55 Years Sober, 10 Minutes Emotionally Sober – AA Speaker – Mel B.
AA speaker Mel B. shares 55 years of sobriety from Nebraska to Ohio, his meeting with Bill Wilson, and why emotional sobriety took far longer than staying sober from alcohol.
Mel B. got sober in a state hospital in Nebraska at 24 after years of jail, homelessness, and the railroad gangs of Idaho. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his journey from a fearful kid in the Depression to 55 years sober—and shares stories of meeting Bill Wilson, photographing Bill at Dr. Bob’s grave, and working on Bill’s biography for AA World Services. The kicker: he’s had 55 years of alcohol sobriety and 45 years off cigarettes, but only “10 minutes of emotional sobriety.”
Mel B. describes his path to sobriety starting at age 14 when he discovered his father’s wine in Nebraska, through years of drinking in California oil fields, the Navy during World War II, and eventually hitting bottom in early 1950 at a state hospital at age 24. The AA speaker reflects on his close encounters with AA history—meeting Bill Wilson multiple times, photographing Bill at Dr. Bob’s gravesite in 1958, and later working on Bill’s biography “Pass It On” for AA World Services. He also explores early AA history, the Oxford Group’s influence, and the critical moments between Bill and Dr. Bob in Akron that launched the fellowship.
Episode Summary
Mel B. is an 80-year-old AA member with 55 years of continuous sobriety dating to April 15, 1950. But what makes this talk stand out isn’t just the length of his sobriety—it’s how he weaves his personal story with AA history, and how he opens the door to a deeper truth about recovery that most people miss.
He starts with a self-deprecating joke: 55 years sober from alcohol, 45 years sober from cigarettes, but “10 minutes of emotional sobriety.” It lands because it’s honest. Mel didn’t just quit drinking—he had to grow up. He tells his story through twelve limericks, a creative touch that lets him cover decades of chaos quickly: a fearful kid from Nebraska who discovered wine at 13, who became a wino in California, who spent 3.5 years in the Navy (five battle stars in the Pacific), who woke up rolled in the street after getting an undesirable discharge from the Army.
The drinking progressed the way it does. He’d get shut off in bars at 21. He worked on railroad gangs in Idaho—all alcoholics, he says, every one of them. He got kicked out and hitchhiked to Southern California. By October 1948, at 23, a man brought him to his first AA meeting in Santa Paula, California. He stayed sober five months, then spent 13 months relapsing until he landed in a state hospital in Nebraska at 24. That’s where his sobriety date is anchored.
But the heart of this AA speaker meeting isn’t just his personal recovery. Mel is a historian. He knew Bill Wilson. Not close friends, but he met him several times—heard him speak in Detroit in 1951, stood in line at Founders Day in 1956 and got a three-page letter back. He was there in 1958 when he photographed Bill at Dr. Bob’s gravesite, a picture that ended up in multiple books. Later, working in public relations, he was given the assignment to work on Bill’s biography. He spent two years researching, visiting Stepping Stones (Bill and Lois’s home), interviewing Nell Wing, reading Bill’s letters in the AA archives. His manuscripts became part of “Pass It On,” published in 1984.
What makes his historical perspective valuable is how he uses it to illuminate the spiritual backbone of AA. He traces the Oxford Group’s influence—how a man named Frank Buchman founded it in 1908 after overcoming a massive resentment through a spiritual experience. He explains how the Oxford Group’s principles (restitution, prayer, admitting faults) became the steps. He talks about Henrietta Cyberlain, the daughter-in-law of Goodyear’s founder, who lived in a gatehouse in Akron and was the bridge between Bill and Dr. Bob. She recognized Dr. Bob’s denial before he did. When Bill called looking for an alcoholic to work with, Henrietta had just three weeks earlier gotten Dr. Bob to admit his drinking problem at a special Oxford Group meeting. Without that admission, she wouldn’t have known who to call.
Mel recounts the famous meeting: Bill, broke after a failed proxy fight, staying at the Portage Country Club, going to the gate house for dinner on Mother’s Day 1935. Dr. Bob was upstairs sleeping off a drunk after bringing his wife a potted plant. They talked for five hours. Dr. Bob later said it was the first time he’d met someone who understood alcoholism from personal experience. When Dr. Bob had to attend a medical convention and came home drunk again, it was Anne (Dr. Bob’s wife) who talked Bill into staying. “One more try,” she said. That surrender—Dr. Bob waking the next morning and choosing to “do whatever it takes”—led to him performing surgery, then going around Akron making direct amends to everyone he’d wronged. He never drank again.
These details matter because they show how AA wasn’t built on perfect people or perfect circumstances. It was built on willingness, on women like Henrietta and Anne recognizing when someone was ready, on Bill’s humility (he suffered from depression for two-thirds of his later life, something that “pissed” Mel off at first until he understood it as humility). Mel also shares something personal about Bill’s depression—that Bill coped by walking, and that he wrote the 12 and 12 while still struggling with depression. That’s not a buoyant book, Mel says, but that’s the reality of sobriety: you get sober, you stay sober, and you deal with the problems of living like everyone else.
The talk ends with Mel singing an original song, “Once There Were Founders,” a tribute to Bill and Bob. At 80, he’s still taking singing lessons. He jokes that his singing teacher said he should be on Oprah—and he’d like that, “and also like to be on her show.” It’s cornball and self-aware at once, which matches his whole approach: dignified but willing to be ridiculous, serious about recovery but not about himself.
What a listener takes away is this: sobriety isn’t just about not drinking. It’s about connection—to history, to the people who came before, to the principles that work when you work them. And it’s about staying humble enough to admit that 55 years in, there’s still emotional work to do.
Notable Quotes
I have 55 years of alcohol sobriety and 45 years of cigarette sobriety and 10 minutes of emotional sobriety.
When I was bleeding, I went to a meeting and friends helpfully gave me an earful.
I didn’t become a drunk overnight or anything like that, but right there, I found something that would give me a different feeling about myself and the world and everything else.
The best defense was no defense at all.” (on Bill Wilson’s response to the 1963 Harper’s Magazine attack on AA)
This fearful young man soon got better, and escaped from John Barleycorn’s fetter. He lives day by day and takes time to pray and follows the steps to the letter.
Dr. Bob said later that this was the first human being he’d ever talked to who knew what he was talking about with regard to alcoholism from personal experience.
When we came broken, they helped us to mend. I wish they were with us again.
