Roger put in 52 years as counterman, bookkeeper and outside salesman for a venerable auto supply parts company in downtown Seattle. Except for a few casual jobs he found in the depths of the Great Depression, it was the only job he ever held. As "The Monitor," an auto parts trade journal, said in its obituary, "Roger probably had more friends in the auto industry than anyone else in the area."

It must be said, though, that it helps to have a boss who´s willing to overlook coming to work late, missing days and getting drunk on the job. He started as assistant bookkeeper in 1939 at 50 cents an hour, then moved to counterman when the war started at a 35-cent pay increase. That and outside salesman were his principal job descriptions for nearly half a century.

"Eighty five cents an hour was pretty good money," Roger said when he was interviewed in 1995. "But I went back to bookkeeping a couple of times, once when the bookkeeper died. I got to drinkin´ so bad I told the boss, ´I´m gonna quit. Get yourself another bookkeeper.´ Nuthin happened, so I got drunk again. Got on a seven-day drunk . Come Monday, I was in bad shape. It happened to be Lincoln´s birthday, a holiday, so the boss didn´t insist I get up.

"I made up my mind to call AA. I looked in the want ads in the P-I and called ´em--SEneca 2916. I still remember the number. The guy who answered said somebody would come out to see me that day, and he did. When I told him I was missing work and had bent up my car, he said, ´Well, you´re not alone. There´s quite a few of us and we meet once a week out in Ballard, on Wednesdays. Want to come?"

I said "Yeah." "The meeting was the next day. I went to work, and lemme tell you, it was pretty grim. But I got in my car that night and found my way out to 22nd and 60th in Ballard. There was floodlights outside the building, and I thought, I can´t go in there. Everybody will see me and know I´m a drunk.

"But I went in finally, and met this guy and asked him, ´Is this where I go?´ He says ´maybe you, not me. I´m the janitor.´ But I finally found the right place, and there was the guy who´d answered the phone when I called, a Canadian guy. His story was really somethin´. He´d been in the Canadian navy, head of a dispensary, and was the guy who handed out the rum ration each day. When a guy didn´t take his, my friend got it.

"He got a telegram that his mother was in bad shape, so he got a furlough and took off for Saskatchewan. But he had to change trains in Montreal and found a saloon instead. When he finally got to Saskatchewan, they were just lowering her casket into the grave. I said to myself, ´I can see why he´s here.´"

That was the start for Roger´s long life of sobriety. Early on, he found strength in meeting other people who he had known as drinkers, like the "milk peddler who sold milk door to door. He was always drunk, and when I found he had seven years of sobriety, I said ´WOW.´´´

That first meeting was interesting, but he wasn´t sure he´d be back. Then he discovered the step meeting at the old hall at 915 East Pine. "I was fascinated again. I could tell I was with a bunch of boozers who weren´t drinking. Big Pete was running the First Step table. There was an Inventory table, Fourth Step and 12th Step. I went around to each one of ´em. Then I´d go back to the Spiritual table. That seemed to draw me.

"I kept coming back, and I listened and listened. Before the summer was over, I was named to represent Ballard at Intergroup.

"I never said nuthin´ in that job. There was another guy there who didn´t talk either. He told me about the Dale Carneigie course, where they teach you how to talk. I kinda resented him telling me that ´cause he was half stewed at the time, but I thought it over and bought ´How to Win Friends and Influence People.´ After I´d read it, I signed up for the course--90 bucks for 15 meetings. I told ´em, ´I belong to a group that believes in prayer, so I want to learn to express myself.´ The next week, at the Ballard meeting, when they asked me somethin´, I could give ´em an answer.

"After that, I started taking part in the meetings, and when they picked on me to be chairman, it sort of opened up AA for me. It took awhile to feel the spiritual part. It wasn´t till after my first AA birthday that I could say ´God´ with reverence."

As time went on, Roger became more and more involved. He did extensive 12 Step work, worked in the jails and chaired the Ballard meeting for several years. Sometimes, he would arrive at work with only a few hours sleep from having been out on a late night call. "It was bad, but not as bad as going to work with a hangover." Most recently, he helped start the highly successful Burke Avenue Men´s Group that meets Thursday nights.

Roger was born in Ambrose, North Dakota, in 1916. When he was eight years old, he came down with polio. The family doctor suggested an appetizer to help him eat during his convalescence, so his dad began making home brew, common practice during Prohibition. Roger began helping himself, and got into serious drinking after Repeal in 1933.

When his uncle in Seattle told him he could find work "out west," he hopped a freight, only to find jobs as scarce here as back home. "I picked beans out around Kent, washed dishes down at Rhodes 10 Cent Store, painted a cottage for a guy." Discouraged, he went back to North Dakota for a year, saved up $80 and came out again, this time to the old Edison Tech Business College on Broadway to learn bookkeeping. That was in 1938, still Depression times, and it took him a year to find the job that became his lifetime career, in the auto parts business. He managed to pay his debts, but the drinking got worse. "I shoulda been fired. I missed work and come in to work stewed. It was wartime by then, though, and the boss leaned over backward to keep me on. I´ll always be grateful." And it paid off for the firm, too. Roger was in AA for most of his working life, sober and diligent.

He stayed with the firm until his retirement at 75 in 1991.

Interviewed and written by Dick S. Thanks to Bob F. for his help with this story. Bob met Roger when he moved into Four Freedoms House and was told there was a man in AA there he ought to get to know. Bob was assigned to Apt. 704 only to discover that Roger lived in 703. Higher Power?