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Brothers Larry B. and Bill B. have a lot in common. They were both born and raised in Seattle, they were both long time restaurant workers, and they were both hardcore drunks who are now sober.

Today, they each have over 30 years of sobriety. Larry, the older brother, sobered up on Jan. 2, 1972. Bill followed him on Sept. 6, 1977. They both give Larry credit for Bill´s sobriety. Here´s the story:

"We was close, but I got so bad he didn´t want me in his house anymore after he got sober," Bill said.

"He´d pretty much used up the family," Larry said. "His drinking was making my life unmanageable. He was comin´ around all the time, a real pain in the ass. By the time he´d leave, my wife and I would be fighting. Finally, I told him not to come around anymore when he was drinking. The rest of the family cut him loose too.

"Then he called me one day, singin´ the blues, and said he was going to jump off the bridge if I didn´t come down and get him. I said no."

Bill: "I knew if he came he was gonna preach that A.A. bullshit to me, but I didn´t know what else to do."

The brothers never met that day, "but two weeks later, Bill called me from the treatment center at Cedar Hills. He´d signed in for their six-month program."

"I quit drinkin´," Bill said in explaining how he came to sobriety.

Cedar Hills was the last of several treatment centers Bill had tried. He´s not sure just how many. Booze has made his memory hazy. But Cedar Hills was the one that turned his life around.

"I had a great counselor there," Bill said. "This was my last stop on the treatment road. I´d had intermittent sobriety before, but when I entered Cedar Hills, I never another drink. And no temptation either."

"I did have an accident," Bill said in the interest of full disclosure. "Larry and me went to Reno one time and I accidentally took a sip of a 7-High. I knew right away what it was and I didn´t take another swallow."

Larry was training as an alcoholism counselor at Seattle University when his brother was in the last stages of his drinking career. "The priest I was working with told me to cut Bill loose with love. That´s what I did, and it worked."

The brothers have grown ever closer since Bill put the plug in the jug 31 years ago.

Before sobriety, it was a wild ride for this family. They were both born in Seattle of parents who were also born here. They lived on lower Queen Anne in the Warren Ave. district. Larry graduated in 1951 from Queen Anne High School. Bill went to Garfield, but he never finished. He earned his GED in that six months at Cedar Hills.

"Dad´s side of the family was riddled with alcoholism," Larry said. "All his brothers were drunks too. Only his sister was spared. She had diabetes and couldn´t drink."

"Mom´s side of the family had their problems too," Bill said, "but not as bad."

Their father was an early Seattle member of A.A., but the boys say he never made it. "He was a cook," Larry said. "Whenever they needed a cook in the jail, they´d put the word on and have him picked up on Skid Row. He died in the jail infirmary."

The whole family worked in restaurants. The boys´ stepfather, they say, was a chef for Ivar´s when that famous chain began in the Thirties. "He gave Ivar a lot of good ideas, but he died in the Sixties, a drunk like the rest of us," Bill said. An uncle was a cook during construction of the Alcan Highway to Alaska during World War II.

Both brothers had stints at sea in the merchant marine.

Both brothers got an early start on alcoholism. Bill said he first got drunk when he was seven years old, when he got into his dad´s blackberry wine. By the time he was a teen at Garfield, he was drinking heavily, and rarely stopped for the next two decades.

"I was in jail a lot," Bill said. "I spent half my life on the installment plan in the drunk tank. I´m the only guy who was ever arrested twice in one day for drunk-out in the morning, back in that afternoon."

He´s been married three times. His first marriage produced three daughters. Their mother died of alcoholism at the age of 47. Later, he married twice to women from the Philippines. Both failed, but he´s still friendly with his third wife.

Larry started his drinking career a little later, when he was 14, but booze got him in a lot more serious trouble. "All through high school, I was drinking a lot of booze and smoking a lot of weed, but I did graduate, in 1951." With his diploma in hand, he began a 25-year career as a dishwasher in various restaurants around Seattle.

"I´d get drunk and get fired and get another job. There was never a problem. We had a strong union then, the Cooks and Assistants Union. They could always get me another job. There was no such thing as hiring help off the street. After I got sober, my first job was at the Turf. The boss asked me for the names of some chefs I´d worked for. I told him if he called any of ´em, they´d say I was the best kitchen help he could get if I was sober. I told him I´d been sober three months. He hired me on the spot."

These jobs were in between stays at Monroe Reformatory, Walla Walla State Prison and the federal reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma.

"I thought I was a good thief," Larry said, "but they´d catch me easy ´cause I was always drunk." The trip to Oklahoma was occasioned by a car theft in Washington which ended in California, resulting in a felony: taking stolen property across a state line.

Why did he finally sober up?

"After I got out of Walla Walla in ´62, my wife said I had to get sober or we were through. So I was in A.A. for a year, but I went for her, not for me. After that year, I stayed drunk for another nine years. I almost died of alcoholism. When I woke up on Jan. 2, 1972, I told myself I´d never make it to my next birthday if I didn´t quit drinking. That day, I went cold turkey, and let me tell you, that was tough. I don´t recommend it to anybody. But I´ve been sober ever since." He knocked on the table for good luck at that point in the interview.

Larry´s marriage survived those long years of alcoholism, until the death of his wife in 1999. He has a stepson and three grandchildren that are close to him.

With his newfound sobriety, Larry decided to move up in the world and signed on for Seattle University´s alcohol counseling program. He was a success, but couldn´t find a job until Harriet T. invited him to Petersburg in Southeast Alaska to work for her. When Harriet moved on to a treatment center in Juneau, Larry took over the Petersburg agency. He was in Alaska seven years before returning to Seattle. While there, he was also elected to the city council. Both he and Harriet, as well as Bill, are regulars at the Longtimers monthly meeting at St. Paul´s Church. Larry is one of Bill´s sponsors.

Except for Longtimers, the brothers go their separate ways to meetings. Bill´s home group is Mountlake Terrace. "I didn´t think there was much sobriety out there," Bill said, "so I´d bring it to ´em." He did a lot of service work for a group in his early sober days, starting out as coffeemaker and graduating to secretary and treasurer, and still making the coffee.

Larry had been forgotten when he came back from Alaska. "Everyone knew Bill from his cooking at the Big Hall on Pine Street. All I was was Bill´s brother." "Cooking at the Alano Club was a big part of my sobriety," Bill said.

Larry found his way back by becoming active in two groups, including the Saturday Night Dinner Bunch.

These two brothers have seen a lot of changes in Seattle since their youth. The biggest, they say, is the growth of deadly gangs and their armed warfare. Larry said he used to have many black drinking friends and felt free to roam the Central District. No more. "It used to be a big deal when someone got shot."

They also regret the demise of Cedar Hills, but they say the agency brought it on itself when it broadened its scope to include drug addicts. The boys feel the program lost focus, and thus lost community support.

Looking back over 30-plus years, Bill sees A.A. as his salvation. "A.A. is to stay sober. I tell new people you gotta do it one day at a time. That is how I´m alive instead of dead 20 or 30 years ago. It´s given me all that time, and it´s still giving me time."

Larry gets the last word. "Everything I have, I owe to this program."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.