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Thank you very much. This is I'm Mel Berger, an alcoholic >> and uh really I'm terribly nervous tonight.
The uh I've been getting a great buildup out here and I I think I think I've been oversold a little bit here. But um this is really a nice just a nice group here tonight. And I've been to three AA meetings since we got here Thursday.
And this is just great. This is the my the day I would have my regular meeting back in Toledo and 2:00 in the afternoon. I I belong to the RAP road group out there.
It's about 10 miles west of town out in the country. And I told him this morning at the meeting when I'm driving out there for our 2:00 Saturday afternoon meeting, there's no place in the world I'd rather be than right there. That's a just something I feel.
Well, I've uh I guess we start out by saying given our sobriety date, my sobriety date is April 15, 1950. And I tell people that I have 55 years of alcohol sobriety and 45 years of cigarette sobriety and 10 minutes of emotional sobriety. I got uh I I got to be 80 years old somehow.
I'm 80 years old. I'm I also say I'm so old that I can remember when a gay bachelor was a guy who chased women. But uh I I want to thank you for this podium.
I like a podium that covers me up in in case I forget to zip up. And at at my age, I sometimes forget to zip down. I asked somebody what you do about that and they said well it depends.
Well, you you met my wife Lori there and we've we've been married 45 years and I also tell people she's probably the only woman in the country that could put up with me for 45 years. Although many of them would like me for one night. Well, well, anyway, I I would like to tonight I would like to u tell my personal story and then just a few things about AA history that I learned.
Uh, as Chad said, I I did know Bill Wilson. I didn't have a long friendship with him like that little blurb implied. I did just I heard him speak for the first time in 51 and I think the last time I talked with Bill briefly was in 64 but over the years I met him a few times in the New York office and also heard him speak several times and I took some pictures of him in 1958 at Dr.
Bob's grave site in Akran and those pictures that one picture has been used in several books now and I knew at the time that I took it that that's what was going to happen to it. You know, you certain things you feel in the program. They just they just work out that way.
But I had covered my story in a I write lirigs once in a while and uh I got a little bit of Irish background. I have two Irish great grandmothers. That may be where I got my alcoholism, but I I don't have any resentment because that's where I also got my good looks.
Uh but uh anyway this is my uh story in 12 limmericks 12 verses. A fearful young man from Nebraska drank amounts that would surely a gastia. He had take any old slop and drink till he had dropped and finally fell on his asa.
But that man from Nebraska got well. That's the story he now wants to tell. He had loads of self-pity and life was quite shitty.
But AA took him out of that hell. He went to a place on a hill. It was run for the mentally ill.
Some thought he was crazy and maybe just lazy or a chap just in search of a thrill. He admitted his problem was boozing. It had gone past the point of mere choosing.
He was hooked on the stuff and was now on his douff and booze was the cause of his losing. He learned that the problem in drinking was linked to the way he was thinking. He needed to hear how resentments and fear had made his life useless and stinking.
Though his emotions were raw and still bleeding, he took time to start some good reading. He started to look at AA's big book and found answers he had always been needing. He found that a god of his choosing could help him give up all that boozing.
The book made it plain that he could abstain, though life might be tough and confusing. That man from Nebraska, still fearful, saw days that were far less than cheerful. But when he was bleeding, he went to a meeting and friends helpfully gave him an earful.
He learned to share secrets with others, with folks who were sisters and brothers. It gave them all gain, though sometimes with pain, and improved them as fathers and mothers. This fearful young man soon got better, and escaped from John Barleyorn's feder.
He lives day by day and takes time to pray and follows the steps to the letter. He knows that his status in life and the love his of his children and wife is a gift from AA that came day by day and brought him from misery and strife. He lives now in Ohio's glass city, a town that some folks might pity.
Though some think it dull, his life is quite full and AA has made things quite pretty. I want to give my little uh thanks to Thank you. Well, I'll still tell what happened in the the story.
I was born in Norfor, Nebraska in 1925 and grew up there during the depression. And I guess I grew up with a lot of resentments and self-pity and fear. all of the things that go hand inhand with alcoholism.
And I had a I guess what today would be called a dysfunctional family. My parents separated in the mid30s and there was a lot of resentment and self-pity about that. I had an older sister who did very well and a younger brother who also did well but I was in the midi in the middle and I was a really a great underachiever and it it seemed that um there was a barrier between me and other people.
Uh I didn't get along well with other kids. Uh and uh that was one thing that was kind of a benefit that I didn't get along with people because when as I became more dysfunctional if anybody any other kids had been planning on robbing a filling station or doing something bad like that, they wouldn't have invited me along. Uh even the guys who were in trouble didn't like me very well.
So that's uh that's how I grew up. But when I was about 13 or 14, I got in some of my dad's wine. And boy, I found something.
I didn't become a drunk overnight or anything like that, but right there, I found something that registered that there was something would give me a different feeling about myself and the world and everything else. And uh I think my alcoholism started somewhere there. Uh, but I didn't, of course, become a drunk overnight or anything like that.
But I went out fishing with an uncle and drank all of his beer. And by by 1941, I had dropped out of high school and my dad and his my stepmother were living out in Scotsluff, Nebraska, which is just north here, north and east a little ways. I dropped out of school there and I just wasn't performing well at anything.
And uh I finally got kicked out of you know my parents had custody fights about me. Each one wanted the other to take me and the um and I I wound up going down to Denver about early maybe February January or February of 1942. I was 16 years old.
I dropped out of school. Had about a year's credit in high school. I went uh to work in the Fitz Simmons General Hospital in Denver and I discovered I could drink in their PX.
They had beer in their PX and even though I was only 16 years old, I go in there and drink with the soldiers and other people who work there. And I worked at a few other places in Denver. And then around May or June, I went out to California.
And I remember catching a ride with a guy out of Salt Lake City. Uh and u he had a bottle and he gave me two or three slugs out of his bottle and then when I wanted another he said, "Kid, you're one of those people who can't drink." Now there I was 16 years old and I didn't know it, but this guy who was probably a drunk himself had diagnosed me as an alcoholic. Well, I wound up spending a year in Valo, California.
I worked for a while at the Mar Island Navyyard and other places around there. I had a habit of getting fired from jobs for not getting along well with people and also for not doing my work. But there in Valo, I discovered that's right near the Napa Valley.
