Colorado AA & Al-Anon conference in Denver, CO

Hello. My name is Dennis, and I'm a very grateful member of Al Anon. Tom told you everything you need to know. I'm sitting down. No.

I guess it's a formality, and I always try to remember it, to thank the committee. And I know that the committee is usually a whole bunch of people, And I'm always honored when, somebody asked me to do this because, you know, there's a lot of people out there, and, you know, when I get asked, I said, well, you could've asked so and so, but you got me, so here I am. And I always look at the crowd out there, and I'm glad I can't see you all real good now because of the lights. But, I think of everywhere that I could be and the people that I could be with, and I I could never pick a finer group of people to, you know, share time with, put people in AA and Al Anon. I love being around program people.

And our get in with the, as you say, the nuts and bolts. I was born and raised in Michigan. Today is a great sacrifice for me. Today was opening day for Michigan. And, usually, at home, I'd be glued in front of my TV screaming and yelling go blue, but, I managed to peak a little bit at the game today, but between workshops and everything.

Not quite as bad as one day when I had to be at an Al Anon meeting, for a state convention. And in Columbus, Ohio, driving to Columbus during the Michigan State Ohio State a Michigan Ohio State game. And that that showed me that, I must really love this program because I wasn't watching the game. But, you know, like I said, I grew up in Detroit and, my childhood when you describe it, somebody would say you had a bad childhood, but I had a good childhood. I don't have any bad memories, you know, as a child.

My father went off to World War 2. I was born in September of 41, right before Pearl Harbor a little bit, and then he went off to the war. He came home from the war, told my mother he met somebody else over there, and goodbye. So he was gone. So I I I really never knew my father again.

He wasn't around at all. And so my mother raised my my older sister and myself. And she worked in the car factories in Detroit, till the time I was 13. We lived in a public housing project. The auto workers got a raise.

We were informed we were now wealthy and had to move. So we moved right across the street to a little apartment place, never changed schools. I went to 12 schools 12 years of school in the same building, and my mother worked to put my sister and I, through 12 years of Catholic schooling, and that was, pretty hard for her to do. I know now, but she did it. But, my mother drank her beer, and, you know, she would stay at home and have her beer.

And when she wasn't home, I knew the neighborhood bar that she would be at. Sometimes I'd go see her there. But I don't ever remember seeing my mother drunk, not once. She just you know, she drank beer, but that was it. So alcohol was never a problem when I was a child, and I played a lot of sports, you know, had my buddies I ran around with.

So, you know, when you talk I hear people talk about broken home projects and and all that kind of stuff and they killed 12 people. I said, well, that, that should be me by all standards, but that's not the way it worked out. Got out of school and, went in the Air Force. I had nothing better to do. Didn't have the money to go to college, so, went in the Air Force and, I was down in Virginia.

First time I was away from home. And I went up to Pittsburgh, which is where my mother's from, and I have 3 uncles there, an aunts and uncles, cousins. So I stayed there on the weekend, and one of my cousins said, I'm going to a dance. Would you like to go with me? And I said, sure.

I'll go to a dance. So I went off to this dance with her, and she introduced me to 2 girls that she went to high school with. And then I went back down to Virginia to the base, and people said, how was your weekend? And I said, oh, fine. And I said, went to a dance, met these girls, and they said, well, how are the girls?

I said, well, one was so so, but the other one was gangbusters. I real the one I real really liked. And, a few weeks later or a month maybe, I went back up to Pittsburgh and my cousin was on the phone and she said, this is the girl you meant at the dance. So I said, oh, okay. So I got on the phone.

I'm talking to her, and I said, you wanna go out tonight, go to a movie or something? She said, yeah. And she gave me directions to her house. So I'm all excited, you know, and I'm gonna go pick up gangbusters to go out for the evening. And I go over and I knock on the door, and I'm standing there and the door opens.

And I looked and it was so so. And I thought I was talking to the other girl. And so so is sitting in the audience out there tonight. Yeah. Her name is Charlene, and this past June, we were married 44 years.

So so see, the only reason I'm here is because of a case of mistaken identity. It's what what got me here. But, you know, we, went back down to the base after being married and you know, after dating for about a year and a half or so. And we our first child, Patrick, was born down there in Virginia while we were in the service. Got out, went back to Pittsburgh.

