Mel B. from Toledo, OH discussing AA History at a Recovery History Event Clarkston, MI

Hi, I'm still Mel B Mel Berger. I still an alcoholic and I'm really out, almost out of gas, but I they didn't want me to tell some of my personal story today. I talked mostly about the PowerPoint there, which I hadn't seen and but I knew most of the things that were up there. Well, I'm 85 years old. I've been sober since

April 15th of 1950 and I've been thank you.

I I went to my first a a meeting though in early October of 1948 out in Ventura Count in the Ventura, CA area. But I was born in Nebraska at a very early age and grew up there during what is called the great, Great American Depression. And I used to blame most of my troubles on my parents and my family situation when I grew up. My parents divorced in the middle

mid 30s and I seem to have had been the kind of the bad guy in the family. If anything went wrong, why I was the one responsible for it even if I wasn't there. At least that's what I thought. I didn't get along well in school. I I know now that I had a lot of resentments and self pity and that kind of thing. I had an older sister who did very well in everything, and I was always compared unfavorably with my older sister and a younger brother who came along and did

well too. He just passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was six years younger than I. And then my parents divorced and my dad remarried and I never really had a very good

relationship with my stepmother. There was always some something bad or nothing bad, but it was just maybe my resentment over what had happened, what I discovered. Alcohol.

Well, my dad always let me have a

sip of beer or whiskey or something like that. In fact, his theory was that if you let people drink moderately, they'll never become drunks. But I shot that theory to heck. And the first time I remember really getting drunk, I was home in my daddy's house and he and my stepmother were gone, and I was working on a bicycle. I was maybe 13 or 14 years old and I started drinking some of his white wine

and I got smashed

and I knew right then what alcohol would do for you. And so ever after that, whenever alcohol was around, I usually overdid it. I went fishing with an uncle, drank all his beer and that kind of thing. I dropped out of school and just before World War Two started in the 1941 and I've been failing and many of my classes. I actually had only about a year's high school credit.

I didn't get a high school diploma, a real high school diploma until I was 41 years old

and I finally got a college degree when I was 50 and but I found out that a 50 year old college graduate is like a 35 year old virgin. Nobody cares anymore and

I I I drifted down one incident that stood out New Year's Eve 1941 World War Two had just started and I was working in an all night truck stop out in western Nebraska. Terrible truck stop. No self respecting trucker would stop there but, and I was the all night guy, the only guy there. And a trucker from

Arkansas came in with his girlfriend, had a bottle and I started drinking with him

and about midnight that truck driver had knocked me into a snowdrift.

I was always hitting people on the fists with my nose. Once I started drinking, I was actually kind of a fearful, shy, timid, timid guy. But drinking made me change. A few drinks and I could become a different person. And I really think today that that's one of the signs of alcoholism, when a person has this sudden change with just a few drinks. I went down to Denver and worked in an Army hospital there and they let me drink in the PX.

And even if I after I went in town, I'd go back out there and sneak, sneak in the PX and pretend to be an employee and drink. And then about May or June of 42, I went out to California and caught a ride with a guy from Salt Lake City to Reno and he came, gave me a couple snorts from his bottle and and when I wanted 1/3 snort he said, kid. He said you're one of those people who can't drink. I don't know what there was about me after just two drinks

that would make him say that, but I guess

there I was, 16 years old and being diagnosed as an alcoholic by another drunk. I guess that was it. And I spent a year out there in the Vallejo, CA area, and that's where I learned about wine, that there was such a thing as a wino. And I drank quite a bit of wine off and on that that year. I didn't get along very well. I lost jobs and

I just had fights with people and that kind of thing.

But that's where I learned the term wino. And I've even though I drank wine, I was fearful of becoming a weno. But of course, after I got an AAI, learned that there's no real such thing as a wino. That's just a guy that drinks wine because it's cheap. Give him some Chivas Regal, he'll drink that too. You know,

I got back to Nebraska and and have a short time later I joined the Navy and I spent the latter part of the war in the Navy. Went out in the Pacific and it was in five. I got 5 battle stars, but I didn't do much fighting. I was on an amphibious type ship and there was one incident though that stood out

on March of 1945, Late March of 45, we were anchored off the island of Samar in the Philippines

and we were permitted to go ashore on a beer party. They gave us three cans of beer just get they carried it on the ship and gave it to you when you if you were not on the ship. There was a recreation area over on the beach. The Filipino came up and he had his shirt stuffed with beer bottles, which was called, he said it was potato whiskey. It was $5 or 10 pesos a bottle.

Well, I had no intention of buying any of his potato whiskey

and by gosh I got my three cans of beer and another guy gave me his and another guy sold me his and suddenly there was no more beer on the beach. What did I do? I looked up the potato whiskey man and I bought 1 bottle of his stuff and I remember buying one more bottle and the next thing I knew it was about 4:00 in the morning, 0400 Navy time, and I was on the boat. It had been hoisted on the Davis and boy was I sick. I was terribly sick.

I must have thrown up and all of that. Somebody had come along and urinated on me, or at least

that frequently happened

after I got sober, those people seemed to disappear. We were always doing that.

You know, I didn't get anything out of that incident until after I came in AA and I would look back on it and say, my gosh, perfectly dry without having a drink. I wouldn't touch anything that might be poisonous or something like that. My God, those nine cans of beer just changed everything.

And I think that's what happens to some Alcoholics. They started out drinking something and wind up drinking wood alcohol or something and die or that kind of thing. The the point is that once we start drinking, why we throw caution to the winds and do things we wouldn't do perfectly sober. We call up the boss and tell him what a jerk he is and, and things like that. All I got out of the Navy and went back home in Nebraska and I stayed drunk until my money was gone. And finally about 1947

I was getting shut off in bars and things like that. And then I drifted out to Idaho where my father lived and stayed there for a while. Finally, early in 48, I was wound up destitute in a little town on the Snake River, Weezer, Idaho, and I was too ashamed to go back to my dad's house, so I went out to work on a railroad Gandy gang on the Union Pacific. These were guys that lived in railroad cars and worked on the track.

And I stayed there for about a month. And it kind of scared me because these guys, most of them were Alcoholics, and it lived years and years up and down that railroad working on the tracks. And most of them didn't have more than the clothes on their backs. It was just they'd talk about how bad the cops were in Pocatello or Salt Lake City or something like that. So I didn't want to be like those guys. But then I got paid and I went into Weezer and I went into a pool hall with a guy and somebody handed me a beer.

Next morning I wake up in jail and I didn't even know where they'd found me. They'd finally passed out on this

sidewalk. Well, I went back and stayed with my dad for a while, and then I went over to Boise and got drunk again and I was broke and I took a cab back without a cent to pay the cab driver. Well, that's not the thing to do and I wound up getting a 10 day jail sentence over that short time. After that I again had a fight with my dad and went down to California where my sister and brother-in-law lived.

Ventura, CA and I got started again. I got a job working in the oil fields and everything, but then I started drinking again and I was right getting in trouble again. One night the cops took me home and I've missed work and everything else and finally that fall I got in touch with A A. Now I've covered a lot of time here.

There was a lot of bad things happened, blackouts and fights and getting rolled a few times,

jail several times. But that brought me to the point of wanting to go to AA and there had been a lot of publicity about a. A because it was new then, it was only 13 years old. A A had 68,000 members then. I think I've since build it up to 2,000,000. And,

but you know, a guy called me up a couple days later where I was rooming and he, he took me to a meeting over in little town, Santa Paula, CA.

And by gosh, that was some meeting. There was about 10 guys down on a church basement. I didn't even like going into church. I was so much against that sort of thing. But a guy came in roaring drunk. And you know, all of the years I've been in a, A and, and meetings I've been to, I've hardly ever seen a guy come to a meeting roaring drunk. And this is a guy that apparently had been in the group there. And those guys were very kind to him. They took him home,

some of them took him home and everything. I thought that was just nice

and I learned a lot about AA. And as I said earlier, the second and third members I met were from Akron. These were the people who told me Bill Dotson was the Guinea pig and all that. And they talked about Akron too. You know, they moved out there from Akron and, and they talked about some of those people as casually as you and I would talk about members of our own group, people we knew. So I was really impressed with a A and I stayed sober for five months and really did a pretty good job for a while.

But then I got out of work and for some strange reason, I joined the Army and had no business doing that. And I wound up getting kicked out of the Army in seven months with an undesirable discharge, had gone back to drinking. And the place where I was kicked out was New Brunswick, NJ. That's where Camp Kilmer is. That's where I was discharged. And, you know, I didn't even get out of Camp Kilmer without getting rolled. I lost my money, my belt, my time, my railroad tickets

and even my undesirable discharge. Somebody in New Brunswick has an undesirable discharge he didn't earn.