I discovered wine. Now, you know, there were goofy people around and somebody would say, "He's a wino." Well, I didn't want to be a wino, but you know, you could get a bottle of wine there for 2530 cents. They had little neighborhood stores and you could take a jar in and fill it up with wine out of a barrel in the back for 15 or 20 cents.
So, it was easy to become a wino. But, u I discovered after I got an AA that uh a wino is no different than a beer or a whiskey. we're we're we're drinking it for the alcohol that's in it.
And um so finally around March of 43, I left Valoa, went back to Nebraska where my mother lived and was there a couple months and and I was starting to drink, get drunk now and then and find uh find ways to find booze and so on. And I got drunk one night and just really got beaten up badly. Now, that was something that would happen to me every now and then.
I was always hitting people on the fist with my nose after uh when I'd been up there in Scots Bluff after I dropped out of school on New Year's Eve in 1941, a truck driver and his girlfriend had come in with some with a bottle and I'd started drinking with him and about midnight he had knocked me into a snow drift. So, these are things that happened to me. Well, then in May of 1943, I joined the Navy and I spent three and a half years in the Navy and two years of it out in the Western Pacific during uh this was during World War II.
The actually I don't know if there was any connection, but the war started to turn in our favor the very month I enlisted and uh they u I wound up on an amphibious ship. They called them LSTs. They were ships that would run right up on the beach.
They had bow doors and they would disorgge tanks and weapons and everything else, trucks. And so I wound up w getting five battle stars out in the Pacific. But um in fact, I was in Okinawa when the atomic bomb was dropped on this.
But there was one incident that happened in the Navy. Now I did quite a bit of drinking, but one instant incident stood out. We were anchored in the Philippines late March of 1945 and we were all loaded up with troops and supplies and everything else.
We knew we were leaving the next day. Well, they let half uh a third of the ship's company go ashore. This was a little island in the Philippines.
They had a little recreation area and they gave you three cans of beer and uh they gave it to you. They carried it on the ship. You couldn't drink it on the ship, but they gave it to you when you went ashore.
So, I went ashore and as I got off the boat, the Liberty boat on the dock, a Filipino came up and he had his shirt stuffed with beer bottles. And he said this was potato whiskey and it was $5 a bottle, 10 pesos, I think. Well, I turned it down because we had been warned about this bad stuff that people were selling.
And so, I had my three cans of beer. Another guy gave me his and I bought three more. And then suddenly there was nothing more to drink on that beach.
So I look up the potato whiskey man and I bought bought his bottle and I remember buying one more. And then the next thing I knew it was 4:00 in the morning 0400 Navy time. And I was in the boat.
It had been hoisted on the Davidits. They had carried me back to the boat and then just hoisted hoisted me up. And there I was at 4:00 in the morning really sick, terribly sick.
And I we we left the next day for Okinawa. We were in on the invasion of Okinawa, which was April 1st, 1945, Easter Sunday. I think I was still sick when I got there.
And u I didn't get anything out of that experience until after I got into AA and realized that I'd had the sanity to turn down something that might be harmful when I hadn't had anything to drink. But then with nine cans of beer, I got anything. And that's why people you find out that people die of drinking wood alcohol and all of that.
You know, I've been wondering about all this ethanol that they're putting in gas tanks. You know, that is probably drinkable. And uh uh yeah, cuz that's what alcohol is, you know.
Uh I what what'll happen when alcoholics discover that? Uh when you can buy it for $2 a gallon. Well, I got out of the Navy in in late 1946 and went home to Nebraska and you know, I stayed drunk as long as my money lasted and I didn't even realize that I was on a continuous drunk and then by 1947 I got started uh getting shut off in bars now and then.
In fact, I could get shut off in a bar after two two drinks sometimes, not always, but there was something about me. I think these bartenders have radar and they know who's going to be troublesome. And I could almost tell when a bartender was going to shut me off.
There I was only 21 years old and already so bad that I was getting shut off in bars and my behavior was pretty bad too. And uh I was wearing out my welcome in it had never been warm anyhow and I was wearing it out more and more. Well, then I went out to Idaho where my dad lived out near Boise, Idaho and um wear out my welcome there and finally wound up early in 1948 destitute in a little town on the Oregon Idaho border and I was ashamed to go back to my dad's house.
So I went out and I worked on a railroad Gandandy gang. And you know those are guys that worked worked up and down the railroad, lived in railroad cars, all alcoholics, every one of them. They they couldn't run that railroad without those guys and worked on the tracks.
You know, they did the tapping and the ballasting and all of that. And it's kind of scared me that when I looked at what those guys what their lives were like and so on and they'd sit around in the railroad car at night and talk about, oh, you don't want to get picked up in Pocutella or watch out for those cops in Salt Lake City and all this kind of thing. Well, I wasn't going to be like them.
Well, I get a get paid after about a month and I go into this little town of Weezer, Idaho. By gosh, I wake up the next morning in jail and I don't even remember where they found me. I passed out on the sidewalk at 1:30 in the morning.
And uh so well, I went back and stayed with my dad for a while. And then I took a I got drunk over in Boise and took a cab 30 miles without a scent to pay the cab driver. Well, you know, that doesn't go over.
And uh I wound up getting a jail sentence out of that. And uh shortly after that, I I left and I hitchhiked all the way down to Southern California where my sister lived, you know, and looking back at how I survived those years. Well, even like when I was 16 years old in Denver, how did I get by?
I was so sick and troubled and everything else. There must be a higher power looking out for us because I certainly wasn't looking out for myself those years. Well, then I um was in Ventura, California, and I got a job working in the oil fields, and that's just terrible work.
Nobody should even have to do that. I mean, I'm incapable of that kind of physical work, especially with a hangover. But somehow I made it through that summer.
And that fall, I got in touch with AA. That was in October of 1948, uh maybe the 5th or 7th of October, and a guy came out to where I was rooming and took me to a meeting in a little town, Santa Paula, California. And I kind of really fell in love with AA from that point on.
But, you know, I only stayed sober five months because I was only 23. And uh people would come up and say, "Boy, kid, if you get the program at your age, it'll really be terrific." But their tone of voice was, "You poor devil, you won't." You know, uh people people under 30 were just not making the program very well then. That 30 was considered young.
And uh but you know funny one funny thing that did happen was the second and third members I met were out from Akran Ohio and one of them was one of the first 2,000 members of AA and one of them was one of the first 200 members of AA. So right at the start I kind of be became an AA historian without realizing it. I didn't realize that someday there'd be something called television and the internet and everything else and there'd be the AA history lovers and all of that.