Our second son, Paul, was born, and then I had an opportunity to move to Detroit, my hometown, and we moved back there. And we were in Detroit for about 3 three and a half years, close to that. And, Shireen had a lot of health problems and was on a lot of medications, and I noticed that the pills were going a lot faster than they should. And she was acting kinda weird. So I went to the doctors, and I told them that she was, you know, just gulping down all these pills that they had given her.

So the doctors cut her off, and I figured, well, that's gonna stop that. And a couple of days later, I came home from work and, I walked in and she was lying on the living room floor passed out. The there was something smoldering on the stove that was supposed to be dinner. The 2 little kids, they were, like, 34. They they were running around the house.

And I looked around on the floor, and I found 3 empty 5ths of scotch. And that was day 1 of alcoholism in our home. Because when I had her booze cut off, she turned to what else was available, which was alcohol. And I hear people talk about when they come into the program how, you know, they would go to parties and their their spouse would drink a little too much, and they say, oh, honey. You're you've had a few too many.

You know, I didn't have any break in period. You know, that that that's all I'm gonna tell you about her drinking, because when day 1 is 3 5ths and it goes downhill from there, you don't need to know anymore. So, we wound up moving back to Pittsburgh because she wanted to be near her family, and we thought that's gonna fix things. And, of course, those geographic cures don't work, and the same thing continued while we were living in Pittsburgh. And I had a long drive to go to work at one point.

I, I worked for a computer manufacturer and and when they sold a computer to a customer, my job was to go down and show them how to use it and get the computer running. And I had this long drive to a customer site, about 70 miles, and I would drive down there and I would be glad to be away from home, and I'd work late, and then I'd have that long drive home. And when on the way home, I'd be thinking about what I was gonna find when I got home, and I'd say maybe I won't find that today. Maybe it'll be different. And I think, okay.

What am I gonna say? And I had my little routines that I would go through, and one of them was the, oh, honey. What have I done that upset you that made you drink? The other one was, if you do it again, I'm gonna break your neck. You know, scream, yell, do everything.

And I've I've rehearsed these things through my in my head while I was driving home. And then as I pulled into the parking lot to this townhouse apartment that we lived in, I'd say, nope. I'm not gonna do any I'm not gonna say anything tonight. And I'd go in and I'd find her in her usual condition, and then I'd start to talk to her a little bit, and and then I'd say, well, I'm just gonna say this. And you know what I discovered?

You cannot rehearse a tirade for an hour on the road and then just say a little bit. And I would start to say something, and the next thing you know, we would be screaming and yelling at each other. And, you know, and and and what I do when things really started getting wild and everything is, you know, I'm I'm getting out of here. And, luckily, she did not drive at the time. She didn't get a driver's license till after she was sober.

A lot of people are grateful for that. And, so, you know, I would go out and I would slam that apartment door. You know, our windows would rattle. The apartments next to us would rattle. And I'd get in the car and I'd start the engine.

I'd back up and I'd lay rubber going out of the parking lot. And as I would be going out of the parking lot, I would see the curtains part and all the neighbors would be looking out the windows and I'd say, see, now they know what she's done. They didn't know anything about what they what she had done, but they knew who the town idiot was. And and that was me. And they would have all these little picnics and everything, and we knew they had picnics because when they were going on, we'd look out the window and see them.

You know? And and I'd wonder why we weren't invited, and I knew it was because of her. And, you know, but she wasn't they never saw her. They just saw me, you know, running all over the place doing crazy things. And then, one day I did my I'm leaving thing and she came out of the house after me and stood next to the car and she says, you're not leaving this time.

And I said, yes. I am. And she says, I got my foot behind the wheel. And I said, I'm leaving. So I put it in reverse and stepped on the gas and fell a little bump, you know.

And next thing I know, she's up she's got one foot in the air hopping around the parking lot. And, so, you know, I'd run over her foot. So I pulled the car back into the parking lot, and, you know, even now after all those years of sobriety, you know, she has never thanked me for missing her on the way back in. So, so I got her in the house and she's moaning and groaning about her foot, so I gave her a bucket of hot water to soak it in. And she keeps crying about her foot, and then the guilt sets in, and I'm thinking that, gee, you know, maybe it's broke.

Maybe I'd get something to her foot. You know? And I said, okay. I'll take you to the hospital, but you can't tell them I rode over your foot. And she said, alright.

Alright. So we get in the car and we go off to the local hospital, and I go into the emergency room. And I tell them my wife hurt her foot and they gave me a wheelchair. And I go out to the car, put her in a wheelchair, and I go up the ramp and those electric guys, you know, opens the door, those doors park. And I'm wheeling her through the doors and those doors weren't even closed behind us yet.

And she is waving her arms and she's yelling, that son of a bitch ran over my foot. And and I refer to that as the day all trust was lost, you know, because she because she promised she wasn't gonna say anything about that. And the doctors come up to her, and she had been in the emergency room multiple times, with overdoses and, suicide attempts. And the doctors knew her there, and they go, how are you tonight, Charlene? You know?

And and she's yelling about her foot, and the doctor looked at me and just kinda waved his finger like he knew she was nuts, and they never even said anything to me about it. And that's a good thing because I was trying to figure out, you know I told her that you know, she had told me she dropped an iron on her foot, and I was trying to figure out what kind of iron lift tread marks. You know? But, and then, she was hospitalized for a while, 6 months, in the funny farm. And I was home with our 2 boys, and they were, like, 7 8 years old.

And, the main thing about that that I remember is that, I never asked the neighbors for any help. And I would go to work, and I'd be at work when the kids got out of school. And I'd worked late because I was mister important at work. I was the one that everybody relied on to make their computer work. And at work, I had a sense of usefulness.

I was worth something. Because at home, when I walked in that door and the way our home was, I felt that I was a total failure. I felt that I was a failure as a husband and as a father, and that if I was, you know since I couldn't fix it, I couldn't make things right, that I was failing. I I knew I should be able to do something, I just didn't know what it was. But at work, I felt like I was a success.

I was doing something. So even with my kids home alone, I worked late. And I'd get home and walk in the house with a bag of hamburgers, and they'd be half asleep and everything. And I'd wake them up and feed them their hamburgers or whatever it was and get them in bed. And I couldn't go to somebody and say, my wife drinks too much, and she's in a hospital, because they would say, why don't you do something about it?

When I was date when I was growing up with my just my mother and my older sister, When it got to the time when I would start to date, I remember my mother sat me down and had a little talk with me and told me that, you know, be a good boy, you know, the birds and the bees. And, you know, and she said, when you grow up and you have a family, you are responsible. And I think she was trying to instill in me a feeling of responsibility that maybe my father did not have. And I can remember the day after we were married, and the next you know, we were in a restaurant having our first breakfast as husband and wife. And the check came to pay for the breakfast and I picked it up and I looked at the bill and I looked across the table at her and I can still remember it, this was June 3, 1962, and the thought came into my mind.

I said, this is not a date. This is different. We're married. And that feeling of, I grew up, I had a family, I was responsible. So when our home life was in complete shambles and everything was falling apart, I felt that I was responsible.

I have to do something about this and I couldn't do it. I didn't know what to do. And I was too embarrassed to go ask anybody for help. Our kids survived that. I think some of the neighbors may have helped without me asking.

And one time she got out of the hospital on a weekend pass and, we were riding around somewhere, and the usual happened. You know, she said hello. I said hello. And then we had a fight. And, we were screaming and yelling at each other.

And, you know, she hopped out of the car. So I slowed down and and, and, and then she was running around the street and, we're right by the cemetery. She ran through the gates of the cemetery into the cemetery. And I drove the car around and drove into the cemetery and got out of the car. And we're chasing her through the cemetery.

And I'm I'm, you know, nice football fan. You know, I made a perfect flying tackle, you know, right on top of somebody's dearly departed. And, and I had her arms pinned down. I'm holding her down on the ground. And look over to the side and there were 4 or 5 guys, whatever, and they were digging a grave.

And they looked turned around and they looked at us, and their eyes were as big as silver dollars, you know. And she had that hospital wristband on. So I grabbed her wrist and I'm waving it up in the air and I'm yelling, she's crazy. But don't ask me what I'm doing here. And and and, you know, this was our marital bliss.

You know, this is the way we were going. So that went on for about three and a half years in Pittsburgh, and then we thought that maybe another change of scenery would do. And we wound up moving to, Falls Church, Virginia. And the same thing went on, of course. And, you know, the lunacy continued.

And I would be sitting at home at night and I would usually but in the evenings, she was totally passed out. And I'd be looking at her passed out and, I would be thinking, how long is this going to be go on? When will this end? And I can remember the night that I answered the question. And I said, it won't.

This is the way it's going to be. I couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I said, this is it. And watching TV, my favorite TV show at the time was Star Trek, the original Star Trek. And my favorite character was mister Spock.

And the reason I liked mister Spock was because he was the man with no emotions. He was the Vulcan and had no human emotions. And I would look at him and I would say, if I was like him, I wouldn't feel the way I do. I wouldn't hurt. I wouldn't have the anger.

I wouldn't have all the resentments. I wouldn't have the feelings of, you know, you know, just futility, hopelessness, everything that I felt. I said, I wouldn't feel that way if I was like him. So I worked on becoming mister Spock, and I worked on trying to block out all emotions. And my kids were at the age or our kids were at the age now where they were getting into little league baseball, And I volunteered to be a help coach the team.

Another reason just to stay out of the house. And one day, I came home from work and it was game day. And the kids were standing by the door and they had their game uniforms on. And I said, you get in the car. I'm gonna go in and see mommy, and then we'll go to the game.

Of course, what I meant was I'm gonna go in and check on mommy and see what's you know, how she is today. And I went in and I looked around and I went back in the bedroom and I found her lying on the bed. And there were a bunch of empty bottles, both alcohol and pills, and there was a note on the nightstand. And first, I leaned over into her and I could barely, barely hear you know, feel a breath that she was breathing. And I picked up a note that was on the nightstand.

And I remember it as of I was reading it yesterday. And that note said, you and the kids will be better off without me. And I things like this had happened before, and I had done the same thing that I started to do the same thing that I'd done before, and that's pick up the phone and start dialing for the rescue squad. And I started to dial and I stopped. And I read that note again.

You and the kids will be better off without me. And I said, she's right. Because remember, I had answered that question, when will this end? And I knew it wasn't gonna end. It was gonna go on and on like this.

And I said, this is the way it's going to end. And I put that phone down. I put the note back on the nightstand, and I said nobody will even know I'm in here. And I turned around, walked out, closed that bedroom door behind me. The kids and us came home and they were hot and sweaty, and they wanted to go in and get something to drink.

And I said, oh, go tell the neighbor kids, you know, over here about how the game was, because I didn't want them to go in and try to tell mommy about what the game was because I thought that it was over. And I went in and went back to the bedroom, and she was still breathing. And she was, you know, breathing a little better than she was before. And it took her a couple days, really, to come out of that from all the booze and all the pills she had taken. But I had reached the point of total hopelessness that there is nothing that's gonna change the way our life is other than she succeeds in one of these attempts.

And I didn't know what else to do other than let it be. This is the way it's going to be. I'm extremely grateful that my higher power had other plans for us, that it did not work out that way. But things went downhill pretty quick after that because I gave up the the screaming and the yelling and the arguing. And, you know, it got to a point where, she she wound up going into the hospital and was introduced to AA, went to a couple meetings, and then didn't go anymore.

And one day, a lady that she met in AA came over to see how she was doing. And what she found was her sitting in a chair with a blanket wrapped around her and me spoon feeding her something out of a bowl because she couldn't even feed herself. And the lady came in and looked at her and she said, don't you know she's dying? I didn't know. I my you know, the computer genius' brain was jello as far as this was I I I didn't have a thought.

I couldn't figure out what to do. So, it was taken out of my hands. The gal got on the phone, called some other guy in AA. He came over, and all I remember is what you know, he'd fit in here. He had cowboy hat and cowboy boots on.

And he came in, and the gal grabbed a bag of some sort, threw some of Charlene's clothes in it. The guy picked Charlene up and carried her out. And they got in the car and took her off to a to a hospital. And I stayed home with the kids. I literally gave my wife to AA.

They took her away to somewhere. I didn't know where they were going, but I said, you you know, you want her? You can have her. And, and, and she wound up going to this, hospital, and then they took the way the NAA told us about a treatment center and she wound up going there. And and, she was in there and they told me that, I could visit her and to be out there on Sunday afternoon about 1 o'clock, you know, a little before 1.