Well, I got back to Nebraska and I stayed that year. That was September of 1949. And I stayed with my mother and stepdad there. And I, I'm real still ashamed today that I leached on those people and it was probably a problem to him and, and all of that. But finally and early April, I guess,

I got a check from the government and I went on what I hope was my last drunk. And anyway, I wound up

real sick and hungover 1 morning and the neighbor lady came over and talked me into going out to the state hospital, which is was on a hill overlooking the town. So I went out there and signed myself in and I spent seven weeks there and I got back in a A and I stayed in a A ever since. This has been my life. And that was April 15th, 1950, that I went to that state hospital.

The nice thing about a state hospital like that, unlike the treatment centers we have today, is that once you spend a few weeks there, why you don't want to go back. It wasn't a very pleasant place. Some ways it was good. There was a psychologist on the staff who was quite a bit of help to me. But when I left there, boy, I didn't ever want to go back. It was like being in a minimum security prison, I guess.

Well, after a few months in Nebraska,

I came out of Pontiac, MI I'd been sober five months, I think when I came, I I got an old car that had bald tires and everything. I wouldn't drive such a car across town today, but I drove that 800 miles from Nebraska to Pontiac. And I had an aunt and uncle there and they owned a little machine shop in Pontiac. And I went to work for them and I lived with them for six months.

And a guy in Nebraska had told me, well, you got the Pontiac. Nobody will even notice you. That's you'll be just a drop in the bucket out there.

Well, that wasn't true. I got to Pontiac, made some of the best friends I ever had. One of them was a doctor, a Doctor Cobb. I don't know if anybody ever heard of him. Leon Cobb, he died many, many years ago. He died about 50 years ago, I think. But he was a great friend to me. In fact, he even sold me a new car for some reason. He had a car that he wanted to sell and he took a mortgage and that was the first new car I ever got.

And then one fellow I met who really is kind of a legend around here

died a few years ago, was Chauncey Costello.

Now Chauncey had nine years sobriety when I came out, came to Pontiac and he met at a group called the Stevens Group at the All Saints Episcopal Church. And well, anybody was nine years sobriety in 1950. Well, that was an eternity. And oh, I was just awed by this guy. Well, then I moved away and moved to Detroit and then

to Jackson, MI in 1952

where I lived until 1972. And, but I always heard about Chauncey. I don't think I saw him those many years, but I always heard that he was active and involved, you know, and by gosh, about the early 60s, I mean the, the early 2 hundreds, I should say. I got an assignment to do some work for Guest House. I, I helped do their 50th anniversary booklet and I started going to meetings over here

and darned if Chauncey wasn't going to those meetings. And I got acquainted with him and he had 65 years sobriety the last time I saw him. And the last place I saw him was the same place where I had first met him in the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pontiac. My gosh. And then a year or two later he died, I guess. Well, I also saw him in Toronto in 2005 at the International Convention there. He was in a wheelchair by that time, but this guy was

right up to the very end. Now, I've known other people who have stayed sober 20304050 years before passing on, which tells me that a a has great staying power. Now, when the Detroit thing was read there, the history, Mike E, Mike Eshelman. I'm violating these people's anonymity, but they're all gone down. They can't do anything about it,

but

I think I heard Mike Eshelman give a talk in December of 1950,

and it was over at Pontiac, a big Saturday night meeting they had. And he had a tremendous story. He had been a Superintendent of a parts manufacturing company in Detroit, and but he had a drinking problem and he had been fired under very humiliating circumstances. They made him clean out his desk right in front of everybody and that kind of thing. He went home and he started a little alley shop. But he had this terrible resentment toward the guy who had fired him. Well,

then he got sober through Archie Trobridge and and so on. One thing he he always talked about was the Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. We didn't have much 1938. We didn't have literature to speak of, but that book really helped him. He and he first read it. He was in bed and he had to put it on a pillow to keep it propped up.

But anyway, he got sober and even saw the guy who had fired him

and went over and shook hands with him and so on. You know, he, he talked about things like that. But then his little shop suddenly grew into quite a business. I think he had three or 400 employees when I heard him speak in Detroit. So he'd become a very wealthy man, but a very humble man, never cocky or proud of his success or anything like that. I always remember that he was a good friend of

a legendary Salvation officer named Captain Tom Crocker,

who had been converted to the Salvation Army after being a drunk on Skid Row in in Detroit. And I even heard Tom Crocker speak later on through Mike.

But it was even this was the sort of guy that really impressed me part partly I suppose because of his great business success. But anyway, when he spoke there in 1950, he was 58 years old and now I was only 25.