That that was back in 1948. Didn't even think about those things. Well, then for 13 months I had a lot of road testing and I won't go into the details, but uh I spent seven months in the army and the army is not the place for me.
Uh, I might have gotten along well in the Navy if I hadn't had the drinking problem, but I don't think I could get along well in the army under any circumstances. In the Navy, if you got back to the ship, you could be dead drunk. Uh, they u as long as you got back to ship, you were okay.
But in the army, if you come back to the post drunk way, they arrest you. See, that's that's how intolerant they are. And uh um so I get kicked out I got kicked out of the army in New Brunswick, New Jersey with an undesirable discharge.
And the next morning at 3:00 in the next morning, I woke up on a lawn on the edge of town and I'd been rolled and my money was gone, my railroad ticket, my belt, and my tie. And even my undesirable discharge that was gone. Somebody in New Brunswick has an undesirable discharge he didn't earn.
Well, you know, it sounds awfully funny when you tell about it today, but gosh, that's an awful it's an awful shape to be in and uh you know, in a strange town and in uh with nothing and in that. But somehow I got back to Nebraska and I made it through that winter was living with my dad or my mother and stepdad. And that next spring I made it to jail once that winter.
I stayed sober a few months at one time. I didn't go back to AA and finally that spring uh somebody took me out to the state hospital which was on a hill overlooking my hometown. And I spent seven weeks in that state hospital.
But my sobriety date started with the day that I went out to that state hospital and I haven't had a drink since and I've stayed very close to AA ever since. I was 24 years old getting to be an old man by that time and uh so uh AA has been my life since then and I'm I'm I couldn't have functioned at all without AA. I'm confident of that.
I had to stay sober at all costs. I learned that and uh I went back to AA and I thought that the people in the AA group had probably been talking about me there in my hometown. But the guy came out to the state hospital to to go to the meeting and he saw me there and he says, "I didn't know you were back in town and you you think everybody's always talking about you." and uh then a few months later I went out to moved out to Michigan where I had an aunt and uncle living and worked for them for a while and uh lived in Michigan uh until 1972 and then went to we moved to Ohio around 1960 my wife and I were married.
Uh by the way uh her folks didn't like it when they learned I was an AA. I'd been sober 10 years by that time and they didn't like it that when they found out I I was an AA that that there was something wrong with that. But her sister was married to a guy that made me look pretty good over time.
And you know, I I really shouldn't say that. The poor guy is dead. But and if my sister-in-law were here and heard me say that, she'd be hurt.
But uh so please keep that all to yourselves. Well, anyway, that's that's how I got sober. And uh it's been a very good life.
The you know, we we find out that just just because you put the plug in the jug by everything. That's when we start solving problems finally. We were running away from problems when we're drinking.
But then you start having to face life when when you get sober. And that's what I had to learn. I had to learn how to grow up.
And AA helped me do that. Uh but um I I can just look back right from the time I finally quit drinking altogether why things started to improve. Little bit here and a little bit there, but they did.
And u I think that anybody can have that same experience in AA. Well, I was going to tell a little bit about AA history. I've only talked for 15 minutes and I've told my whole story.
The uh Yeah, but um >> Pardon? >> Well, yeah, that's and now that's really something. I guess I've gone to about 13 or 14,000 meetings somewhere, something like that.
I go to a lot of meetings. I go to three or four meetings a week. In fact, they get tired of seeing me.
Uh, I have this regular group, the Rab Road group, which is out west of Toledo, as I said, and that meets at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. But there's a noon meeting downtown that I go to quite a bit. And I tell him u that I told him this week that I was coming out to save AA in Fort Collins and that's that's become a kind of a joke, you know, when I go somewhere to talk, where you going to save AA this week or something like that.
And uh then I always get treated well on these trips. And I went back one day and told my group I says, "How come I get treated so well?" And I come back here and you you folks crap on me all the time. And they said, "Well, we know we know you, Mel." One of the people I had way up on a pedestal was Bill W.
And in 1951, Bill came out to Detroit. I was living in Pontiac, Michigan by that time and I was living with these relatives and um I had an old car that it was a real cold night. I probably couldn't have made it down to Detroit on those icy roads in this terrible old car that I had.
But some guys took me down there to hear Bill W give a talk. And Bill was barnstorming the the North America, I guess, all the big cities in in the United States and Canada, promoting what he called the third legacy. Anybody know what the third legacy was?
That was service. Uh the three things we have in AA is unity, recovery, and service. And Bill was promoting what became the the general service conference.
And I just went down to Detroit with these guys to hear him talk. And you know, there's a book called Pass It On that that's the biography of Bill. And page 348 is my little account of of that night of going down to hear Bill, but I never got to meet him that night.
He gave a two-hour talk. It was interrupted by a s cigarette break. About 1500 people came over there to hear him.
But he was talking about the necessity of having a general service conference so that AA could be controlled by the grassroots so that the the fellow the people in the fellowship could control the central office and have a say in how things were run. Well, I couldn't have cared less about that. I just wanted to hear Bill give a talk.
But since then, have I have I got to know more about AA and how things work. I think that that showed tremendous vision on his part that if we didn't have the general service conference, AA probably would have split apart because there's there's a lot of people around that want to run things their own way. Some some of the people that were against Bill were in Akran, Ohio and Cleveland, those places, you know, people that should have been very grateful to Bill for coming out there carrying the message and all that.
But a lot of them were jealous of Bill. I heard people say bad things about Bill and uh but the having the general service conference and this feedback and everything I think it's kind of kept the lid on things over the years. Bill had an ability to look ahead and see what the problems were down the road.
I think in some ways that he was a genius at the things he could see. For example, AA came under attack in 1963. Uh the up until 1963, everybody said good things about AA.
Every newspaper article, every well, there was one real smutty magazine that uh had an article called AA, no booze but plenty of babes or something like that. But uh that was the only bad article that ever came out up until 1963. But in 1963, Harper's magazine ran a a cover story, a a cult or cure, Alcoholics Anonymous, Cult or Cure.
And it was written by a guy with a PhD from Colombia, no less. And you know, when anybody runs a magazine article with a title like that, cultural cure, you know, they're going to come out negative. And it really was a very negative article.
And boy, AA is all over the country mad as hell. That nobody in AA ever read Harpers until that day, that month. And uh my gosh, letters came in to Harpers from all over the country.
