he said we are a band of men who’ve gathered together
to obtain and maintain our sobriety on an all-time basis with no mental reservations
whatsoever and that’s what they had to you know swear to to get in I guess I don’t know
because when he said that that was the end of me I thought I can’t do that I said what an
order what an order I can’t go through with it that all probably took I don’t know a few
seconds 15 seconds 30 seconds or something like that and I was mad I sat there and just
my face got red and I was mad to hear that but he continued see because they have a
little way they lead a meeting but he says but as is our custom before the regular
meeting starts the women will have to leave and there I’m sitting where Beth is and I
knew they were throwing me out because I didn’t fit in and I knew that I had I never did
fit in in school I was always an odd ball I couldn’t make friends and I was scared in school
started drinking when I was 15 I was almost 33 at this time I’m telling you about I’ve
been terribly drunk for 17 years and doing all the wrong things at the wrong time and
didn’t want to behave that way and all I wanted out of life was to be a good wife and
mother and I couldn’t be and I felt such shame and remorse that I cannot describe it to
you and I just didn’t want to live anymore actually could not stand myself and here they
were throwing me out and I’d had that great hope so I got up put my hands over my face
and I ran out of the room and went out in this huge lobby and just cried and carried on
wrung my hands but Dick sat Regina sitting and he he stayed because uh he’s a man
and they said well the women will have to leave the room and they thought he was a
new baby and they had didn’t get many the impact of Saturday Post hadn’t hit so they
didn’t have a crowd there you know and my letter got there and was answered and I was
there and then the mail hadn’t come in and he sat there and I was out there waltzing up
and down for hours because they were in no hurry they didn’t look at any watches or
clocks and they talked their hearts out to each other because they knew they wouldn’t
see each other for another week and I thought I would die until that door opened and
they came out and I ran over to Dick and I said well give me my pills I’m dying and take
me home he said Sib you’ll never know what I’ve been through well I got hysterical and I
had no more hope and when he took me home I went to a bar and I got very very drunk
and got 86 thrown out on the street and then I remembered that I had the letter in my
purse that Ruth Haack had written me my intentions were that I would pull out a letter
from headquarters which was very impressive now you know AA Alcoholics Anonymous
signed by R Haack I thought it was Richard Haack and I was going to pull this on these
these guys and say here are my credentials from the home office in New York you know
and they would have to let me in and I’d never gotten a chance to even show them my
letter so now that I’m thoroughly staggering falling down drunk I remembered the letter
and at the bottom of that letter it said P.S. if you need help call Cliff Walker who was
written up in your book A. A. Comes of Age and he had taken all the 12-step calls for
California no central office naturally not but anyone anyone who wanted to know
anything about it or anyone who called up or among themselves Cliff and Dorothy
answered the phones in their home and that New York had his number for that and they
gave it to me in that letter and so I put a nickel in the telephone pay telephone out in
front of the bar and called Cliff and it was two o’clock in the morning and he was just
leaving to go and pedal pedal milk he had to deliver it before daylight and in the
Saturday Evening Post they had shown a man a picture of him on a stretcher being put
in an ambulance and I concluded it was an A. A. Hospital that it was an A. A. Hospital
cure and then I saw the picture next picture in the Saturday Evening Post showed the
man in bed and two men were sitting there by his bed talking to him so I thought yeah
it’s an A. A. cure in a hospital in New York that’s the only place you can get it you see so
when I called Cliff I wanted to be like that man they were picking up on the stretcher and
taking over the hospital I said send your A. A. ambulance and pick me up and he said
you’re drunk I said of course I said I tried to get into your exclusive club and they threw
me out he said you’ve made a terrible mistake I said no I have not and I was very
haughty I was so drunk that I was haughty I got that way at times and so he said well we
don’t go to bars or outside of bars at two o’clock in the morning and pick up drunks
you’ve got the wrong idea about this thing now he said did you tell him you were a
woman alcoholic I said certainly not well I couldn’t listen I was so scared and I was such a
mouse when I was sober I could no more walk into a room full of strange men and walk
around the room like we do these days and say hi my name is Sybil and I’m an alcoholic I
couldn’t have done that and so he said well now you didn’t tell him you were an alcoholic
and there’s been a terrible mistake because occasionally a few wives go down there I
haven’t been able to go down there for a while because I work nights now so I have a
