Only a Minor Miracle...

I have seen on a number of occasions the hand of God working in my life.  Sometimes, these "demonstrations" of His personal concern and love for me are absolutely amazing.  One such event took place in June or July of 1983, only a few weeks before I became sober for the last and hopefully final time (I recently celebrated 36 years of continuous sobriety.).

I was working at the time for the University of Alabama in Huntsville Division of Continuing Education.  My job was to develop and deliver advanced training courses to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Before I had arrived in this job, my predecessor, Bob King, had put together a course in "Environmental Laws and Regulations."  It was taught by two nationally-recognized Attorneys.  One was an environmentalist who was a faculty member at Rice University in Houston, Texas, a gentleman named Jim Blackburn.  He was generally a laid-back Texan, usually attired in jeans and boots.  The other instructor was a member of a prominent environmental law firm in Washington, DC, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.  His name was Kenneth Rubin.  Mr. Rubin was a graduate of Cornell University with a degree in environmental engineering supplemented by a doctorate in law from Cornell's College of Law.  He had previously served as an EPA attorney and had also spent some time at the Department of Justice.  Ken was a far more formal individual, and was a 3-piece suit kind of lawyer.  These two attorneys were a uniquely different pair.

Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Rubin had a wealth of knowledge and didn't always see eye-to-eye on every environmental issue.  It was this difference in viewpoint that made the course so successful.  The members of the class got drawn into the myriad debates over environmental policy and regulatory issues.  Because of the course's relevancy to Corps of Engineers issues, the Army wanted the course delivered more frequently than we could possibly deliver, as we were limited by the availability of these two incredible teachers.

In 1983, we were asked if we could deliver the class in Anchorage, Alaska, at Elmendorf Air Force Base.  It would be a large class of about thirty students.  Some were from the region's Corps of Engineers, but we also had class members from other state and federal agencies -- Forestry, Interior, Transportation and others.  We scheduled the class, got both instructors on contract, and I began preparation.  There were three separate textbooks in the class and we always purchased the most recent editions.  I ordered them and within a few days I had large cartons of heavy "law books" in my office. I called the local post office and was informed that it would take no longer than 5 weeks for the cartons of books to reach Anchorage.  I alerted the mail clerks at Elmendorf to be on the lookout for six boxes addressed to me at their facility and they agreed to hold them for my arrival.  To be extra certain of the books' safe arrival, I allowed two extra weeks for shipping.

My wife Margo decided to join me on the last couple of days of the class.  We thought this represented a great opportunity for a vacation in Alaska.  I would simply extend my rental car for an additional week.  We'd visit Denali Park to witness Mt. McKinley, drive to Paxson to see the Alyeska pipeline, then down to Valdez, where we might get to see the salmon spawning.  We'd take a ferry boat past Glacier Bay to Whittier, than be carried on a railroad flatcar through a series of tunnels to the western side of the Kenai peninsula.  From there, we planned to drive southwest to Homer and Soldatna, after which we'd return to Anchorage to fly home.

A week before the class was to begin, I called the Elmendorf postal facility only to learn that the textbooks had not yet arrived.  I spoke with Ken Rubin and Jim Blackburn and they advised me not to panic.  As a worst-case possibility that the books didn't arrive in time, they said they could wing it.  They had enough case studies memorized that they could teach without the books.

I flew to Anchorage on a Thursday so I could search for the books on Friday in the event they'd been delivered to the wrong destination. They were nowhere to be found; We would be winging it.  Jim and Ken arrived Friday afternoon and we drove out to Elmendorf to check out the classroom and rearrange it to their liking.

The Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage
Site of the Coincidence

At the time all this was taking place, I was in the final throes of chronic, acute alcoholism.  I was functioning, but my emotional and spiritual state was desperate.  I had not yet admitted that my life was unmanageable, but it certainly was.  Alcohol was not only available in the Captain Cook Hotel, our residence for the week, it was actually free.  All the political parties in the state were having their conventions in Anchorage that week, and they were all resident in my hotel.  And they all had hospitality rooms with free booze!  I could wlk down a hotel corridor and be a liberal Democrat for a while, enjoying a few liberal drinks.  Then, by simply turning a corner, I could become a conservative Republican and imbibe some of their spirits -- all free of charge.  Every lobbying agency was also represented, so there was no shortage of free liquor.  It was the perfect setting for a raving alcoholic.  I drank heavily all weekend.

