Sober 49 years since 4/8/1962 at age 28, Bill was a New York City newspaper reporter and writer by trade. Drinking started as a way to fit in with the other reporters. It took him down fast. He came into AA and got cured enough to try the beer only experiment.
Within a year he was on a ledge, having not paid income tax for eight years, ready to jump. But he came back in and went back home. His wife said, "Before you leave us, do us one favor...go back to AA." He went and ordered two more shots at the neighborhood bar but he could not drink the second.
Through AA, he became a husband and a father and was financed into the communications business in New York. He made a movie with Rachel Welch as a Roller Derby Queen and the true thriller Serpico with Al Pacino.
Then his wife Bernadette introduced him to Lois Wilson and realized there was a movie to be made about Bill and Lois. He got permission to write the story. He began going to Stepping Stones with a tape recorder. From it came a script that became My Name is Bill W. which aired in 1989. More recently we wrote and assisted in the production of the Lois Wilson story When Love is Not Enough.
The details of how James Garner got the script to read is not on this recording but it is astonishing. He covered it when he talked in Douglasville, GA in 2009.