Sunday afternoon meeting in my house so the wives if they go sometimes they don’t but
if they do they mingle around in there and they chit chat you know until the meeting
starts and then the leader always says and as is our custom the women will have to
leave and the wives are used to it and they stroll on out in the lobby and sit down and
wait and obviously those women that I had seen sitting on a davenport out there knitting
were sitting there talking about their husbands I guess there was no al-anon this couldn’t
have happened today with al-anon but there was no al-anon and so therefore they
thought my husband was a member and they talked to him but wouldn’t talk to me they
didn’t mean to throw me out Cliff said you sober up and go back down there next Friday
uh as hurt as I was you see I feel like that I was absolutely divinely guided to go back
there because I was not the kind of a person that could take that kind of treatment and
and being so horribly embarrassed and everything go back but my big brother came
over who denied he was an alcoholic but insisted on going back that following week to
look them over to see how they were making money he figured they were all getting in
on some kind of a take and it was a racket and he insisted he’d go and I said they’ll
throw you out too and he said no they won’t because I won’t open my mouth and I said
well you better make darn sure you don’t because I want a second chance at that outfit
so by this time he’d been reduced from considerable wealth down to having a produce
house and a couple of vegetable trucks that peddled the vegetables out in the suburbs
around potatoes and winos that would gather around wanting a job and he said well
those bombers never show up they’re all in jail and if this thing can help you see if you’re
an example of the worst drunk I’ve ever seen in my whole life and I want to watch what
it can do for you and if it can help you I’m going down to see those people and then I can
take all my winos down there and get them sobered up and buy a fleet of trucks and in
six months I’ll be rich again that’s all my interest is in it he said so he went down there
with me and they’d set up some chairs by this time and expectations of the results from
New York and so Tex pulled up in front of my house to take me down there and he had
bought his vegetable truck and standing up in the back were 11 winos and I get in that
truck with my brother Tex and we go on down to the mother group and we sat down in
that big long row and there were actually more of us than there were of them and and I
holded my arms there I knew I had my letter with me and I knew that Cliff had
straightened things out he had phoned them and told them that a woman alcoholic had
been down there the week before and they were just devastated really Frank Randall
was a magnificent man with an eloquent personality and I was terribly nervous and I
didn’t listen to what they read out of the book uh I didn’t hear the steps I was selfconcerned about my ability to stay in that room by God I’m gonna stay I’m told I can stay
by Cliff he told that man up in front who’s probably close to God that uh that I can stay
and uh so eventually they he went through this rigmarole which didn’t mean a thing to
me I don’t know where the newcomers I didn’t hear anything that was going to help me I
it didn’t I didn’t didn’t hear that I just couldn’t but I got very interested when Frank left
the podium and went out like over there and came back with a big brown carton full of
letters from New York that had arrived uh had been mailed from New York there because
Saturday Evening Post article and that mail came in in bushel baskets and there were
five or six hundred and twelve step calls to make immediately and uh you can bet I got
interested when I saw this big man Frank he looked oh he was a tall well -dressed man
he said here’s a few jokers any of you who’ve been sober 15 minutes come up here and
get these 12 step calls they’ve been mailed to us from New York because alcoholism is a
disease and it’s a killer and if you don’t make these calls this week and bring these guys
down here some of them could die so I have bundled them up according to where you
live I have some here from Santa Barbara some from Fresno some from Orange County
and some from San Bernardino and a lot of them in Glendale and Pasadena and
downtown Los Angeles everywhere there can be a drunk in California we got a letter
here so according to where you live I’m gonna I’m gonna hold up a bundle and say it and
then you raise your hand if you’re anywhere in the area and he began that way and I
was interested and he said first is anybody here from San Bernardino Riverside County
and Kent Hayden raised his hand here and so he went up and he got about 50 or 60 all
tied up with twine and he went through that Orange County Mel Tricky a real estate
broker went up and got huge stacks and so on Curly O’Neill happened to be there from
Long Beach he said anybody from the beaches and he meant from Laguna Clara on
down to San Pedro and uh Curly O’Neill said here and he went up and got all the beaches
to take care of and he did this till he got out the last stack of letters about 50 or 60 and