On Monday, shaky as I was, I arose, had breakfast, and proceeded with Ken and Jim out to the classroom building at Elmendorf.  I remained most of the day, then returned to the hotel, desperate for my next drink.  I was showing some symptoms of withdrawal and sensed that I was in trouble.  After a couple drinks had settled my nerves, I got on my knees in my hotel room and asked God to give me relief from my dependence on alcohol.  I wanted to wake up with no desire for another drink.  He had other plans.

I drank a few drinks Monday evening while dining with Ken and Jim, being cautious not to make a fool of myself.  On Tuesday, I prayed again that I could be sober completely by the time Margo would be arriving on Thursday.  I drank only a couple drinks that evening, again using the excuse that I needed to "calm my nerves."

On Wednesday evening, Ken and Jim had plans to dine with some members of the class.  I decided to dine by myself and went down to one of the five restaurants in this gigantic hotel complex.  The line was long because of the hour and the fact that the hotel was completely full.  After about twenty minutes, I was seated at a table that could accommodate four people.  It was adjacent to another four-person table occupied by a single individual.  I did something I had never done before and have never done since -- I spoke to that individual.  "Pardon me, but in light of the long line of people waiting for a table, would you mind if I joined you for dinner?"  He most graciosly accepted my offer.

The gentleman, whose name I can't recall (if I ever even knew it) was in town on business.  We made small talk throughout dinner.  I'm sure my dinner was accompanied by one or more alcoholic beverages.  As we neared the end of our meal, God's plan began to become more evident.

My new-found friend said, "I hate to be rude, but I need to leave to get to a meeting.  I'm fortunate enough to be part of an organization that has meetings just about everywhere that I go."  I immediately thought that he wasn't talking about Kiwanis or Rotary.  I asked, "Are you by any chance talking about Alcoholics Anonymous?"  He said that he was indeed talking about AA.  I asked if he would take me with him.  I informed him that I was in desperate need of help.

I don't recall much about the meeting.  I think it was at a Unitarian church.  It was in a large meeting room to accommodate the crowd.  There were a substantial number of native Americans -- Eskimo and Aleut -- who held their own meeting while the Anglos had theirs.  It was a spiritually charged gathering.  I had begun to sense that this was way more than a coincidence.

On Thursday, Margo arrived and I was completely dry.  Shaky, but dry.  We went to the class on Friday where sahe got to witness the Moot Court that was the highlight of the Rubin-Blackburn Show.  They had prepared a fictitious case in which an older female member of the case was cast as a villainous gold miner, living on the banks of a pristine Alaskan river, and discharging mercury from her mining operation into the river.  They had chosen the most lovable member of the class to play the villain.  Class members were chosen as jury members and as trial and defense attorneys.  It was a great teaching tool.  The books had never arrived.

Denali in Sunshine

Shortly after class had been dismissed, an individual from the postal facility showed up as we were cleaning up the room.  One of our cartons had arrived.  We decided that Margo and I would come back to Anchorage a day earlier than planned, hoping that all the books would have arrived.  We would repackage the books to ship to the twenty or so locations at which the attendees resided.

Margo and I went on our whirlwind vacation, got to see Denali's peak on a rare sunny day, saw moose and bear in the wild, witnessed salmon spawning in Valdez, saw glaciers calving, and got as far as Homer before returning to Anchorage.  We found that all the cartons had arrived and shipped sets of texts to all the members of this special class.

I still had a few more weeks of addiction to survive, but my life had already begun a transformation.  The guy at the next table, that fellow whose name I do not know, had planted a spiritual seed that continues to grow, thirty-six years later.  We have a saying in AA that I think applies.  "A coincidence is a miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous."