Sober 12 years since 2/9/2004 at age 57, Dick drank alcoholically from his first drink in high school - though he was a functioning alcoholic for many years missing only 2 or 3 days of work in all that time due to alcohol.
He graduated from the Air Force Academy, flew missions in Vietnam and worked in the Pentagon. He was in a long unhappy marriage
He retired in 1989 and went to work for a guy he met in a bar.
Dick got divorced, "Eventually my X and I just quit."
He came into AA after totaling a car in Canton, GA, going to jail and making the local newspaper - being a public figure in the town.
He cried much of his first meetings.
"But when I got over being a mind reader and a fortune teller my life cleaned up an awful lot when I was able to 'mostly' stay in the present moment."
Very active in the recovery community, Dick has remarried in sobriety to a woman who did her dissertation on Alcoholics Anonymous.
He shares about going to a local church and hearing a Franciscan priest from the west coast say:
"Our pride demands that love be merited." and Dick says, "...that's really just not true particularly in the case of my Higher Power, my God who loves me - unconditionally."
Dick shared another message from that priest:
"Remember when we say 'Love' and I think this is how we say it in Alcoholics Anonymous, what it means is this: I wish you God's Peace; I bear you no ill will. I should be able to say that to anyone."