he said I’ve saved these to the last because they’re all from women alcoholics who are
asking for help and according to Cliff we’ve got one here tonight and I think you’re it are
you Sybil Maxwell which was my married name at that time and I said yes sir and he said
I thought so so come on up here Sybil uh because uh I’m gonna put you in charge of all
the women and it really really was the way that hit me sitting there as scared as I was
with tears in my eyes and shaking and I had dug my my fingernails into my hand and
there were little half moons of blood and half heels just hanging up and I said yes sir and
he said well come up here I said come up here and get these 12 flip calls and I got up
there and just shaking and I looked up at him he’s so tall and I said I can’t do that sir he
looked at me says why not I said well because you said that they had to be made by
next Friday that that some of them might die if we didn’t make them and I’m not
dependable I’ll be drunk by next Friday and I had to tell him that and so I can’t I better
not do that I I don’t want to be responsible for anybody dying and I said unless but
before I leave here tonight sir that you can tell me what you’re doing to stay sober
because truthfully nobody’s told me how you’re doing it yet and they hadn’t and I
wonder if ever a newcomer comes to AA now and wonders why don’t somebody tell me
how they’re doing it what are you doing what are you doing and I’ve been there you
know a long time wondering about it I hadn’t heard anything uh they hadn’t told me how
to do it well no he said you asked if it was a miracle not exactly but you could almost say
that it is but not in those words he said we just go by this big red book here because we
started AA in California here without any instructions from any of the wiser men in the
east whom we’ve never met and we read it we believe what it says and here on page so
and so I’ll say page 26 uh our founder Bill Wilson whom you’ll hear about all the time
says when all other measures fail working with another alcoholic will save the day and
he says that’s what you’ll be doing see he said our founder says that when you work with
another alcoholic he said I’ll never forget he pointed his finger right at my nose he said
Sybil get your mind off yourself and help somebody else that’s what it means and I said I
can do that and so he gave me the big stack of letters and I believed him I just believed
him thoroughly and I looked up at him again and I said but what’ll I say he says when I
call on the girl he says well ring that doorbell when she comes to the door uh you hand
her the letter she wrote she’ll recognize her own handwriting and I said yeah but what’ll I
say he says very little you don’t know anything he he said just hold hold out the letter
and say do you write this and ask for help for a drinking problem I did I wrote one like
that and she said yeah that’s that’s me that’s my letter well they got my letter last week
and they sent me to get you so if you want to get sober like I want to get sober come
with me and we’ll just have to find out together he says that’s a 12-step call and I’ve got
a pet gripe that I state publicly sometimes when I think of it and I will at this point in
recent years very recent years they they make the central service committee in Los
Angeles and then I’ve checked with other service offices not not here I’m not Little Rock I
haven’t checked um they have now made a rule they made the rule here last year two
years ago in Los Angeles that a person had to be sober one year before they could make
a 12-step call from the central office and I think that stinks and the groups didn’t like it
much and so they had another central service committee and they have now reduced it
to six months and I still think that stinks because how long had Bill been sober when he
called on Dr. Bob how would AA have been born how would we have been here tonight if
when Bill worked with 75 drugs down on Skid Row and the Bowery and then jails and not
one of them would listen to him and he went home one day and said Lois I’m giving it up
nobody will stay sober I’m a failure and she said Bill you’re not a failure you’re a great
success you’ve been sober six months longer than you’ve ever been sober since we’ve
been married and he said my golly Lois you’re right I guess I’ll give it another shot and
he did and it wasn’t long till he went over to Akron and he got one Dr. Bob and there
were two and they went over to the hospital and called on Joe Warden and there were
three and then you know the story of Sister Ignatia and how he stayed there and lived at
Bill uh Dr. Bob’s house and he finally went back to New York and he had a little bunch of
them and they had those in in Akron and they were off and running slowly of course no
publicity and they grew just from working with other alcoholics and I think that any
alcoholic and I mean they didn’t what if Bill on that day there oh well we’ll make this up
because it isn’t true it didn’t happen but suppose that Bill is there in New York and
somebody would walked up to him after oh a little while he was doing this thing and it
just started it will say and somebody had walked up to him and said hey Bill I hear
there’s a famous surgeon over in Akron that’s dying of this alcoholism they call him Dr.