In fact, I wrote one and I'm glad they never published it. And uh but Bill, they they went to Bill and asked him what we should do about that. And Bill said, 'Well, let's look at what uh and and he had a little publication that he had prepared called 12 concepts of world service.
And I remember talking to Bill in New York when he was working on that publication. It's available, I think, in all our central offices. 12 and he goes into 12 concepts of world services.
And what do you know? It says suppose AA should come under attack. Yeah, that was written a couple of years before we came under attack.
And so what should we do? Well, the answer he he p he prepared an article for the grapevine titled our critics can be our benefactors. And the point of it was that if what these people are saying is true, well then we should thank them for it and try to correct what is wrong.
See, it's like if somebody tells you you got bad breath, well, you know, they're doing you a favor. And uh but uh he didn't say that. I added that.
And but then suppose suppose they're terribly wrong. They're unfair and everything else. Well, if you oppose them, he said unreasonable people are stimulated all the more by opposition.
Of course, any married man knows that. And uh ooh I should have said that but you know wasn't that so good and the point of it was that the best defense was no defense at all. And AA never responded to this guy.
See that would have been entering into contro controversy. Even when somebody attacks AA that's kind of an outside controversy. So never responded.
And of course, the guy who wrote the article, I think he was furious about that because I believe he wanted to become the Ralph Nater of AA to, you know, have a cottage industry out of writing bad things about AA. He wrote a couple more articles and then the thing kind of died down and I tried to look look him up some years ago and I found out he'd passed away. So, uh, down in Arizona somewhere and I never could find out what he passed away from or anything else.
But anyway, that was how Bill handled that when we came under attack. And you can read about that. You can read that article in a book called The Language of the Heart.
That's that was published by The Grapevine. It's all of Bill's articles in the grapevine. And it's just a great a great publication.
If you want to know what Bill thought about what AA should do or about any situation that arises, it's in that book. And it's just great. Well, uh, I always thought that someday I might like to write Bill's biography.
Now, that was in the back of my mind. It's funny how you get these ideas. And, uh, then in 1975, a a biography came out about Bill and it was about the same time they had the international conference in Denver.
And, uh, they sold it for a while from the AA World Services, but it had been privately published. So they decided that they wanted their own that that AA should have its own biography and a fellow wrote the biography of Dr. Bob which is called Dr.
Bob and the good old-timers. I met that fellow once. His name was Niles.
He did a great job on it. They did Dr. Bob's biography first because they realized that it would have to be based on interviews from people uh around Akran and so on.
And these people were getting pretty along in the tooth. So the Niles went out there and uh yeah, isn't that something to get long in the tooth and uh he went out there and interviewed all these old-timers who had known Dr. Bob and that's what the book is made up of a lot of these interviews and it's very good and I think that was published in 1980 and somebody asked me if I'd had anything to do with that book.
I have two photographs in it. The photograph of King's School and the one of St. Thomas Hospital.
But then Nile started on Bill's biography and he got cancer and passed away after he had just done a little bit of work. So I happened to know the general manager of GSO. So I went in there and threw my hat in the ring and they gave me the assignment of working on Bill's biography.
So I worked on it for two years and 1980 and 81. And in that in that time I spent a few a few days at Stepping Stones, Lois Bill's wife. She invited me up there, stayed there a couple times.
I interviewed Nell Wing, the the one that was mentioned. There's a marvelous person and got in the AA archives, read a lot of Bill's letters and everything. Worked on that for two years and did two manuscripts.
And then by gosh, they hired some more writers to work on it. You know, it's pretty hard to satisfy those people. And uh they finally came out in 1984 under the title Pass It On.
I had wanted to call it Bill W and his friends because I thought that went along with Dr. Bob and the good old-timers. I could see both books in a slip case, you know, with those.
But uh the last line of one of my manuscripts, one of the two manuscripts I submitted was pass it on. And that's what Bill would tell people when they would come in and be express gratitude for everything he had done. Well, he'd tell them, "Pass it on.
Pass it on to somebody else." That's that's the way you show gratitude in AA. You don't thank Bill or thank any of the old-timers or anything like that. Pass it on to somebody else.
Bill always talked about the million who still don't know. Uh he would always write about that. uh people who are still in their caves and drinking that we had an obligation a duty to keep this thing going for them and Bill worked real hard to see to see that that was done that aa didn't get loused up there were a lot of people could have loused it up and Bill always said I think to his friends I never heard him say this that his personal life wasn't all that great in some ways but he felt that every decision he had made for AA was right that he was more like a parent, you know, looking after a child.
You know, Bill and Lois never had any children, but I think we're we are their children in some ways. The uh and but he was very protective of AA. He wanted AA to keep functioning the the way it did.
He had he had our best interests in mind. But anyway, I worked on this and when I got to New York and I was see I was still working for Libyans Ford as in public relations by that time. I I had worked for a company called Aeroquip in Jackson, Michigan for 19 years.
I became an editor of their company magazine and they um they hired they Libyans Ford acquired Aeroquip just to get me on their payroll and I was transferred down to Toledo. That's how I got in Toledo. Uh somebody told me to be honest tonight.
I better be careful. But anyway, Lois invited me out to uh to their home, Stepping Stones, which is in Westchester County near Bedford Hills, New York. It's a little home.
It's in a a nice wooded section up there. And Bill and Lois had lived in that place since 1941. They hadn't had any money and everything, but uh some real estate woman got the idea that they deserved having a home.
They were living in a couple of rooms in a clubhouse down in New York. And Bill said, "Well, we don't even have enough money for a down payment." Well, she got them out there and figured out how they could get the house without a down payment. And that's where they lived the rest of their life.
I feel that they were supposed to have that house. It was just a a wonderful place for them. And Lois lived there the rest of her life until she was 97.
She passed away at 97. But she invited me up there. And so I got there and there was a woman staying there with her named Edna.
And this woman couldn't have weighed more than 80 or 90bs. And she looked awful. And she fluttered around and wanted to help with the dishes and everything.
And she sat there and listened patiently while I interviewed Lois and talked with her. And I wonder I thought at first that she was probably an Alanon woman. And I didn't know much about her.
And uh but the whole weekend she was just very always wanting to try to do something. Well, on Monday a man came to take her away. And it turned out that Edna had been a had worked for Lois as a housekeeper some years earlier.
And then she had been working for another family as as a live-in housekeeper or something. And she got sick and she went to the hospital and she was terminal. you know, that's why she looked so bad when I saw her.
