The 11th annual Alberta Conference Banquet/Speaker Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marty. My only qualification for carrying this meeting, which I am honored and privileged to do, is because I am an alcoholic. If there are any members of the press here, I would like to ask them to preserve the anonymity of any of our AA speakers who speak here tonight and respect our traditions as such. How did you like the food? Was it good?

Thank you very much. How did you act the organ interlude? Ladies and gentlemen, our guest speaker tonight was the first member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the province of Quebec. I guess you've heard about this province before. He is an accountant by profession, and he is also is the Canadian trustee on the general service board of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He's well known throughout AA circles as a great little guy. I've, spent a little time with him since last Thursday night and, I've grown to love him too. And he is positive, proof positive that this program really works. He's here tonight with us with 21 years of AA Sobibati under his belt. And I think that this is something in itself.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you with confidence, day b of Montreal Day. Thank you, good people. I can't remember all the proper titles I'm supposed to say about the head table, So I will only say honored guests at the head table and my friends out there. There are 2 things I wanted to say before I started to tell my story because I've been asked to tell my story. And 1, the first one, to thank you people so much for inviting me here.

You know, up here in Canada, we have the largest area in the AA world from which a trustee is selected. And I have been in every area now that I have been in Alberta from Newfoundland to British Columbia. And it has been a most rewarding experience to me, and I thank you that you have made it possible for me. My term is coming to an end this year as your servant had on the board. We have a new one who is a westerner too.

He's not really the trustee yet because we haven't elected him, but he is the trustee nominee. I've known never known one yet that wasn't elected. And here is Tom. He is here today from Winnipeg. And if he is in the room, I haven't been able to see him so that you can see your representative on the board for the next 4 years.

I wish Tom, wherever he is, would stand up. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Dave Bancroft. I like to say that for various reasons. The main reason is to remind myself.

It's quite a long time since I had a drink. It's something I don't ever wanna forget. I'm going to tell my story tonight, and that reminds me a little more. And it reminds me particularly of one of my favorite prayers, and that is god give me a grateful heart. It reminds me too that this thing wasn't of my own doing.

It is something that I have to remember the last little phrase that we use in the Lord's prayer. It says, for thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, and thine is the glory. And that's the way I hope that I can always look at it. I think I was one of those people that was predestined to be an alcoholic if there is such a thing as predestination. I've had all of the characteristics of the alcoholic for as long as I can remember.

Particularly, do I remember the fear? My very first memory is a fear, And that was we lived in Mexico City when I was a very small boy, and we were there during the period of the revolution. And I can remember the soldiers coming to the house and taking away my father's riding horse. I can remember the soldiers who were not having time to bury them as they were burning on the street. I can remember the terrible earthquakes that used to frighten my mother so much.

As she used to stand, we used to all have to stand under the lintel of the door. My next memory is a memory that created even more fear in me. Very shortly after that, my father and mother took a trip over to Europe and they came back. And shortly after they came back, my mother died. And then there was a fear, who's going to look after us?

What's going to happen to us? Where are we going to go? And this seems to me have given me perhaps the main characteristic of the alcoholic and that is fear. I was looked after by my grandmother and 2 maiden ants, and I was very badly spoiled. And I think perhaps that is what gave me that other characteristic of the alcoholic.

I didn't wanna take orders. I didn't wanna do what I was told, and I became pretty rebellious, And I was going to run things my way. And then my father remarried, and I had to go home, and I had to take orders, but I was rebellious. My car set the commotion around the place, and eventually, I was shipped off for boarding school. I had other characteristics too.

I had, I think, what they used to call in the old days, the world to fail. I can remember my father bringing me up to the head office of the Bank of Montreal where he had worked for many years, introducing me to the general manager and the president of the bank and say, this is my son. He's gonna follow in my footsteps. And I can remember feeling inside myself, I'll never be able to do that. I just can't do the things that everybody expects me to do.