Robert Smith and uh I think you ought to go over and try to help him and Bill would say
well let’s see I’ve only been sober two or three weeks um I’ll uh in about six months
possibly a year I’ll go over and talk to the man wouldn’t that have been a terrible thing if
Bill had thought that he had to wait a certain length of time and try this thing out before
he went to work with another alcoholic I’m I’m so grateful and so thankful that he went
over when he did and that he persevered and he endured as we endure no matter what
happens and kept their sobriety and I was just captivated by that story to think that
that’s what they did they worked with other alcoholics and that’s the way they stayed
sober and then of course they read the book and and and practiced the steps but
working with other alcoholics I think any alcoholic now tonight if he knows of a drug that
needs help I don’t care if you’ve been sober 15 minutes 15 days or 15 years you can
take somebody with you if you’re uh frightened or going or nervous about it take
somebody with you take Gerald take Gene take anybody with you it’s not that big a deal
they’re so glad to see you as a rule the worst they can say is no no thank you you’ll say
okay uh call me if you need me and that’s about the end of it uh it’s the only way that I
know that we can grow and stay sober is to go see people who need help or they will die
and we should be allowed to do it in our own good time without any motions being made
and carried and voted on and that’s the end of that but anyway I’m sober and I’m in
charge of the women and I’m bossy and I’m told that I can you know they they got to do
what I tell them and I go to the meetings and then instead of just me uh handing out
these I made the 12 step calls got a little bunch of them and and then pretty soon there
were 30 or 40 and I knew there were because uh Beth would have to go see Susie and
there’s that Susie so she’s the sponsor and Susie’s the sponsee yep that matches and
there’s two over here and I’d given her that call yeah she did the job there she brought
that girl and I had it all in a book uh all the sponsors and sponsees and their phone
numbers and I’m in charge and I go to the meeting and I can count off my list and it
matches and so it’s a good system and it’s keeping me sober and I’m so important that I
just uh beyond telling you how important I felt that I was in charge and then one night I
looked back in the hall here uh here came Kay Riley and then back of her following her in
the long trail were five women and I looked them over and they were all strangers and
none of them had been cleared through me and I noticed that right away and so I just
walked right back there to her with my book and I said hey where’d you get those
women she said it’s none of your business Sybil but I don’t mind telling you they’re
neighbors of mine in Culver City that I used to play cards with when I was sober enough
and we drank a lot together for many years and they watched me saw me stay sober
asked how I was doing it and I told them and they said let us go too we want this thing
and I said sure come along and they did and that’s the way it is that’s the way it’s gonna
be and I’m never ever gonna do anything you tell me to do again Sybil and I got the
tears back in my eyes and my nerves twitched and it nearly killed me and I went back
out to the hole in the ground because my brother had been excommunicated because he
started a group he laughed at him about that they didn’t like that big fat Texan who
started a group they walked up to him and when he started the hole in the ground which
was at the halfway point between the mother group and downtown and they heard about
it he just met in my house and somebody else’s house so he had a little bunch of people
and we went down to Long Beach on Wednesdays and met in a home down there and
then would go downtown Friday but when they heard that he’d rented a hall and started
another group we walked and went in one night and they walked up to him about four of
them and they said we have taken a vote and we don’t want you you’re disloyal to this
program and to your mother group that has given you your sobriety so you are
excommunicated and he said you can’t do that and they said but we have because
Gerald here is an attorney and we asked him to do us a favor and draw up papers to
incorporate Alcoholics Anonymous against this kind of thing and we have incorporation
we have corporation papers which we can show you tonight that Alcoholics Anonymous
is incorporated in California and you can’t start a group without our permission and the
text says I can’t well I have and it’s gonna be okay because he said you might as well try
to incorporate a sunset he said I’ll lay you eight to five and six months we’ll have 50
groups scattered around here so folks I’m gonna sit down and enjoy the meeting I’ll be
too busy to come down here much because of my group but when I get good and ready
I’m gonna come back anytime I please you see we had no tradition so we made terrible
mistakes like that and it’s a wonder that we didn’t destroy ourselves but uh we didn’t it
was terribly exciting I can tell you that but we stayed sober and it was fun and I thought
that since I was sober and all that that life would always be just like that and nothing bad
could ever happen but this wonderful non-alcoholic man that I had married in the some