But the she couldn't stay in the hospital any longer for some reason. And the hospice couldn't take her for another two or three weeks. And there the poor woman was desperate.
She was penniless, had no place to go. And she called up Lois and told her what her situation was. And Lois says, "Come out and stay with me." And she was staying there with Lois for three weeks.
And then on Monday morning, a man came in an old car and took her away. And a couple months later, Lois told me that Edna had died. Now, this woman had been living with a family, working for them.
And then when she got sick, she wanted to come back and stay with his family until she could go to the hospice. But of course, she was no good to him anymore. She couldn't, you know, do the work for anymore.
And but Lois, you know, that's the type of person she was. That's probably why she played the role that she did. you know, we owe a lot to people like Lois.
And then there was also Anne Smith, Dr. Bob's wife, and she she did things that, you know, we don't probably don't give her credit for. U you know, I've only talked a half an hour, and that means I have an hour and a half to go, right?
But um anyway, we that was a great experience and I learned a lot about AA just going into the archives and talking to some of these old-timers. Some of them didn't like Bill Wilson with real credit. I I spent a whole day with one guy.
Uh he'd founded a in a big city and everything. Couldn't get him to say one good word about Bill, you know, not not one good word. And uh so you you found that and it was just amazing that our fellowship uh keeps going the way it is.
Uh of course when I told the guy I thought he had a resentment. He the thing you know the way people express resentments and they hey uh if you tell somebody who's got a resentment they'll say no I don't have a resentment. I just feel sorry for the poor bastard.
It's that kind of thing. U but um you know uh I learned learned some things about AA and Akran. The manuscripts I submitted had a lot a lot to do about the early background in Akran before Bill Wilson got involved out there and that got chopped out of Pass it on.
There wasn't too much of it. And a lot of the stuff that got chopped out of Pass It On, I put in my own books, New Wine and My Search for Bill W. and Ebie.
Those are books that I wrote for Hazelton. They're not conference approved, but by God, I approve of them. And and they would all be bestellers except that millions of people have chosen not to buy them.
But actually, they're they're doing fairly well though. But what I learned was that uh you know AA did come out of a fellowship called the Oxford group. There's a lot of history about this group.
Uh it there's very little of it mentioned in AA but there's there's quite a bit of there's been a number of books written about the Oxford group and that was founded in 1908 by a guy who had a terrible resentment and got over it. He wasn't an alcoholic, but he had as much resentment as any alcoholic ever had. And he got over it through a spiritual experience.
And it's very interesting that we were helped or we were grew out of an organization that was founded by a guy who overcame a resentment. Well, it flourished and in the 1920s it acquired the name the Oxford Group. Got a lot of publicity in those years.
You can go back in the old readers guides and find a lot of articles about the Oxford group and a few alcoholics were getting sober in that fellowship. Nothing like what happened in AA, but they were finding out that by following the principles that the Oxford group had, some alcoholics were recovering and some of their principles were making restitution, praying for guidance every day, admitting your faults to other everything we have in the 12 steps but just in not in that form. So around 1934, Bill W.
got in the Oxford group and that's all in his story about how a fellow named Ebie didn't give Eby's name, but that was his old school friend called on him. And then Bill immediately Bill had been trying to do everything to try to quit drinking and nothing had worked. And then he had this big spiritual experience and you know that's all in his story.
But out in Akran, there was an Oxford group member who went to work for Harvey Firestone in 1928, a young fellow with a lot of ability. And Harvey Firestone's second oldest son had a terrible drinking problem. And this young Oxford group member started working with him, trying to help him.
And uh this is in my book, New Wine. And they would go on business trips together. This fell's name was Bud.
Bud Firestone and they would even pray on their knees in in the hotel rooms and Bud would even start crying this this young Firestone fellow bec because he couldn't quit drinking. Well, then he went on a uh they went on a trip out to D out to Denver for crying out loud. And on the way back, Sam Shoemaker, that's the guy in New York who helped Bill Wilson a lot, went into a compartment in the train with with Bud, and started talking to him.
And something happened and and this this man told me that when he came out of the compartment, he looked different just right there. And he got sober. And that was the talk of Akran.
You see the Firestones, they were the big they were the people that everybody in Akran looked up to. They they were held in awe at that time. And the fact that Bud Firestone had gotten sober became the talk of the town.
Now that was back in 1932 3132. So Harvey Firestone out of gratitude sponsored a big Oxford group rally in Akran. And that's when Dr.
Bob and some of the people who were involved with the early age, that's when they got in the Oxford group and started following these principles. Well, now that's all part of AA history. See, that that had something to do with our getting sober along the way.
Dr. Bob in his personal story, he tells about falling in with a group of people that impressed him because they seemed ill at ease and could talk without self-consciousness or anything like that. and and he was uptight all the time and they they went to their meetings for two and a half years but got tight every night nonetheless.
That's in his personal story in the big book. Well, that was the Oxford group and they were meeting there in homes in Akran and but one of the women who was quite uh prominent in the Oxford group was a woman named Henrietta Cyberlain. Now, this is the woman that Bill Wilson would talk to, who would introduce him to Dr.
Bob. And she was the daughter-in-law of Frank Cyberlane, who had founded the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. And she lived in the gate house of the big mansion called, it's called Stan Hewood.
It was a big 55 room mansion there in Akran. And the Cyberlings had built that in 1917. It's a tutor mansion, one of the best mansions, the finest mansions in the whole country.
and she was living out in the gate house because she was separated from her husband and her husband was something of a playboy and he stayed up there in the big house with his parents and she moved with her three children out to this gate house and that's where Bill and Bob would meet. Well, I never met Henrietta but I talked with her by phone a number of times and she kind of told me all the story about uh what had happened there and anyway they knew that Dr. Bob had a drinking problem, but he never mentioned it.
He went to these meetings, sat there, and half drunk most of the time, but he never talked about his drinking problem. And all the others, they talked about their problems. So Henrietta got the idea that they ought to flesh Dr.
Bob out and get him to admit his faults, his real problem. So she organized a special meeting and the they started talking about their different faults. Well, you know, with most of these Oxford groupers, their faults were little things compared to what alcoholics are up against many times, but they were pretty honest.
They all shared their faults. And it got around to Dr. Bob and he said, well, said, you folks have been honest with me and I'll be honest with you.
Now, this might cost me my profession, but I'm a secret drinker. Well, it was only a secret to himself. Every everybody else knew.
