FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 1 The Factory Owner & the Convict FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 2 Hindsfoot Foundation Series on Alcoholics Anonymous History FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 3 The Factory Owner & the Convict Lives and Teachings of the A.A. Old Timers Vol. 1 Glenn C. Second Edition FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 4 Copyright © 1996, 2005 by Glenn C., Archivist Written for the groups in South Bend, Mishawaka, Elkhart, and Goshen, c/o Michiana Central Service Office 814 E. Jefferson Blvd., South Bend, Indiana 46617 First edition 1996 Second edition 2005 Front cover: steel mills from the area of heavy industry in northwestern Indiana which stretched from Gary to South Bend and Mishawaka. From a poster designed by Carroll T. Berry in 1928 for the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend Railroad, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 5 St. Joseph-Elkhart County Archives Project Stories, tapes, and reminiscences collected with the aid of South Bend, IN: Bob F., Bob S., Gil L., Mary Pat L., Molly S., Pat R., Pat W., Phyllis T., and Raymond I. Elkhart, IN: Ed C., Martha P., and Marty G. Mishawaka, IN: Sharon K. Also: Bill C. (Osceola, IN), D. Merrill (Oberlin, OH), Frank N. (Syracuse IN), Juanita P. (Rolling Prairie, IN), Rob G. (Niles, MI), and Stan E. (Edwardsburg, MI) FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 6 Table of Contents Preface Part One. Introduction 1. My Story Is My Message Part Two. Ken M.’s Early Life: From Rags to Riches 2. The Wounded Healer 3. Expelled from School 4. The Traveling Salesman Who Played the Organ 5. World War I: Interlude at Sea 6. Marriage to Helen and Move to South Bend 7. The Successful Young Factory Owner 8. Breakdown and Collapse Part Three. Nick K.’s Early Life: From the Orphanage to the Penitentiary 9. The Brave Young Man Who Didn’t Even Cry 10. Black Fig Wine and Jail Cells 11. The Murder of Joseph Desits Part Four. Ken and Soo Found the South Bend Alcoholics Anonymous Group 12. Ken and Soo Start Their A.A. Group 13. The First Twenty Members Part Five. Nick K. and the A.A. Prison Group 14. Joining Hands with the Convicts 15. Doing God’s Time 16. Little Boys and Girls in Grown-ups’ Bodies Part Six. Bill H. and Jimmy M.: Winning Inclusion for Black Alcoholics 17. Jimmy’s Bar 18. The Interracial Group 19. Meetings and Steps in Early A.A. 20. He Knew It Was a God Notes FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 7 Preface to the first edition This project was begun as part of the celebration of the Golden Anniversary of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement in South Bend, Elkhart, Mishawaka, and Goshen, Indiana in 1993. The present volume is the fruit of the following three years of research, and is presented, appropriately enough, at the Silver Anniversary meeting of the Michiana Regional Conference which brings A.A. members together from this region of northern Indiana and southern Michigan. Preface to the second edition In the Spring of 1993, the groups in South Bend and Mishawaka asked one of their members to assemble this material to preserve the memory of how A.A. had first begun fifty years earlier in their part of the country, in the cities and towns of Indiana and Michigan which cluster around the St. Joseph river valley and the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan. It was intended just as a local project. No one at that time imagined that anyone outside of this area would be interested in it. But then a number of A.A. groups began making annual pilgrimages to South Bend from many miles away, some from the Chicago area coming for an entire month every year, and others traveling at times from Ann Arbor and Lansing in Michigan, and from Bloomington in southern Indiana. Their lives had been saved, they said, by people who had been trained at the feet of Nick and Brownie and their South Bend friends, who had come to their town FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 8 and started A.A. groups there, bringing with them the tradition and the spirit of early St. Joseph river valley A.A. And they told us that there were many others from even further away, in places like New York City and Florida, who would be making that same pilgrimage if they did not live at such a distance. And then a few copies of this book began to travel to other parts of the country, and an ever-increasing number of calls started coming in for copies to pass around there too, and we began to realize to an even greater extent that we had something of more than just local interest. We were told that this collection of stories made sense of what the twelve step program was about in a way that people could understand and relate to in their part of the country also, better in its own way than anything they had read before. They told us that it gave a picture of the depths of the inner misery of alcoholism and addiction that struck a deep chord in their hearts. One good old- timer told us that “this book describes the way alcoholics actually think better than anything I have ever read.” Newcomers said that it opened their eyes and “made sense” out of what they were going through. Even more importantly, this collection of stories gave a clear and moving vision of the new hope which the twelve step program offered, and showed people how to begin walking the path that led to that new and blessed life. Then psychotherapists who were treating people who had problems with alcohol and drugs began begging for copies too. They said they were loaning copies of it to their patients to read, because this book seemed to deliver the message which they most needed to hear, better than anything else they had come up with. A very successful book which came out in 2001, The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program: For Believers and Non- Believers, was based on the message of the St. Joseph river valley A.A. teachers. Some of the key people in the development of FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 9 modern alcoholism treatment in the United States said that it was the first thing they had encountered which gave truly useful help to newcomers who were atheists and agnostics — people who up to that point had always been turned away by any kind of spiritual approach to recovery. And they too begged us to reprint the original stories of these Hoosier old timers. It became clear that it was time to do another printing of the original historical account. This second edition has been divided into two volumes, with the second half given a separate title, The St. Louis Gambler and the Railroad Man. The first volume contains the stories of Ken M. (the factory owner), Nick K. (the convict), and Jimmy M., a woman who was one of the first two black people to come into the South Bend program. The second volume continues with the stories of Brownie (the St. Louis gambler), Ed P. (the railroad man), Ellen L., and Goshen Bill. The preparation of this new edition has provided an opportunity to revise an occasional very badly put together sentence or paragraph — the first edition was written rather hurriedly — and to add an appendix talking about the books these good old timers read, but this is otherwise the same book which was put together for our local Indiana A.A. groups nine years ago. Last but not least, very special thanks must be given to Frank N. of Syracuse, Indiana, the northern Indiana A.A. archivist, who has walked every step of the way during those years, encouraging and supporting and contributing his own talents as an interviewer and researcher. If we measured his contribution only in terms of days spent and miles journeyed, that would be reason enough to thank him. But he is one who has truly thrown himself into the spirit and complete dedication of old time A.A., and has been above all the best friend anyone could ever have. FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 10 Part One Introduction FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 11 Chapter 1 My Story Is My Message These two volumes are a description of how alcoholics actually think and feel inside, about themselves and about their problems, and their accounts of the psychological and spiritual transformations which their lives underwent when they discovered the Alcoholics Anonymous program — told in the words of some of the earliest pioneers from one local region during the period of the rapid grassroots spread of the movement across the United States in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s. This two-part work also gives the personal sagas of some very memorable and colorful characters. The first volume begins with the story of Ken M., who was co- owner and president of a large factory which he was able to make grow and prosper in the midst of the great depression era. But he was also a talented author and musician: he wrote fiction which he published in Collier’s and the Atlantic Monthly and other prominent national publications; he could attend the symphony and come back home and play on the piano, from memory, all the major parts of one of the movements of a piece that had caught his interest. Nick K., the convict, was a young man brought up mostly in an orphanage in New Mexico, chest deformed by rickets from the inadequate diet, serving a life sentence in the state penitentiary because one cold winter night he had plunged in a drunken fury into the sitting room of a house of ill repute and shot and killed a total FACTORY OWNER & THE CONVICT — 12 stranger whom his alcohol-blurred vision mistook for someone else.