"We don't have any hidden cells lurking around in us to be discovered. Rather, we are what we are committed to."
Episcopalian minister,one-time atheist, he drank alcoholically for a little over a year.
Born in Statesville in western NC, his parents died when he was one year old.
He had an older brother. Shifted from aunt to aunt. Though never formally adopted, both were taken up when Joe was five by a childless couple who were North Carolina tobacco farmers named Matthews.
Quit school to go into the Service. Drank once during that tour and got a little afraid of alcohol.
When he got back, he finished High School and finished his dream of going to the University of North Carolina.
Went back into the service during the Korean War stationed in Washington DC. Got a job as an intelligence specialist.
He became a self-made man. He did most of it to keep from going back to the tobacco farm.
He never had any problem at that time with booze and his wife did not really like it though sometimes he drank too much.
But, liquor did mean a great deal to him.
He decided to go back to church after their child was born, had a spiritual awakening, got very involved and went to seminary planning to one day be a bishop.
Instead he came into AA as an alcoholic minister who shook during his sermons.
NOTE: There is a short place in the middle where the tape has some distortion though understandable.
GSSA Cassette #C00-0113A
(1 hr 6 min) (30.4 MB) (id#1434)