And now, you know, the funny thing about this though, when when I learned this from Henrietta and from a talk she gave out there, that was three weeks before Bill called Henrietta looking for an alcoholic. Three weeks. Now, you see, if he hadn't made that admission, she never would have been able to call Anne and say, "I have a man from New York." See, because he was in denial, what we call denial.
But, uh, anyway, then Bill in the meantime got sober in New York. Now, he was only in the Oxford group five or six months when he met Dr. Bob, but Dr.
Bob had had more exposure to those things than Bill had. So, Bill goes out to Akran. He gets this business deal out there.
He's in a proxy fight for a little machine tool company. And that would have put him on his feet if he could have won that proxy fight. He was a stock broker and pretty good.
Bill really was good at what he did. But he went out there and tried to solicit these proxies and everything and and when the stockholders voted, why he lost. He just didn't have enough proxies.
And there he was on a Saturday morning and he was at the Mayflower Hotel and he only had about $10. Uh he had gone out there on a shoestring anyhow and he had the whole weekend to face and uh he didn't know what to do and that's when he realized that he was on thin ice because he would thought about going in the bar and just sitting there and having a soft drink to strike up a conversation and he realized that was entirely wrong thing to do. He had learned enough about his condition.
He just knew that if he went in that bar, he wouldn't come out sober. And so that's when he got the idea of calling this minister, a Dr. Walter Tons, who happened to be in the Oxford group.
And the that guy gave him 10 names, and none of them could help Bill, but he did give it uh one guy did tell him about Henrietta Cyber. And Bill was reluctant to call her because he knew who she was. He knew that he thought she was the wife of Frank Cyberlin who had founded Goodyear.
Actually, she was Frank's daughter-in-law. But finally something told him he should and he called her and she invited him right out to talk to her and she called Anne Smith. Bill had introduced himself to an to Henrietta this way.
I'm a member of the Oxford group and I'm a rum hound from New York. That's how he described himself. And so Bob had come home.
It was the day before Mother's Day and he had brought a potted plant for Anne, his wife, but he was potted too. And so he was upstairs sleeping it off. And so Henrietta set it up for Bill to come there for dinner the next day late in the afternoon at the gate house.
This is a little tutor style gate house. Now today it has a plaque on it, a historical plaque saying that this is where the founders of AA met. I was there, we were there last May, the 70th anniversary of their meeting by the way and uh we were I just had to be an Akan for that day.
But anyway, Dr. Bob showed up the next day with an terribly sick and he was only going to talk to Bill for 15 minutes and he couldn't eat any dinner. Henrietta had a nice dinner for him, but he couldn't eat anything.
But they went in and talked and they talked for 5 hours. And Dr. Bob said later that this was the first human being he'd ever talked to who knew what he was talking about with regard to alcoholism from personal experience.
Now, that was something here. Bob, he was a doctor, an MD, and a graduate of a fine medical school and everything else, but uh Bill was the guy that really gave him the the truth. Well, Bill was broke.
His partners sent him a little bit of money to keep they thought there had been some fraud in the uh stockholders election and everything. So, they kept sending him a little bit of money to keep him going. But in the meantime, Henrietta wanted to keep Bill there in Akran to talk to Bob.
So, she got a wealthy neighbor to put him up in the Portage Country Club. Nice country club there in Akran. And there's Bill.
Here he is in Akran, broke. and he's staying in this nice country club. Talk about things being taken care of.
Well, then after a couple weeks, uh, and Smith, Dr. Bob's wife, invited him to come live with them. And they, you know, Smitty, I got to know Dr.
Bob's son quite well. He passed on a year or two ago, but he said that when they ever they had guess why he and Susan, his his sister, had to go up and sleep in the attic, but Bill came there and stayed with them. Well, then Dr.
Bob had to go to a medical convention. That was very important that he go to this convention. He'd been going there for 20 years and getting drunk and not learning a damn thing, but still it was very important.
And so he he got on the train and started drinking immediately and came back home drunk. Now Smitty told me, now this is something that I hadn't known. Smitty told me that when Bill learned that Dr.
Bob was drunk and back in town drunk, uh he packed his bags and was going back to New York. He figured he just had another failure. He'd been working with drunks down in New York, not helping a darn one of them.
And now he had another one. But Anne, Dr. Bob's wife talked him into staying.
Let's give it one more chance, one more try. And so they got Bobbed in bed and he was supposed to perform surgery in three days. Now he had become a specialist.
He had been a general surgeon before, but in 1929 he had gone up to Mayo Clinic and studied proctologology and he had become a proctologist. In case you don't know, that's a guy who works on diseases of the rectum, a part of the body that gets very little sunlight. And uh so he was supposed to perform.
But see, the the good thing about that was they probably needed somebody like that, a specialist of this kind. But the bad thing was that when he started depending on other doctors for referrals, his drinking started working against him. the other doctors knew he had this problem and they weren't giving him the referrals.
So his practice had pretty much dried up and so that's why this surgery was kind of important because if he didn't do it he would be just letting another doctor down is what it amounted to. Well, so Bill took him. Bill said that they woke up on the morning.
They were in adjoining beds and Bob says, "I'm going to go through with it." And Bill said, "The surgery?" And Bob says, "No, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get sober and stay that way." So Bill drove him to the hospital and gave him a bottle of beer to steady his nerves. And Bob went in and did the surgery. And then he went around Akran and started talking to all the people he had been on the outs with.
People he had tried to conceal his problems from. Told him honestly what had happened, what he was trying to do, and was gone all day. And Bill and Anne thought that maybe he might be off drunk again.
But instead, he came home just the happiest man in the world. And and he never had another drink. That was the ninth step really.
It wasn't we didn't have the steps in that form then, but he was working the ninth step and it worked for him and he really became oh just a tremendous job that he did out there in Akran. He had 80 members in Akran when Bill didn't have 20 in New York but he just did a great job. And then Bill said the patient lived talking about the Yeah.
And he was Bill Bill always dramatized thing. And he said, "The patient lived, well, who in the hell ever died from a hemorrhoid operation, you know?" So that was those are the kind of things you learn as you keep digging in. You know that there were all these little things just like Anne Smith talking Bill into staying there and then like Henry at a cyberling getting Dr.
Bob to admit that he had this drinking problem. See, those were all things that were critical to the forming of AA, to these people getting sober out there. There have been so many other things that have happened.