So I went out to this treatment center on Sunday afternoon, a little before 1, and I said, you know, I'm here to visit her. And they said, well, you can't see here until a little bit after 2. And I said, well, why? And they said, because she's in an AA meeting over there from 1 to 2. And I said, well, you told me to be here before 1, and I came to visit her.

And they said, well, to visit her, you gotta go in that room first. And I said, what's in that room? And they said, you go in and find out. So I went into this room and there was a guy at, you know, the head of the table and there were all the other family members of the inmates. And and, we and it it was an institutional Al Anon meeting, and a guy was doing the meeting.

And what he said you know, I I I remember it exactly now. And, I'll share it with you what he said during that meeting. He said that, you have to get a mental picture in your mind of the alcoholic. Just close your eyes and get this picture of the person. And as you're looking at that person, the shape seems to quiver a little bit and move, and something moves off to the side and comes out of that body.

And now there's 2 things there. And what came out is the bottle, and what you're looking at is the alcoholic and the alcoholism. And what you have to do is separate the person from the disease. And he said that all those actions, the things that she did, were not her. They were the symptoms of her illness.

And to show you how impressed I was with that, I stood up and announced to everybody else in the room that he was crazy. And with that, I walked out and did my slam the door routine. I slammed the door of the room. And that was my first Al Anon meeting. But they told me I had to come back, you know, next week if I wanted to have visiting privileges.

So I came back and I where do I came back? Started coming back to Al Anon for visiting privileges. And I went to the meetings out there. And after the treatment center, she informed me she wasn't coming home. She was going to a halfway house with alcoholic women.

And I said, for how long? And she said, I don't know. And to show her how supportive I was, I said, give me the address, and when you get there, all your clothes will be on the doorstep, anemone. Because I figured she had the 30 day cure. Now come home and be the good wife, the good mother that she should have always been.

And I was upset that she wasn't doing that. So she went off to this treatment I mean, not a treatment center, but a halfway house. And a lady named Marge was the house mother who ran the place. And Marge had 5 or 6 years sober at the time. And there were maybe 6 or 7 gals in the house.

And I would go out there and, see her on a Sunday afternoon, and, she'd say hello. I'd say hello. We'd fight, and Mars would kick me out. And one time I went out and I I drove away and I came back and I walked up the sidewalk and I had bought a bouquet of flowers. And I standing at the door with this bouquet of flowers and Marge is looking out through the little window in the door and just I could couldn't hear her, but I could see the read the you know, lip read the words, go away.

And she wouldn't let me back in. So I went home and I got on the phone and I called the the place and I got Marge on the phone. And, I told her that, you know, she wasn't gonna stop me from seeing my wife and, she you know, I just might come out there and do something like break all the windows or burn the place down. And, I accused her of trying to break up our happy marriage. And, and, Charlene had a good sense not to come home for about 11 months.

And during that time, though, I was going to Al Anon and, you know, things started to calm down a little bit. And eventually, she came home and, we started to try to make a life of it in recovery in this program. Neither one of us knew if it would work. Marjorie's foot was firmly planted in her backside and mine, and, we were told that we had to give it a try. And we started to go to meetings, and we were told that, don't even sit in the same room with each other in the evening.

So she would sit in one room and read the big book. I'd sit in another room, read the Al Anon literature. We'd get in the car, drive to a meeting. We went to where there were both meetings, AA and Allanon, you know, to in each room. And then on the way home, I'd turn to her and I'd say, what was your meeting about?

And and she'd tell me. And she'd say, what was your meeting about? And I'd tell her. And the first thing that we could talk about without a fight was, what was your meeting about? And that fell right in line with 1 an old timer in my meeting told me.

Name name is Mary. And before I went to this one particular meeting, I'd gone to several other meetings, and one guy said, I'm gonna take you to the best Al Anon meeting in town. And he took me to this meeting on a Tuesday night in Takoma Park, Maryland, the Brightwood Tuesday night meeting, and he said this is the best meeting. And I went in there and I'm sitting there looking around. I said, Bob, are we in the right place?

And he said, yeah. This is it. And the reason I asked him the question was because Bob and I were the only white people in the room. We were surrounded by a bunch of, you know, African American little women. And I started to listen and and that group became my home group.

And I found out that this was real black belt Al Anon. And it was a step meeting, and every week was on the steps. And Mary was kind of like the the real guru of the group, the old timer. And, her husband, Harry, was in the AA group. And I got the right to listen to what Mary said, and and Mary was a, you know, a black lady.