Things got so bad at home, they sent me to a boarding school. And in my last year there, I was shy and I was small, And I wasn't too much good at games, and I wasn't too much good at studies or any other thing that I can think of. I didn't have, I guess, another one of the old fashioned characteristics called moral courage. I remember we were down in Sherbrooke one day, and we're walking past the old May God's house. And somebody said, let's go in and have a beer.

And I don't know why I had a feeling this was the wrong thing to do. Alcohol wasn't something that was forbidden in our house. I don't believe I ever really thought abused there. I don't know why I never had a a drink previously, but I hadn't. But inside me was a feeling this wasn't right.

I couldn't do this. But I didn't want the other boys to say select of me. So I went in, and I had a beer, and then another. And a whole new world opened up for me. I could be all of the things I'd always dreamed.

I could be all of the things I'd always wanted to be. Didn't matter about all these things I wasn't too good at. I could sit there and dream. And then something else, when I got back to school, I became the big wheel. I was the spinner of attraction.

I can still remember the the little boys around the school. Boy, did you smell bankrupt? He's been drinking. And that really made me into something I'd never been before. I think that I was the type of alcoholic who's an alcoholic right from the very first drink or perhaps before he takes his first drink.

I went back home after that, and I drank not all the time, but when I drank, I always wanted to finish the evening. I wanted to see the end of the bottle. I wanted to get drunk. Didn't seem to sleep very well if I hadn't done that. And I can remember it wasn't too long until I got the dishonesty part of the alcoholic.

I would pretend I was going home when the others went home, but I would go off somewhere else and finish it out and then go home. I can remember too in those old days in Quebec City. Being in this hotel reminds me of it. In the shadow front, Mike, you know, I used to do the most outlandish thing that I could be the center of attraction. It seems to be when you start to do outlandish things, you gotta keep doing bigger and better ones that people don't talk about you anymore, and you aren't relieved.

And I can remember going to a very fancy St. George's Day ball. White tie, tails, red rose in the buttonhole. And I can remember standing up on the stage at the end of that and remembering my Scottish ancestry and saying, scot, what, hey, away Wallace bled and down at the Sachemak. And, I was led out of there in disgrace, I might tell you.

There were a few other incidents like that, and I found myself transferred out of the city of West down to the maritime. And from there, I went to the Ontario division. By this time, alcohol had become quite a problem, at least every other every other person thought it was except me. And people were saying, why don't you cut it down? Why don't you take it easy?

And others were saying, why doesn't he he's just throwing his wild oats. He'll get over it. He'll grow out of it. And I used to get very defiant in those days and say it's my business if I drink. I never missed a day's work.

I've never been late. You look after your affairs, I look after mine. But that trip to Hamilton, I woke up in the lower berth of a train. The porter is shaking me. There's a bottle on each side of me.

He says we're in Hamilton and I get out, and I didn't get into work. I didn't get into work for 2 or 3 days until the accountant of the bank came over and got me. That was another part of the dishonesty. I think the person I was most dishonest with was myself because I can remember many, many times after that saying alcohol isn't really a problem. I've never done this, and I've never done that, and I can handle it.

And it's my business if I drink. But every once in a while in the morning when you'd wake up, that old feeling was there, and this would come right out of where you've hidden it, and you'd know that you were living a kind of a phony existence. And after that, I was transferred out to Tom's hometown, out to Winnipeg. Winnipeg was an alcoholic's paradise. I lived upstairs over the bank.

I worked downstairs, and all I had to do was run through the back alley into the Corona Hotel, and I did that all that winter. And as I say, you have to keep doing bigger and better and better things all the time. I can remember I was at the Winnipeg Roundup a few years ago. You know, sometimes you people out in the West have a strange idea of a a seat easterners, I guess. And somebody said to me, you're from Montreal, are you?

And I said, yes. And, he said, boy, well, there's one story you'll never talk. You know, once oh, years ago, not it was 30 years ago, there was a fellow remote from the east and he stood up top of the bank there at the corner of Portage and Maine. Didn't have a stick to close on, only a fur coat and a bottle in the pocket. And finally, I took the the extension ladders up.

I had to fire from the police and everybody else to get them down. I didn't say a word until I got up to speak. And when I did, I told that story. And I thought it must have really been something if they remembered it after 30 years. I can remember too.