And when you're 25, anybody 58 is senile. You know, they, and you know, I thought, well, this guy will be around a few more years and, and they'll pack him away. But I went to his 40th a a anniversary at down in Grosse Pointe. I was then living in Toledo in 1978. And one of the members knew Mike too, and he wanted to go to that meeting and he drove me down there with him. And and by gosh, Mike was sober 40 years

and I talked to him a number of times too.

I think he passed away shortly after that. But that's an example of the staying power of AAA. We got, we got something pretty good here for the long pole. Every now and then you read about some new new answer for alcoholism and oh, it's better than a A and all of that so on. Then you don't hear anything about it doesn't have staying power. CAA isn't about quitting, it's about staying quit. And if we really follow this program, we can stay quit, and that's what we do.

Sometimes people say that we don't. Only about 5% of the people who come here get sober or something like that. I don't have any idea what the percentage is. But it never was real high even that the first meetings I went to, that people would say, well, if, if we had everybody who came here was sober, we'd have to stack them up like cord wood, you know, because so many people had come. There were a lot of people who came and never stayed. But the fact is we're supposed to have about 2 million people

day and that means that every morning 2 million people get up and stay sober that day and drive sober and work sober and do all of that and art causing a lot of trouble. And so that's something for a a too. I don't know much about our percentages of those who come in because I know people come here for lots of reasons. They're sent by the courts and the boss forces them or the wife or somebody and they have no real interest or desire. But if you come here and you really have a gun with know that

got to change your life, by gosh, it'll work for you. I sometimes tell people that I have 60 years of sobriety, alcohol sobriety and 49 years of cigarette sobriety and 10 minutes of emotional sobriety, which which

that's just my way of saying that we're always working on those personal problems.

We don't get perfect or anything like that. And you know, the old things, this resentments, the laziness and procrastination, all of the things, the problems we had in sobriety, gosh, they're in, in drinking too. You know, I mean that we had problems in drinking and they're in sobriety too. They come up in new forms. And so actually I've just spent the last 60 years trying to grow up.

Now I'm 85 and well, what do I have left? 2530 years?

I don't know,

but it's, it's, it's been a great ride and a lot of wonderful things have happened to me. I've learned things. Now my wife is with me tonight. We are staying over in Rochester, that beautiful hotel over there. I'm really impressed. Well, my wife went to high school in Rochester. Her parents lived there and and she graduated from high school there in 1952

and Rochester was a much different place than and she just

amazed at what has happened there. But we were married there in the Saint Johns Lutheran Church. It's only about a mile maybe from where we're staying tonight. So kind of funny that we went full circle. We celebrated 50 years of marriage on September 3rd.

Thank you.

At least I celebrated it. I don't know if she did,

but the way we met, I after I moved to Jackson in 1952, I became involved in a lot of things that I'd never been able to get involved in drinking. I became an actor in the community theater there. I did 30 plays and I had in 1959, I had a role in The Great Sebastians. In fact, I was Sebastian, and there was one scene where Sebastian goes across the stage in his underwear

and she was working on the sets or something for that show. That's the first time she saw me

and she said I've got to have that man.

And

then we, her parents lived here in Rochester and when they found out I was in a a they didn't like that very well. They just didn't think it was very good. But in time why they began to see that that I wasn't a bad guy after all. And it worked out pretty well. We have 4 adult children and nine grandchildren and

so that's been my story. But I think a A has been the basis for all of it. So their principles of A, A now I don't think we follow the quiet time

that they had an Oxford Group. I got to know quite a bit about the Oxford Group. In 1978, the editor of the Grapevine called me and asked me if I knew anything about the Oxford Group. While I'd read something about it over the years. But they had received a manuscript from a man named Willard Hunter, who was not an alcoholic, but he had been an Oxford grouper since 1938. And they didn't let. They had submitted the manuscript for the Grapevine, but they wanted it rewritten.

So I wound up meeting Willard Hunter and rewriting the manuscript, and it wound up getting rejected by the Grapevine because they didn't want to give Frank Buchmann this much

publicity or anything. There are reasons why AA kind of separated itself from the Oxford Group, and Bill Wilson was very strong on that point because he felt that it was detrimental to AA to be connected with him after 1936 when Frank Buchmann had that unfortunate newspaper interview. And but, but the four absolutes, Bill always said that those were included in the 12 steps. I'm not sure

whether they are or not, but

I believe that we we try to do pretty much what the Oxford Group was doing. And the point is it has worked for us very well over the years. A Willard. He was a guy who had left Harvard Law School just to become part of the Oxford Group and follow Frank Bugman, and he had quite a career. He is a great guy. We became good friends. He died a couple years ago, but it seemed to me and partly that he was trying to remarry

a hey in the Oxford Group. I think we learned a lot from the Oxford Group, and we ought to honor them for all the good that they did for us and for the wonderful principles we got.