Mary was my first sponsor, and I was looking for my twin, somebody just like me, my same background. I was 32 years old, and Mary is a 60 year old black lady. We fit perfectly. And, and then but I wanted to sit near her and Mary would sit on one side of the table one week, so the next week I come in and I'd sit there. And Mary and her little group would walk in and they'd be over on the other side table.

So the other week I'd go and I'd go on that side of the table. And every week, they'd sit somewhere else, and I was having trouble catching up with Mary. And then we had a group anniversary and Mary said to me she said, now I'm gonna have you do something real important at the anniversary. And I said, oh, what? You know, I'm thinking they want me to talk.

What? You know, I had never given a lead in my life. You know, I've been in less than a year. And, she said, no. I want you to know when.

So we had this sit down dinner and everybody's eating on paper plates and everything. And then Mary gives me a wave and I go over to her and, she says, now here. And she gives me this big green plastic garbage bag. And I'll walk down between the tables and the people will drop their dirty bites in it. And that was my first service job.

And, after the meeting, Mary and I were talking and she said to me she said, you've come a long way. And I said, well, I don't you know, I didn't recognize any change in myself, but, of course, other people see you and they do recognize changes. And when I first got to Al Anon, there was no difference between my face and a tomato. I mean, I was my face was beet red. I was so angry and so mad all the time.

And Mary looked at me and she said, you know, I was raised in the ghetto, and I was raised around guys with criminal records as long as your arm. But I was never afraid of a man in my life until you came into our meeting. That's why I couldn't catch her. But when that meeting ended every week and we held hands and said the serenity prayer, And after this or the lord's prayer. And after the lord's prayer, we said, keep coming back.

It gets better. A lot of those ladies were physically afraid of me when I came into their meeting because I was so angry, and my face was just red all the time. But every week, they told me, come back. And I don't think there's any place other than this program where you will find unconditional love like that. And they kept telling me to come back.

And that group was, our home group, for about three and a half years. And then my job situation, I had a job offer. I I I left the job I was at, took a job that was terrible. I didn't like it. And then God stepped in and gave me an opportunity for a pretty good job, in Dayton, Ohio.

And we literally asked permission to move. We asked Marge. We asked Mary. We talked to both of them, and they said, you have enough program with you. You can take it to Ohio.

And if they had said no, I would have turned the job down and stayed because we were at the point we did what they told us to do. Because that it we didn't know anything else to do, You know? And they were the ones who guided us and got us to where, you know, we were trying to kill each other every day. So it was 1977, and, we were coming to Dayton, Ohio. And by the way, that meeting in the treatment center where I lasted about 10 minutes and walked out, that was February 3, 1974, and I consider that my Al Anon anniversary.

So, so we moved to Dayton. Well, actually, we came for a house hunting trip and looked at places and and went to a couple of meetings. And I found out about the Ohio State Al Anon Conference. It was held at Denison University, Middle East of Columbus. And it just happened that the conference was the weekend between my jobs.

I ended work in Washington on, on Friday, and I was starting work in Dayton on Monday. So Friday, I left and I drove and I came to Ohio, and I pulled into Denison University and walked in and registered. And I spent the weekend at the Ohio State Al Anon Conference with 500 and so Al Anon's. And by the time I got I got to Dayton, I'd already met a bunch of people from meetings in, you know, that I would be going to in Dayton, Ohio. I made Al Anon friends before I even got to town, you know.

And, I went to a group Monday night, and then on Tuesday night, I went to Tuesday night Centerville. And that group is still my home group tonight. I've been going there ever since then in 1977. And there were people there that had been at the state conference. So I had friends before I ever made it to my new town.

And we started to get to know some people. We missed our friends in DC terribly. The people who knew us and loved you know, when we were brand new and loved us anyways, and we didn't think we would ever have friends like that again. But, of course, as time goes on and we met new friends and and we started to fit in with the people there. And I got involved in service as a group representative and went off to the Ohio area assembly.

And then we, had our district meeting, and I wound up being elected district representative. So we're off to a state assembly, and it's election time. And there was no timer named Peggy, who was my replacement for Mary. She was, you know, been in a long time and and I I loved her dearly. And Peggy was sitting next to me at assembly, and we had elections.