I can remember in the morning. I can remember the manager of the bank when I was called down there. I can remember the look on his face, the look of disgust. And he said, what is the matter with you? What is it?

Are you crazy doing things like that? I can remember having to go down to the police station. I can remember having to pay the fine, and I can remember what the head policeman down there said to me. And those things hurt for a little while. You decide you're going to straighten around, but I didn't.

And I was now becoming very defiant. I wasn't taking orders from anybody, and nobody was gonna push me around. I also had the fears on the inside. I can remember to everything, you know, I think most alcoholics are like that. Everything that happened in this world or anything that happened, I related to myself.

It was personally directed against me. I never thought of the other people that the that related to me. And I had fallen by on the head, blowers, boys of 21 do. A young lady of 15. And then all of a sudden, the blow fell.

I was transferred to Vancouver, and I thought that this was personally directed against me. And I can remember I was making $800 a year, which is worth a little more than it is now. And I can remember deciding because of that feeling that most alcoholics have that it's a feeling of insecurity. That If I get away from here, some far better looking man and somebody smarter than me will take this girl away. And so I decided I'd use some of my expense money and we would straighten this thing up.

So we went into a little jewelry store in 40th Avenue, and we bought a ring. And the little man in the jewelry store said, you know, these things come in spec. Perhaps you would like to get the wedding ring at the same time. Well, you can't look small in the eyes of your beloved, and so we brought the wedding ring. And then he reached under the counter and he said, are you planning on getting married right away?

And I got frightened and I didn't say everything, but he said, if you are, here's a minister who will marry you way up in the other end of town. And who can look small in the eyes of their beloved. And so we got an attack team. We were married. And I don't suppose that a marriage like that has one chance in I don't know how many million I've ever been successful.

But I can tell you something else. 36 years later, a few days ago, that same wife came and said goodbye to me as I started off for here. These are some of the tremendous miracles, really, I think, that have happened. I think God does have a special eye for the drunks and the children and the helpless kind of people. I went out to Vancouver.

We haven't told anybody we were married. And finally, perhaps part of my trouble was that my father set up me out of all the gems that I was ever in. And I finally wrote him a letter and told him what I had done. And he said there's nothing I can do with a very strict guru and go and report it to the which I did and I was fired right there on the spot. And here I was, 3,000 miles from home, no money, a wife in Winnipeg.

And then Dorey's father took action to have the have the marriage and all. And that made it even worse. And then my father did straighten it up with the bank, and he sent me $500, and this was supposed to be our wedding present to get things started. When Dory arrived in there, in in Vancouver, I was in the hospital. There was no $500.

There was nothing to start with. If he had to go and live with the family of the account bank which I worked. That's not a very pretty start to life. And you would think about this time, I would be saying to myself, well, it must have something to do with the alcohol. Maybe I'm going to straighten up.

But it wasn't that yet. The next thing came was a blackout, the first real blackout that I have had. And I found myself sitting across the desk room police left tenants looking for a permit to carry a revolver. And I had no idea of how I got there. I had no idea of anything except that I already had a permit to carry a revolver while I was on the bank business, and this frightened me terribly.

And I made my first real attempt to stop drinking. It lasted for 3 days. The bank kept transferring me from one branch to another branch to another branch, and finally, I landed up in the old Hotel Vancouver. And it was there that the beginning of the end really came, but it was only the beginning of the end. Because the party started in one of the rooms that night, and we ran out of liquor, and it's all very vague in my mind.

And I woke up the following morning in the little flat we had with a terrible headache. And I didn't very often have headaches. I got off to sick. There was also a funny little feeling of a fear, and it was a kind of a fear that I was to get to know very well after that. And I suppose most alcoholics do.

It was a fear of the unknown. Something terrible was going to happen. You don't know what it is. It's a fear of sort of impending doom. And it was right, but I had the answer for that.

There was some beer in the icebox. And so I went in there, and I got back and started to drink. And the beer the feeling got worse and worse. And there was good reason for it because very shortly, I felt a feeling of things and needles all down one side. My face was all pulled over, and I was terrified.

