Horace R. (Popsy) M., New York City.
(p. 375, 1st edition.)
Popsy entered A.A. in September of 1938.
He was described as a charming Virginia gentleman. His wife, Sandy, had been a nurse. They lived in a fashionable home on exclusive Sutton Place in Manhattan.
According to his story he was drinking heavily by the age of fifteen and sixteen. Then he decided to leave school. The next few years were spent in civil engineering work, travel, sports, and idleness, and he seemed not to have serious difficulties because of his drinking.
By the time he married and sailed for France during World War I, alcohol had begun to play a big part in his life. Soon he knew he was an alcoholic, but would admit it to no one.
Sometime after he was divorced from his first wife, he stopped being a social drinker and became a periodic drunkard, with sprees lasting from three days to three weeks, and the dry intervals lasting from three weeks to four months.
He married again by the age of thirty-five and had a beautiful home. He had a kind understanding, lovely wife; a partnership in a firm he had helped to found years before; a more than comfortable income; many luxuries and friends; opportunity to follow his interests and hobbies; a love of his work; pride in his success; great health; optimism; and hope.
But he had a growing, gnawing fear about his drinking. Soon he slipped to the bottom, sleeping in cheap hotels, flop houses, police stations and once in a doorway. (Since they appear to have been a wealthy family, this may have been because his wife had kicked him out, or he didn’t quite make it home due to his condition.)
He was sent many times to the alcoholic ward of a hospital. Sometimes he could pull himself together and work, but not for long. He became helpless, hopeless, bitter.
When he finally found A.A., he found that his intelligence, instead of drawing him further away from spiritual faith brought him closer to it. He was finally able to see that God could do an eminently more capable job of running the universe than he. At last he believed he was on his way.
It was Popsy and his wife who took Marty M. (“Women Suffer Too”) to her first meeting, on April 15, 1939. His sister-in-law had given the manuscript of the Big Book to Dr. Tiebout. Marty was a patient of Dr. Tiebout at Blythewood. Dr. Tiebout handed her a card with an address and told her to take the five o’clock train into New York, grab a cab, and go to the address on the card. These people would take her to a meeting. Marty was astounded to find this charming older couple, in this elegant home. Sandy put Marty immediately at ease. They had also invited for dinner a handsome, curly black-haired, blue-eyed young A.A. Irish man named Brian as Marty’s escort for the evening. They had an elegant dinner, after which the four of them caught the subway to Brooklyn across the East River.