And, a lady from Youngstown was elected delegate. And then they had the Doctor stand up who would be willing to serve as alternate delegate, and nobody stood up. And I didn't know what was going on, but nobody nobody was standing up. And all of a sudden, I had a terrible pain. That's because Peggy's elbow was embedded in my ribs and she wham.

And she I I said, why are you doing? And she said, you can do that. And I said, what do I gotta do? And she said, if the delegate can't go to New York, you go instead for it's a week. You can do that.

I said, I guess, maybe I could. So I raised my hand. Nobody else did. I stood up and I was unanimously elected. And, so I was in Ohio 14 months and I was there alternate delegate.

And, so, that I was out in the delegate for 2 years, and then in the 3rd year, this was, 1981, I got a call from the lady in Youngstown who said that, she was going to have surgery and could not make the conference. And I had to go as her alternate. I was terrified. I mean, you know, it's like the vice president. You know, you you sit around and you got nothing to do unless the president dies.

You know? And and but all all of a sudden, I'm told, you know, you gotta go. And there was a preconference delegates meeting in Chicago, and I I tootle off there and I met a bunch of other delegates and everything. And and then, when time came, I got on an airplane. I flew to New York in 1981 for the Al Anon World Service Conference as the alternate from Ohio.

And what a wonderful experience. You know, we talk in our readings about, you know, Al Anon as a whole. And what I found at the world service conference was the fellowship as a whole. Not just how we do it in Dayton or how we do it in Virginia, but how we do it in Colorado, how we do it in California, how we do it in Florida, what works, what doesn't work. And I went back after the conference.

Oh, can't omit this. I got to the hotel in New York and checked in, and I'm walking around like a lost sheep. And this little old lady comes by and she says, are you here for the conference? And I said, yeah. I'm I'm, you know, the delegate or alternate from Ohio.

And she said, well, you know, the conference didn't start till next day. And she said, we're having an Al Anon meeting over here. You wanna go? I said, yeah. So I went over and sat down at the meeting, and it wasn't till about 3 fourths of the way through the meeting that I realized that the little old lady who grabbed me in the lobby and took me into the room was Lois w.

So, literally, the first person I met in New York was our cofounder, Lois. And so I went back after the conference and made up the conference report and gave it at the area assembly. And I traveled around to Toledo and Columbus and Cleveland and Youngstown and Cincinnati to all the major cities, and the the groups all got together to hear the report, people who had didn't attend the assembly. And, then in the fall, we had our elections. And this time, candidates for the delegate came out of the woodwork.

There were about 6 or 7 people who had been at the assembly for a lot of years, I mean, a long time. And we had the election, and, you know, the 3rd or 4th ballot, whatever it was, they called my name the required number of times, and the chairman said, we have a delegate. And I just sat there and thought looked, and I put my hands to my face. I said, these lunatics don't know what they've done. And, I was selected the panel 22 delegate from Ohio.

And after the conference, I went home and I told Charlene and I said, I gotta make a phone call. And I picked up the phone and I called Marilyn, and I I called Marge, her first sponsor in AA. AA. And I told her what had happened. And Marge laughed and she said, I knew if you stuck with it, you'd finally get this program.

And, so I had the opportunity to go to 3 more world service conferences as delegates. So I actually attended 4 of them. And, of course, at each conference, our cofounder, Lois w, was there and had the opportunity to go to stepping stones 2 of those years and to sit at Bill w's desk and look at the book there with the pictorial depiction of the 12 steps. Somebody had made this up for them and he's on his desk there in the little house away from the main house. And, look at all all their the memories and all all the things there from the early days of the program, to meet people like Henrietta Sutcliffe, who was the 1st volunteer at the World Service Office, and and a lot of the early people who helped get the world service office in Al Anon going.

It was just an amazing, wonderful adventure. And I was sitting there in Lois's front room at at Stepping Stones and talking to Lois, and she's sitting in a chair. And Lois had a cup of coffee, and she reached over for the coffee and it tilted and it spilled. Well, immediately, there were about 12 people around with napkins and everything. Everybody's cleaning up the coffee.

And then I'm I'm I'm sitting there next to Lois, and I said, Lois, you know what this means, don't you? And she said, what? And I said, when I get back to Ohio, I have to tell everybody that you're not perfect. And she laughed and she chuckled. And she said, please do that.