Annie D., like many of the others in this series on Seattle area AA oldtimers, is one tough bird.

Back when Fremont Hall was still in Fremont, she was a regular there. "We called it Fremonster. It wasn´t uncommon for people to pass out during the meeting or have a punch out in the back room.

"One time, I went into the ladies´ room and saw where someone had written some stupid thing about ´lesbons´ on the wall. They couldn´t even spell ´lesbian.´ Well, when they asked if anyone had any announcements for the good of AA, I spoke up and said, ´Why don´t you save that chicken s--t crap for the bars where it belongs?´ There was total silence in this huge room, and then a voice from the back said, ´Right on!´ Later, when I went back to the washroom, someone had ripped that piece of wallpaper off the wall."

Annie´s AA birthday is May 31,1976, but it was a long, rough road that got her there. Her brother died when she was 12 years old. It was a shock to her parents, whom, she said, had pinned their hopes on their only son. "My mother came home from the hospital and took to her bed for about a year," Annie said. "I remember standing at her bedroom door, and she would just stare at me. I was a great disappointment to them. It was apparent the wrong child had died."

Her parents divorced, and Annie lived with her mother and her new husband in Ojai, California, for two years. They didn´t get along, though, so her father took her back to Seattle. "I was stuck in what was then the Helen Bush School for Girls. I lived with my dad in his Seattle house . He´d come into my room after I´d gone to bed and harangue me about how awful I was. That went on all winter. I was exhausted.

"He had some kind of job and would disappear early. When I got back from school, he and my grandmother would be having dinner, and guess what? He would act like nothing had happened. I didn´t know the term ´denial´ then. He used to come into my room when he was drunk and beat the hell out of me ´til one day I kicked him clear across the room with both feet. He staggered back to my bed with blood on his face and said, ´My, you HAVE grown up.´

"I had a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Since he could no longer take his feelings out on me, he started beating my dog. At that point, I took the dog and went to some friends who had been kind to me at Helen Bush School. They let me and the dog move in with them and called my dad and said, ´There will be no more of this.´

"That was a very hard winter. I´m surprised at the guts I had to survive."´

Annie graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955. "You always hear about Berkeley in the ´60s, but let me tell you, it was a pretty squirrely place in the ´50s too." On graduation day, "My parents were nowhere to be found, and I didn´t have a clue about what to do with myself. So I went back to Ojai and got a job as a swimming teacher. Then some of my buddies from Berkeley asked me to go to Europe with them.

"That was all I needed to hear, so off we went. We hitchhiked all over England, then up to Scotland, and one night in a little bar with a bunch of Scotties, one of them made the mistake of saying, ´You will not go without a bit of a dram.´ He bought us a round. I don´t remember leaving the bar.

"In another pub in South Ireland, some locals began to give us a bad time. ´Look,´ I told them, ´in California we don´t put up with that kind of crap.´ They settled down and gave us no more trouble.

"When we got to Copenhagen, I met a woman who thought I was just what the doctor ordered. I was so boggled I didn´t know any better, so I stuck around with her for three years. Learning the language came in handy some years later at a Fremont meeting when one of the guys got offensive..I told him off in Danish, and then said, ´if any of you jerks want a beer, I´m buying.´ I still had half a fifth of bourbon in my house, so I invited some people over to finish it off. Why waste good booze pouring it down the sink?"

Annie has spent years coming to terms with her troubled childhood. She went into therapy, but had difficulty finding a therapist that met her needs. "There are many egomaniacs and incompetent jerks out there." She speaks contemptuously of doctors who think of themselves as "M.Dieties," but also feels any competent therapist "is able to treat the spiritual aspect of the human being. My present therapist is like that. I finally found this guy 12 years ago."

Today, Annie is still active in the fellowship. She attends several meetings each week, and one day a week, works at Intergroup fielding calls from people in need of help. And she continues to add her color and vitality to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Interviewed and written by Dick S.