tough days of my life and that baby was born and during the depression and I couldn’t
get a job and I was finally forced to go to work and so that I could take care of her she
was staying with my mother because I was too drunk to have a home her father had
deserted me when she was born he was a drunk and he’s good boy too but he went back
to his folks in New York and it was okay he was a good boy but he just left things were
too tough and he couldn’t work didn’t have any money and he’d been that way with us a
long time and I had the baby and so mama kept her because I couldn’t and uh I wanted
to be self-supporting and I couldn’t find a job so I went down to a taxi dance hall and you
young people don’t even know what that is that’s a dime a dance hall where the girls
dance with you for a dime and the music will run about 20 seconds and it stops and
you’re out of dime and uh you get a string of tickets and you that’s the way it is and you
just dance and music stops and then they get another partner and so forth and I did that
that night and hated it and got drunk and they had an intermission and where you could
get a pitcher of beer and I drank all I could hold in order to do this thing but a very welldressed man kept buying long strings of tickets and he only danced with me and I mean
you had to buy a long string of tickets to dance with anybody 20 minutes and he bought
me beer and I cried by this time I’m good drunk and I want my baby and I want to be a
good wife and mother and look at me what I’ve become here I am working in this taxi
dance hall and I just and I’m really a nice person but I can’t get sober and I don’t know
what I’m going to do and I just can’t stand being here and I don’t want to be like that and
I’d been a bootlegger before that and didn’t think a thing about it so with my brother Tex
we drank up all the stuff and the cops would arrest him and haul him off to jail and I’d
just sit there and drink up the booze but at any rate during intermission when I was
giving him the sad tale which was entirely true I didn’t want to be there he said oh little
girl you’re too nice to be in a terrible joint like this and he said all you need is security
imagine financial security with a darling little baby and everything he said I can offer you
that honey he said I’ll take good care of you and you won’t have to drink and and and if
you promise me you won’t drink well I’ll take care of your child and I’ll adopt her and be
a good father to her so let’s get married and I said oh let’s do and we did and I was drunk
in a week and when I found out he drove me down there I told you that the little girl it
was going getting bigger and I’m still drunk and it hadn’t improved the situation at all to
live in a huge beautiful home with three bathrooms and four bedrooms and a huge
dining room and an oriental rug and damask furniture and everything it didn’t make any
difference I was worse than I’d ever been and I did not know why I I just didn’t know why
but now I’m going to the meetings and I’m coming home and he’s sitting in the rocking
chair in that beautiful room and he’s he’s sitting there with his chin jutted out sour again
he’d say meaning you’ve been to the meeting again I’d say oh honey I promised it
wouldn’t go so much and I will cut back on those 80 meetings I really will I’ll really be a
good wife I just won’t go as much I promise I won’t and I’d kneel down where he was
sitting put my head in his lap and cry and say I’ll stay home until next Saturday night
and then I’ll go to a meeting but some girl would call up or somebody give me a 12-step
call and I’d have to take the girl or whatever would come up and I’d go to the meeting
and I’d come home he’d be sitting in the rocking chair and he’d say again and I’d go
through that again balloon and then I kept thinking why gee I’m doing the same thing I
used to when I came home drunk I’d say gee I’m sorry I went to that bar meant to come
home after one beer and I won’t do it again oh honey please forgive me now I’m saying
please forgive me for going to AA so much and I couldn’t take that so I came home to the
meeting the next night and he had a smile on his face and he said honey I’ve got the
solution to our marriage and by golly I said gee let’s talk about it I said turn on the light
in the living room and let’s sit down and I want to know what it is and he said well I got
the thinking he said now and this will work he said if you’ll go back to drinking like it was
in the good old days I’ll take care of you and it’ll be better than this I couldn’t believe my
ears and I looked at him and I didn’t speak and I just my whole being was just I was just
all a skirt I couldn’t speak and I had a bad temper and instead of throwing dishes or
screaming or hollering or fighting or quarreling or anything else I stood there like stone
stunned really I finally went upstairs and I got a little suitcase and I packed what I could I
left my new car right there in the driveway and my daughter was 16 and had just gotten
married too young but we couldn’t prevent it she wanted to get married she did didn’t
work out but that’s another story she’s happily married now and a member of a ace over
almost two years she and her husband both and I left and I didn’t take anything and I
just picked up my purse with whatever money was in it and I went down to Adams and
Figueroa rooming house section it was some old mansions that had been turned into