Uh I kept trying to meet Bill Wilson after hearing him talk in 1951. I wasn't wasn't able to meet him that time, but in 1956, I went to Founders Day. See, every every June in Akran they have founders day and 10,000 people come in.
It's just a marvelous it's almost like one of the international conventions. Uh they take over the campus of the of the University of Akran. They use all the dorms and everything and they turn the the athletic stadium over for campers.
People that want to camp there, they camp in the stadium there and it's just a wonderful weekend. Usually good weather, too. And of course they call it Founders Day because Dr.
Bob was supposedly took his last drink on June 10th, 19. And so it's always early in June. And so I went there in 56 and I heard Bill speak on a Saturday night and I w stood in the line to talk to him.
I told him I lived in Jackson, Michigan. And he says, "Well, my knowledge of Jackson goes back to Al Cameron's time." Well, Al Cameron was the guy who had started AA and Jackson in 1939. And Bill had a quite a a memory for the people that that had been involved.
Uh, a lot of the other stuff that he remembered, he he got dates wrong sometimes, but but he was sharp on many things. But he told me he was too I told him I'd like to talk to him, and he said he was too tired to send him a letter. And I did when I got back to Jackson.
And I got a three-page letter from him. It just stunned me and part of the letter is in one of my books now. And u he but in the in the in the letter he told me that for the last 12 years of life he had suffered from depression about twothirds of the time.
Well, you know that pissed me off. He had no right to suffer from depression. He was the guy who had written the 12 steps and for a while it kind of disillusioned me.
But as I got to thinking about it, I realized that was part of Bill's humility, that he never put himself up higher than anybody else. He never said that he had all of these problems mastered or anything like that. He he in fact he always said that other people were doing better with the program than he did.
And uh he this was just one of these terrible things that he put up with, but he stayed sober all that time. and uh he continued to do things for AA. He wrote the 12 and 12 when he was suffering from depression part of the time.
I go to a noon meeting in Jack in Toledo where we we go through the 12 and 12 all the time. I've been through the 12 and 12 15 times, I'll bet. And uh it's not a a buoyant book, you know, it's not something that's going to really lift you up because he's talking about some of these problems in working the steps.
But that's the reality of being sober and living in AA and day by day and with all of these earth people that we have to deal with. Uh and uh it's it's really healthy in the long run. I feel that.
Uh but that was Bill. There have been some books written about Bill now. Well, oh one more thing.
In 58 I went to Founders Day again. And I got there, I went there with a friend and this was before I was married, before Lori had the good fortune to meet me. And uh I was uh this friend of mine was pretty like much like a sponsor and we went to Akran and we stopped.
We were going to stay at the Mayflower Hotel, but their rates were 18 bucks and Leo thought that was too much. So we went to a flea bag down the street, a block or two down the street. And so we got up at Sunday morning and there wasn't a coffee shop in the flea bag.
So, we walked back up to the Mayflower Hotel and we went into the coffee shop and we were sitting in a table and Bill came in and he sat down at the counter and I I had known Bill was going to be out there and so I kind of waved like that and so as soon as he got his coffee he picked it up and came over and sat down with us and he started telling us about some of his hopes for AA and what he was doing these days. He had kind of overcome that depression that had caused him so much trouble. A lot of a lot of his therapy was just walking.
He he took walks and things like that. Well, then about half hour or hour later, a man came along to pick Bill up and to take him out to the cemetery. There were they were going to have a special cemetery, a special ceremony at Dr.
Bob's grave where Dr. Bob and Anne were buried. And that had been in the notice, but I had thought, well, I didn't know Dr.
Bob, so probably I shouldn't have attended. So I asked if it was all right if we went. So we followed him out there, maybe a couple dozen cars.
We got there, maybe three dozen people, and I I suddenly remembered, see, I was a company magazine editor by this time, and I was carrying a camera, and I asked Bill if I could photograph, and he said it was okay. And so we had this little simple ceremony there. Uh Bill just went over to the headstone and started talking to them like they were actually there.
And then when he had concluded, we all said the Lord's Prayer. But just as we started, a church bell started ringing just while we were saying the Lord's Prayer. But I'd taken these pictures of Bill and one of them, even as I took it, I just had the feeling that was going to be a great picture.
And now that has been in three or four books and a couple of my own by the way too. And u so I that was just a something. Well then I I didn't get back there for 20 years at that founders day.
Got married and you know what involved there the family and all of that. And so I never got to attend a founders day for 20 years. Next time I came back my god they were they had the same ceremony and there were thousands of people there.
Now they're they cover the whole cemetery. They say that the motorcycles there are so many motorcycles that when the first motorcycles arrive at the cemetery, the last ones haven't left the the university. So that's what that ceremony has become.
But I think that I was involved in the first one when there only about three dozen people there. And one of the sad things I heard one woman whisper that Sue Smith, do Dr. Bob's daughter, well, her name was Sue Galbreth, I guess.
She couldn't be there for that ceremony because her husband was drunk that weekend. It was It just really made me feel sad. They eventually were divorced.
But, uh, it was just too bad that she couldn't have been there for that ceremony. Well, anyway, you know, I have talked an hour and almost an hour and by God, that's that's enough to stretch your patience. But I have a special way of closing this these m this kind of a talk.
Excuse me. Most people don't know it, but I'm a singer and uh actually At age 80, I'm still taking singing lessons. In fact, my singing teacher told me one day that I should be on Oprah.
And I said, "Yes, I'd like to be on Oprah, and I'd also like to be on her show." I shouldn't have. This is all going down on tape and I'm so ashamed. But I just can't resist this kind of stuff.
But anyway, I have a little song that I wrote about the founders of AA. I call it Once There Were Founders. And uh last time I tried this, my voice was gone and it didn't go very well.
Uh but when I said I was a singer, I didn't mean that I was a great singer. Uh, I I sang for a couple out in Palm Springs, an older couple that just got married. I sang Some Enchanted Evening for them.
And a guy came up and he said, "Uh, I always wished I could sing. Now I wish you could, but anyway, I wrote these words and these are a tribute to Bill and Bob. Once there were founders, two men we esteem.
They had a vision, a sort of a dream. And though they had struggles, they'd never complain. 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 princes 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. And over the long years, their stories were told and lost souls began to return to the fold. All that they told us turned out to be true.
I wish they were with us again. Can you imagine their place in the universe higher than princes or kings? They open the gates to a new way of life and all of the wonder 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. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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