“I
can’t stand Leroy’s language,” one
woman gave as the reason for no longer attending my
home group, where she had almost been a regular. I
heard a few other complaints about this man whom I
saw as a true friend and a good Toledo AA member.
Leroy T., now deceased, did indeed
cuss a lot, though not obscenely. Most of us even
found it amusing and were always glad to see and hear
him. What many don’t know today is how he made
a dramatic change in the closing years of his life
and even toned down the cussing.
I was present when Leroy came to
his first AA meetings in early 1973, accompanied by
his wife Joyce, and mother-in-law Hazel (both had
drinking problems). Leroy and Hazel appeared to be
perpetually at war. Joyce was sweet and timid, and
despite their wrangling I could feel that she and
Leroy were at heart a loving couple. Of the three,
it was Leroy who seized the AA program most enthusiastically
and never stopped running with it. Joyce and Hazel
participated, but not so fiercely and Joyce had trouble
staying sober; vanilla extract even became her drink
of choice.
Leroy was a toolmaker by trade and
often used colorful cuss words to describe how poorly
things were going at the shop or how frustrated he
was when a certain job gave him trouble. He had emerged
from the poverty of the Great American Depression,
and it became apparent that he almost needed such
words to express himself. Far from excluding him,
groups invited Leroy to speak at open meetings and
he did, indeed, present a story of real redemption
through AA. He never drank again after his first meeting
in 1973. And though he made it sound as if his tool
making work was one frustration after another, he
found a high-paying job in a Toledo auto plant and
worked until his retirement with a good pension.
Along with attending many meetings, Leroy studied
AA literature intensely and was especially devoted
to the AA Big Book. We lived only several blocks apart
and sometimes we’d have discussions about Big
Book ideas. And one day in late 1977 he came over
to ask my help with an article he’d prepared
for The Grapevine. It was based on the professor
and the paradoxes in the Big Book second edition,
which said that things are not always what they seem
to be. . The professor had explained paradoxes by
noting that we AA’s “surrender to win,
we give away to keep, we suffer to get well, we die
to live.” Leroy, quite by chance, had discovered
a paradox in his own life. His article needed tidying
up and maybe even the elimination of a few cuss words,
but it was a gem.
Here, briefly, was the story:
Leroy, Joyce, and Hazel had come home from a beautiful
day that included a picnic and an afternoon AA meeting,
which he described as “all three of us attending
as sober and happy members after years of stormy three-way
battles.” Driving onto their street, he could
see that somebody had broken their mailbox, which
had been upright when they left at noon.
It was something to cuss about, but Leroy decided
to report it to the police. After troubles with the
police in their drinking years, the thought terrified
him. But he realized that responsible citizenship
required him to do it, perhaps to save others from
the same vandalism.
The police officer showed up, took
their report, and headed for his car. Then he turned
around to explain that this was the first time the
police had heard from them in years. Before that,
they’d been in trouble so often that officers
at the station came to recognize their voices on the
telephone. He seemed to want to know what had happened.
Leroy took this opportunity to tell
the officer about AA and its benefits. He said a wonderful
feeling came over him as he watched the policeman
drive away. Leroy saw the afternoon experience as
a sort of paradox: “…some crazy driver
or kid prankster had smashed our mailbox, and I was
actually happy about it.” As he concluded in
the article, which appeared in the May, 1978 Grapevine,
“…I don’t dread problems any more,
because I accept them as part of living. The paradox
is that most problems are easily solved and even avoided
now that we’ve lost our fear of them. More than
that, almost every problem has a happy ending.”
As the years wore on, however, Leroy
had to face a number of problems with lots to cuss
about. H e had made his peace with Hazel when she
passed on and he learned to face frustrations on the
job. But one very serious problem he couldn’t
solve was Joyce’s intermittent drinking, which
seemed to be beyond his reach. It finally reached
a stage where she was virtually helpless and left
him with messes to clean up. Some people even urged
him to divorce her. But just as he had old-fashioned
ways of cussing, he held to the old-fashioned promise
“to love and cherish in sickness and in health
until parted by death.” He stayed the course,
grimly and loyally, and felt real grief when Joyce
passed away early in 1998.
Now widowed, and having worsening
heart problems, Leroy persevered in AA. His language
had never changed, but many of us had realized long
ago that he was a kind, generous and gracious man
who always had something useful to say in group discussions.
He attended many meetings and then went home to an
empty house which held good memories as well as unpleasant
ones.
Then a miracle happened. At an AA
meeting, Leroy met an attractive woman named Barbara
who had been divorced eight years. It was love at
first sight, and two weeks later they were married.
Some of us wondered if Leroy had finally flipped and
had set himself up for a crushing disappointment.
But the marriage defied the odds
and worked out beautifully. Barbara, with almost ten
years’ sobriety then, had two sons and eight
grandchildren who took instantly to Leroy and made
him the grandpa of their dreams. I remembered how
my own grandchildren had liked him. For the next two
years, Leroy and Barbara were a joyously happy couple,
continuously marveling at the good fortune in having
found each other and sharing the love of Barbara’s
family.
Then a national tragedy, the Columbine
school shootings in Colorado, threw Leroy into deep
despair and serious reflection. For answers, he decided
to go to church again, supplementing the spiritual
things he’d learned in AA. He and Barbara began
to attend services regularly and even took Bible classes.
He explained this at AA meetings, but without the
smugness of a Bible thumper or any pressure to convert
the rest of us. Church attendance became a very positive
development in Leroy’s life and he was even
baptized at age 72.
One other change became very noticeable
at AA meetings: Leroy cussed less often. When one
woman noted this, he said, “Hell, I didn’t
even know I was cussing.”
With nearly 28 years’ sobriety, Leroy died of
a heart attack on December 11, 2000. I still miss
him. Other AA friends still miss him. Barbara, her
sons, and the eight grandchildren still miss him.
And we all miss his real language: The Language
of the Heart.
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