housekeeping rooms it had been a fine section and I rented a housekeeping room there
with a gas plate in the bathroom across the hall for seven or ten or twelve dollars a week
I don’t remember and I went down to the times newspaper big newspaper there in Los
Angeles got a job the next day I could always find work I was a good secretary I was a
legal secretary for many years I was a jill of all trades I had no problem getting the job
but I I was so hurt and I was so lonely and there was a big church there on the corner on
Figueroa and those church bells would ring on the hour and I would hear the bell call and
I would weep and I couldn’t stand it and I walked down the hall one day and the door was
open long hall to get out the front door and the door was open a woman was lying there
on a bed and I said hi she said hi and I walked back from work the next day and I saw the
bottles on the floor and I went in to speak to her and I told her I was a member of AA and
did she want some help she said no I’ve been drinking since about oh December the first
what is this and I said January the 15th and she said well I started this about in
December before Christmas or maybe it was Thanksgiving so I’d walk by her door every
day and it’d be open and she wasn’t getting out and the bottles were getting higher and I
didn’t know I guess the fellows living upstairs bought the bottles I don’t know but her
door would be open and then she called me in one day and she was in terrible shape and
she said mom and daddy are coming from Kansas to get me and take me home and I
talked to them on the phone today and they’ve already left and they’re gonna take me
home and I’m gonna be all right but Sybil you’ve been good to me and I don’t want your
AA I don’t want that I don’t need that I just need to go home with mom and daddy so will
you go down and get me a half pint so I can get out of bed and and be on my feet when
they get here and I said no I never buy a drink for a drunk that’s a pledge I made myself
a drunk and always find a bottle I won’t do that oh please Sybil I need so much I need so
much to get out of this bed and get a bath and please go and so I did and I went down to
the corner liquor store and bought her a half pint and I went back and sat it down she
had the sink at the end there just like in my room and I told her good night and I thought
did I do the right thing was she I think I did I think I did I really think I did and so in the
morning before I went to work at the times I looked in to see how she was she was dead
and I tell you I was a bad situation I nearly died I killed her I’m a murderer I shouldn’t
have done it I gave her a drink and I got I didn’t go to work I caught a street car and I
went out to the hole in the ground cried on everybody’s shoulder told them what I’d done
and they said Sybil you’re not God you had that girl was dead already she wouldn’t go to
the hospital she wouldn’t go to AA she’d been lying there six or eight weeks and she was
too far gone we had no treatment facilities and no treatment centers of any no help for
alcoholics then they said you did the best you could and did you look to see if she ever
got up and even got the bottle they said the chances are she didn’t even drink it she was
dying of pneumonia the type that gets you real quick when you’re in that condition which
proved to be true but I suffered over that and I hurt and I got over it because they they
really gave me the best they could out of that and I went home I am to my home my
room and I saw a man a woman a little woman with a little black hat on a little bay on
the feather and little man all humped over and I could hear him say well I thought it was
room seven daddy and he says well maybe it isn’t we better ask the lady and I knew who
it was it was mom and daddy from Kansas and to add to that day I had to walk up to him
and say she’s gone now that was tough for an alcoholic and I I’m making a big deal of it
but it was it really was in it and I hurt over it and agonized over it a lot but I found out
that an alcoholic synonymous I don’t have to drink that it isn’t all gonna be peaches and
cream and a bed of roses I found out that if alcoholics anonymous won’t work under any
circumstances any circumstances but only works when things are good it wouldn’t be
worth a plugged nickel to me because there were times when I was drinking that things
were okay I mean everybody’s had some times in their lives when things were okay but I
I will be 76 next May I will be 43 years sober in March and through my experience I have
found that you can stay sober no matter what happens because a lot of it has happened
to me because I’m a human being not because I’m a member of AA I’m talking about
tragedies like my brother dying right there at the meeting at the hole in the ground and
not being able to cry and he knew he was dying but he lived for five years longer than
doctors said he could and instead of crying I didn’t and you know what that’ll do that’ll
kill you and I was there and there my brother was and he was supposed to been gone
five years before that but now he is gone and I can’t cry and that got to me bad I keep
going to the meetings and smile and show my teeth and Beth and Margaret and
everybody say how are you Sid oh I’m fine how are you well that’s good we’d like to