I called Dorey. She called the doctor. It turned out that I had had first the first doctor that came said, it's alcoholic and you're right. Feed him well. Give him trust to this man.

He'll be alright in a few days. You know, these drunks, they drink and they don't eat. But in a couple of days, I was delirious and so he called the bank doctor. And it turned out that I had had a cerebral hemorrhage and that I was paralyzed all down my right side. That was the time when the loan company that I was well known to by this time started clamoring for their money from the bank.

It was a time when I when all the text that I had cut it out all over the countryside because that was a good position to do it started coming back home to Ruth. And as soon as I was able to travel, I was transferred back to Montreal in disgrace. And I can remember now the bitterness that was inside me. What had I ever done? 23 years old, paralyzed, crippled for life.

If there was a god, how could he ever do a thing like this to me? I don't think anybody ever had such self pity. And instead of being the kind of person that was quite talkative and enjoying everything and lots of friends and all the rest, I became withdrawn. I began to hate everybody and everything. And I was afraid to drink.

I was afraid to drink at first because they told me I might be paralyzed for the rest of my life if I did and flat on my back or die. I don't think you can frighten an alcoholic. And then there's that kind of rationalization that that alcoholics do. Because it wasn't too long before I was saying to myself, I think they're just trying to make me stop drinking. I think they're just trying to scare me.

And this was something nobody could do. And say one day, I went in, and I had a glass of beer. And then I had another glass of beer. And then I had another glass of beer. And then I went in, and I had a glass of beer.

And then I had another, and I didn't die, and I wasn't paralyzed. And I never could handle as much after that, but that really was the beginning of the end. I can remember not too long. After that, they sent me up to a branch uptown, and this was gonna be better. I I can remember walking in the door, and I was still walking with a cane.

I can remember the accountant of the branch. A man, really, who did me the greatest favor that anybody ever did. He took one look and he said, what are they sending up here? A bunch of cripples? And I can remember inside myself saying, I'll show that man.

I'll show that man, and it's the last thing I ever do. I hadn't learned to write too well with my left hand and all the rest and handle the cash, but I was so mad and so hurt that it wasn't too long until I did. But the drinking still continued. And I can remember eventually they sent me up to a psychiatrist. Not that I have anything against psychiatrists.

Some of my best friends and some of the people who have helped me the most are psychiatrists. And I don't really say this, in any spirit of anything but telling my story. And I went up to the psychiatrist, and I had laid out the money. I forget how much it was, but it was a good deal of money in those days. And I sat up there, and the psychiatrist kept looking at the a spot in the wall over my head.

And I sat there and not thinking of my $10, I lied to him. I wouldn't tell him one word of the truth, and I didn't have much of a trouble and so on and so forth. And I went to him a second time and lied even more, I guess. The end of that story was that the psychiatrist one day packed his wife in a car and himself and left a note on his desk and drove up north and over a cliff and into a river. I don't really think that it had anything to do with me, but nevertheless, that was something.

Maybe I was the last driver that broke the camel back and then started the round of hospitals. I forget how many times I was in that Western Hospital. And then started an old friend of mine, a clergyman, an Anglican clergyman, who tried so hard to help me and how much time I spent with him and in and out of those hospitals. And then again came that great experiment. Maybe it shouldn't be Doreen and I just living alone.

Maybe if we had a youngster, this was is going to be was going to be different. I can remember the day that Bill was born, my oldest son. I can remember how much I wanted to be sober, and I wanted to do this thing right. I had put away about that much in a bottle up on the top in the kitchen, and by great strength of character, I had kept it up there, and this was to be for the night when Dorey said I've got to phone the doctor. Well, that night came.

By the time I found the the bottle and got myself unshaky enough, I couldn't dial. She had dialed a doctor. And then I started to drive her to the hospital. And on the way, I had to stop at one of the hotels and get a package of cigarettes. I came up some long time later, and I barely got her to the hospital in time.