But we shouldn't be affiliated with them in any way. That's part of our history. But

but for that matter, we shouldn't be affiliated with anybody we should cooperate with. This is part of our tradition. We cooperate with everybody who comes along and well,

my gosh, well, thank you for that applause.

I'll go back and tell the people in Toledo that I got a standing ovation. I mean, ovulation, is that what is it

anyway?

The but I've had a great time in AAI think that the program has guided me. Now my wife and I, we do our, we can do our prayers every morning using the daily word meditation book and my own meditation book. And it seems to suffice for us. It's it carried us along. We've used the daily word probably for 40 years. But there are plenty of good meditation books. The early members of AAI think they will use one called the Upper Room. Probably you'll find one right here in this church.

It would be very good. Anything that gets us centered on God, our higher power,

right action, right thoughts. I think it works for us. And there have been many, many times when I've done the wrong thing and and then I've been able to draw back my horns and think about it, go back and make amends or make some change. I've kept from making big mistakes. When I moved to Detroit from Pontiac, I went worked in an engine plant and West side of Detroit

and I was working on assembly and we, we worked on these little engines and then we were supposed to push them along to the next station

when we got done with what we were doing. And a guy working with me, he kept trying to boss me. He wasn't a foreman or anything, but he kept telling me not to put my hand behind the engine when I pushed it. But one day I mistakenly had my hand there and I just happened to turn around and he had a look of hatred on his face and he pushed the next engine right up there and just in time I pulled my hand out. Oh gosh, I would have broken every hand in my body with us 2 engines coming together that way. And just for a second

or maybe a half second, there was a big Crescent wrench laying there on the tool back. And I felt like picking up that Crescent wrench and working this nut over that.

But then just as fast, something hit me and I had no resentment or anything at all. I just went on and kept about my work. You know, today I can't tell you what that guy looked like. I don't even remember how old he was or anything. But of course, if I'd picked up that wrench, I would be joined to him at the hip. There was no question about that. So I think the program, even when we're not on the

thinking rightly ourselves for a moment, the program helps us. Something in the big book says there are times when we're without defense against the first drink. Well, there are times when we're out without defense against that first terrible thought or the emotion and so on. But if we keep reading our literature and doing our meditations and trying to help others as best we can, by gosh, something will come through for us when we need it. The time we best need it.

Well, I want to sit down now. I think I've run completely out of gas,

but I, you know, I close my talks in a funny way. And I'm not sure this will be acceptable to this audience. But I have a song

that I wrote and I copied somebody's tune, of course. And of course, I thought I was plagiarizing, but somebody said, well, when the composer hears you sing it, he won't recognize his tune,

but it's a tribute to Bill and Bob. And, you know, when I was in the 6th grade, I tried to sing in front of the class and I failed. And I was 38 years old before I could sing a song before an audience.

It took me that long, but it took a A that I was finally able to come around that. And the name of this song is Once There Were Founders. And it's a tribute to Bill and Bob. Oh, I did sing a song for an older couple out in Palm Springs one day at an aviation convention. And a guy came up afterwards and he said, God, I always wished I could sing. Now I wish you could,

so you don't have to make any judgment. I'll just go ahead and sing the song and then I'll sit down.

Once there were founders, two men we esteem. They had a vision,

a sort of a dream, and though they had struggles, they had never complained. I wish they were with us again. Once there was darkness, no answer was known. Each of us faced a grim future alone. Then came their vision, and new life appeared. Our founders were with us back then.

Can you imagine their place in the universe

higher than Princess or kings? They opened the gates to a new way of life and all of the wonder it brings. Once there were founders, we honor them still. A doctor named Bob and a broker named Bill Dim was the path when their journey began. I wish they were with us again.

So over the long years, their stories were told.

Goals began to return to the fold. All that they told us

turned out to be true. Our founders were with us back then.

Can you imagine their place in the universe? Higher than Princess or kings, They opened the gates to a new way of life and all of the hunger it brings. Once there were founders, both gentle and kind, they gave us this program. It's yours and it's mine. When we came broken, they helped us to mend. I wish they were with us again.

So remember the gift from the founders we love. With help from our friends and the power above. Each day we have is a journey begun. I feel there now with us again. Yes, I feel there now with us again. Thank you.