come over and see you oh I’m sorry so busy these days I just you’ll just have to make it
another time and I would let him come over and some of them would cry and I’d say oh
gee I’m just going to the bank you’ll have to excuse me and it would just be a brassy
voice with no feeling and I I don’t know it was bad and I finally couldn’t take it and I
didn’t know what the problem was so I wrote a letter to Bill Wilson I mean another
member wouldn’t do this was Bill had been out to visit us many times there in California
in the early days to see how his program was getting along and I’d met him talked with
him been with him and fortunate enough to do that and I wrote him a letter and I told
him all these feelings I’ve been telling you that this was bad and he answered
immediately absolutely immediately and he said your letter has stirred me more than
anything I can remember in recent years I loved text too but in God’s house there are
many mansions and somehow or other I see your brother Tex on the porch of one of
those mansions in the sunlight talking to another drunk and that’s as it should be but as
for you my dear I will tell you this that life is but a long day in school and some of our
lessons will be easy and and some of them will be hard and it’s not so much what
happens to us here but it’s what we do with those experiences it’s what we do with those
experiences it’s the demonstration that counts and I thought to myself I guess what he
means is that when we go through something that is bad that it puts us in a position
possibly to save another human being later on that may be going through something
very similar and that there’s a reason for it and a purpose for it and I’ve come to believe
that and I have endured and I think I’m the most privileged person on earth to be asked
to talk at meetings because for 10 years or 20 years I couldn’t I was so timid I was so shy
and I was so scared first my brother Tex worked on me and made me made me get up
with a scrap of paper in my hand after several months of sobriety and read it to just a
few little people and when I got through they applauded till the rafters came off because
they knew I had this terrible problem of fear and I remember when I sat down the first
time about where I know I sat in the second row or first row I folded my arms and
somebody put a word and the applause kept up and I remember thinking my god was I
really that good and I had to practice to get up and say anything and each time it hurt
less a war came along and I worked midnight shift and couldn’t go to meetings I had to
sleep daytime and be at work and I had to start a daytime meeting in my home and I had
to have my medicine even though I couldn’t get to the hole in the ground except maybe
just say hello and then cut out with my with my Levi’s on and go over and be a welder
and I was a good mechanic and I I worked all through those years and I didn’t go to as
much AA and I have found that every every time that I don’t go to a lot of AA I begin to
go back to the old civil and I get fearful I get full of anxiety and uh it’s bad for me not to
go to be with you and to have your hugs and kisses and I whispered into someone’s ear
here today uh that was hugging me I said don’t tell anybody but I think the hugs and
kisses are just as important as the 12 steps and I do need a lot of love I’ll tell you why
because if I don’t get a lot of love from you I need to have extra special love and
attention just to feel average you know like maybe you feel all the time uh because if I
didn’t have it uh I would I would finally get timid and I’d get in the back row and I would
like my say they don’t like me they don’t want me here and uh I just have to believe that
you love me and that you want me here and I and I do believe it and I know that I
haven’t said anything probably that that uh is earth-shaking uh the thing about speaking
is people were going to they’ll be on an uplift and they’ll say wasn’t it a wonderful
meeting and you’ll go home and you’ll tell your friends oh it was a wonderful meeting
well what did he say uh he said uh he was really good though really good yeah but why
did he say well he talked about drinking and he was against it and that’s about the way it
is but I’ve had a glorious weekend here and I don’t like very much to have to get up at
five in the morning and be out I have to be I have a phobia I have to be at the airport an
hour before the plane leaves as if that was the last plane on earth that was ever going to
go anywhere and that’s the way it is because my plane leaves at 7 30 and I don’t want to
go I’m I’m happy here and I want to be with you but I’ve got a lovely warm loving
husband and four dogs and three cats they’re waiting for me to come home and clean up
the mess that which I will do but you know I think that uh seniority is a bad word I don’t
want to be an old-timer and I’ll poke anybody in the nose that would call me one because
I feel like a newcomer and I know that I’m here to learn and keep on learning and that’s
the only way it can possibly be as a matter of fact I think we should all call ourselves
newcomers because in the book it says more will be revealed to us and it is all the time I
think that we’re like all of us like little fledglings learning to fly so as fledglings learning
to fly may the wings of your happiness never lose a feather. Thank you and God bless
you.
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