I couldn't bear the thought of going back to that lonely apartment by itself myself. So I went and stayed at the old Ford Hotel, And I just drank and I just drank and I just drank. And about the 3rd day, I said, well, you can't do this. I've gotta go up to Dory. And I went out and I bought a single flowers, a tremendous single flowers that would have looked well in the main square.

And I got in a taxi and I went up to the hospital. Story has a picture of this. She saw me coming walking down the hall dirty, not shaved, still half drunk, dragging this great thing of flowers behind me. She remembers all that. But I'll tell you what I remember.

If there's ever a glass in front of me that I have any intention of picking up and taking a drink out of it, I hope I remember it right then. I hope it comes right in front of my face. Because I remember the look she took at me and I can remember that she burst into tears. And all I could do was walk away and go out and get drunker than I already was. This went on.

I'm not going to tell you of all the various hospitals in and out and in and out and in and out and the absolute hopelessness that comes after that. The moving from this house to that house to the other house because you hated the places so much that you've lived there a little while. You couldn't stand couldn't stand to see them again. I can remember once calling all the way up to the top of the shrine with this 100 and 100 of steps and asking brother Andre up at the top if he could help me. He gave me a little medallion, which I brought down and we just found a little while ago, and that's what reminded me of it.

But he said he couldn't help me. I can remember all the other people that tried to help me. I can remember a day and a place that we were living at that particular time, which is certainly not a very nice place where my friend, the minister, came one day. And I had had hallucinations a few times, and they'd carted me away. The fear that got so bad, I couldn't undress at night.

I couldn't go to bed. I'd sit up there in a chair waiting waiting for something to happen. Just like that feeling in impending doom, something terrible was going to happen. You can imagine what this was doing to my little boy who was about 2 by this time. I can remember coming home at night and he'd run under the bed because he didn't know whose side to be on and the quarrels and upset that he'd gone when I would get home.

But I can remember this day Fred Wilkinson arrives. He's a bit of Toronto now and a tremendous friend of mine. I can remember him arriving in the same day. Nobody can stand this anymore. They you can't go on like this.

It'll kill you, and it'll kill your family. You've got to do something about it. And he suggested that I go down to the court and take a voluntary interdiction. I found it was voluntary to get into, but not very voluntary to get out of. I remember standing in front of judge for a in the superior court.

I don't feel sorry for myself for these things, really. I'm glad they happened to me because I can appreciate things that I've got now so much more. I stood in front of him and he read out this wrong thing. They have a thing in Quebec called the family council and all my family's behind me. And I listen while he reads the book.

I was taking all my civil rights away. And finally, he says, the reason why because I'm a common drunkard and a vagabond. And I took my first trip after that, down at the Verdun Protestant Hospital for the Insane, and you should call it in those days. And I can remember the terrible fear. And I can remember what's going to happen to me now.

And I can also remember after the alcohol had worn off, and I got feeling pretty good saying, how could they do this to me? Imagine locking me up in the room to take a. Wait till I get out of here. Just wait. I'm going back out to Vancouver.

But I didn't go to Vancouver or anywhere else. Right? No sooner out of there, and I started drinking again, and I was back in again. And then I got out again. And this time, it was going to be different.

This time, you know, for all days, he couldn't stand the pressures of city life, of routine in the office. And we were gonna put them out in the farm. And they did put me out on the farm, about 70 miles out of Montreal. And I determined that I wasn't going to drink. I started raising chickens, and I did not too badly at it.

I made a little profit while it was operating, took some prices for setting edge of bone failure too. I can remember that. And then one day in the old house, it's been in our family for many generations, I saw in a boom in the cellar of way up there. And I picked it down. I looked at it.

Said doctor somebody's bovine bronchial serve 40% alcohol. And that was the end. And I was shortly on my way back to the Vergara Poterton Hospital. And this time, I was a 3 time loser. And I don't know how it is here, but there that means that if they want, they can perhaps keep you there for the rest of their life.

And I can remember the defiance that was in me. The defiance that was on the outside and the fear that was in the inside. And walking in the dear kindly old doctor Porges' office who tried so hard to help me and saying, you'll never make me stop drinking. You'll never make me stop drinking if you keep me here a 1000 years. I think that maybe we will, Dave.

Maybe we will if we keep you here long enough. And that's again going around and around and around in my mind. What do you mean keep me here long enough? Was I gonna be there the rest of my life? That wasn't too long when I could get to a phone.

I finally got hold of Dory. I said you can't do this to me, Dory. Remember the good years. You can't keep me locked up in this lunatic asylum And say god bless her and got me out. And that's another one of the things I don't ever wanna forget if there's ever a glass that I ever have any intention of picking up.

I can remember sitting in doctor Porges' office with my wife, with little Billy. And I can remember him saying, Billy is an alcoholic of the type with whom we've had very little success. There's nothing more that we can do for him. He'll probably have to have custodial care for the rest of his life, but he let me go. Dori went to live with her sisters and took little Bill.

Bank gave me a pension. My father supplemented a a bit, and I want to live where and when and how I could. Half of that 2 years is a sort of a grim world. I've learned by this time that there were all kinds of substitutes for alcohol. I've learned that you can drink paraguar.

You can drink paraldahete. You can drink essence of anna tea. You can drink bay rum and all of these various other things. And they're an awful lot cheaper than alcohol. I learned many things.

As I say, half that I remember, half that I don't. There's one thing I didn't know if it was true or not. I remember going to a doctor who tried very hard to help me over the years. I'm telling him that somebody had given me a white feather. This was during the 2nd World War.

No. I did have a paralyzed arm, but after a couple of beers, if I didn't have too many that I could use actors as well as the other one. This was a wonderful excuse for drink. And so with the white sweater, I went down to the recruiting office. And I signed up and then the next day I phoned up Dory and said, well, they've taken me over across to the Jacques Hite barracks.

I'm gonna join the army and I'll probably be killed. You'll be well rid of me, and it'll be the best of everything for all of us concerned. And so she was all frightened, and she came down. And they were loading us all on an army truck, and I'm standing on the back, the great work group waving goodbye off the thing. And I got over there, and I go through the medical thing.

They strip everything off except my shoes and socks. And I'd had a few drinks, so my arm was alright, and I got as far as the man who comes to examine your feet. I've been in another accident due to drinking when I've been in Vancouver and lost the toes off one foot. But when the man looked at that, he says, good God. We said that you and your enemy got no toes on that foot.

And I had visions then. Maybe I wasn't gonna get this. And what would all these people say now? And so I talked to him and then letting me go through the rest of it. He said, well, maybe he can go down and work in Long Point in some desk job or something anyway.

So finally, I come to a green beige curtain at the end. And they call us back, and I'm to go in to see the man who is the psychiatrist. He takes a look at me, and he happened to be one of the staff doctors at the Verdun Protestant Hospital. He said if you were the last man in Canada, I wouldn't take you in this man's army. So I had to come out and I had to say I wasn't going to save the world anymore.

The end of that 2 years was in the bullpen in number 1 police station. I'd been there a good many times before, but something was different this time. I think I was what Bill called deflated that death. There was absolutely no hope anymore. There was nothing.

I don't think there's any loneliness, and the alcoholics in the room will know what I mean. I don't think there's any loneliness in the world like that. Who can understand? Who can who can believe you when you tell them these things that you've done? And who can understand that awful loneliness?

It was later for some unknown reason. And I like to think that maybe it was the good Lord looking down and saying this poor guy has had enough. I'm gonna give him just one more chance. And if he'll take it, if he'll only take it, I'll help him. Maybe it was what Saint Paul says that I will defeat come victory because I was certainly finally defeated.

But I didn't believe that there was anything that I could do. And then for some reason, I remembered a book, a book that I hadn't thought out for years. A book that my sister had brought up to me when I'd been locked up in Vermont was a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And that book had talked about drunk, just like me, who found a way to get sober. They had their wives and their families, some of them.

They got up in the morning, and they went to work, and they tipped their wives to buy, and they come home at night and read the paper, and they were just like ordinary people. And I don't think there was anything in the world that I wanted more than that right then, and I hope it's what I want right now. I got out of there on it was an Easter weekend on the Tuesday morning. I got out to my father's place who retired by this time out to know. I asked him if I could get in touch with these Alcoholics Anonymous people.

And he said, what have you got to lose? And Ethan asked me to a telephone call to what was then a very small office down in New York City. And I got hold of a girl eventually down there named Bobbie. And Bobbie said, I'm an alcoholic too. There are a lot of us down here.

And if you want help, we'll help you. I hope I never say forget to say that to anybody that I may be able to help. It was something to me. There were these people 500 miles away in a different country who understood. And the next day, I got the 2 pamphlets of the day.

And the day after that, I got the big book. And you know that girl, she said now, she became my sponsor and god bless her. She wrote me every single day a note, a memo, a letter, or something for nearly a year until we had 2 or 3 more in the group in Montreal. This really is one of the reasons why I tried so hard to help general service because if they hadn't been there, I don't know where I would have been. It wasn't too long after that So Dore came back, my father financed the plaque.

And that's how I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd like here to give a little credit to the wise of alcoholics. I doubt very much. You know, there's other places and people sometimes say what a great guy you are. I doubt very much if I'd be here if it wasn't for the support and the trust and the belief that Barry had in me.

She was the only one, I think, that used to say, you can't help it, Dave, can you? Nobody else ever said that. And she did, I think, as far as any nonalcoholic can understand. She understood. And I think that helped me more than anything else.

I'm just gonna take a few minutes. I think I've gone over my time as my Marty. I'm only going to take 2 or 3 more minutes to tell you of the tremendous reward that have come to me. They've come to me through God and through Alcoholics Anonymous, really. And not too much effort on my part.

My father, who I had spent all the money he ever had, left him in debt. When he died, left me or did me the great honor or had the great faith in me of appointing me as executor. Now he was one of these old fashioned people that never talked too much about AA. He didn't really understand what it was all about, And he thought perhaps it wasn't quite the proper thing for me to be in. But, boy, he was so happy I was sober.

He never said very much about it. But when I opened the safe, the old fashioned safe in the country house up there, there was an envelope, and it had my name on the outside. And inside were all the clippings about AA that has ever been ever since I've been in AA. And I thought that that was a tremendous reward. There was a few years ago.

My wife suddenly was stricken blind when we were in New York. Nobody seemed able to help her. There was a doctor from McGill and from Montreal who just happened to be in the place where it was. She didn't know if this might be a permanent thing. And all of these various things that seem to work so strangely, This doctor that had been in McGill happened to know the most one of the most famous eye surgeons in Canada who you couldn't get an appointment with for a year.

He's been a fraternity brother of his. He phoned him up. He said, certainly out there, get her husband to drive her home. And I did, and he saw her. And we operated on both her eyes.

She didn't know that she might never see again. So one night casually, I'm up at the hospital. They said that, no. The doctor got the bandages out today, and I could see his fingers. I said, god, why didn't you tell me before?

But she didn't know. That's another one of the things I'm so tremendously grateful for. I sat just before I left here around the table in our own house. That same wife is sitting at the other end. That little boy, Bill, it might have turned out so badly.

25 now. She has married a lovely girl. We all love her. My grandson's in the basket, sort of thing behind me. And my 2 little AA division.

Mary who's 16 and Paul who's 10. And sometimes I look out over things like that. And I say, what wonders has God wrought? And that's why I have a prayer. God give me a grateful heart.

And I'm going to close with one of my most favorite poems. Probably all of you heard it. It was written by a New England poet. It says, I said to the man who's sophisticated the year, give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he will die broadens the darkness.

And put your hand into the hand of God. So that should be to you better than life and safer than the known way. I thought that was the end of it. Until my son, Bill, who gets a little irritated at the misquotations I'm always making, gave me a copy of copy of Bartlett's quotation. And that was the first thing I looked up.

And there's something more in it. And it's something I think that applies a little more to those of us who've been around for some time in AA because it says, so I went for. And finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night, and he led me toward the hill in the breaking of the day in the loaning. Thank you.