COLOR HIM FATHER: A 48-YEAR SOBRIETY JOURNEY

Dave Barrett stopped consuming alcohol almost 50 years ago in April 1976.

“My wife has never seen me drink,” he told me. “I didn’t have to worry about being drunk at my daughter’s wedding. Nipping it in the bud at age 26 allowed me to have a life.”

I think those of us who have successfully abstained from alcohol consumption to improve ourselves and be more present for our loved ones—including myself here—know exactly where Dave is coming from with that sentiment. It is one of the purest forms of thankfulness, established by a self-control you never knew was in you, or that you lost and regained through a commitment to change.

Dave gave me a sip of his addiction origin story during a two-day executive retreat this past spring at A Walk in the Woods Experience in Virginia. We were there to understand the value of leadership team renewals being cultivated by founder Sam Dibert, Sr.  We had never met before then.

While Dave’s charm and genuine interest in others were immediately recognizable, the personal turmoil and battles he faced as a child and young man didn’t come into view until we shared our backgrounds around a late morning campfire on our second day together.

The man’s fatherly aura makes you want to know him on a deeper level.

If you watch Dave in a social situation, you will notice the ease he brings to those around him. He is not presenting himself and his accomplishments, he is providing the sort of eye contact and asking the sorts of questions that signal he wants to learn from you and about you. And ultimately, to help you.

He is self-aware and therefore inclusive, an attribute that’s rarer than you might think given its overuse in our global corporate vernacular. My instinctive reaction to meeting Dave: soak up his wisdom.

After he overcame an alcoholism that crashed mercilessly through generation upon generation of his family—including both parents and a paternal grandfather who was “kicked out of Ireland for drinking too much and barroom fighting”—he started and sold two businesses. Today he advises business leaders through his work as a regional executive for the Virginia Council of CEOs.

While he would not say the words himself, and might not see himself this way, Dave is the very definition of human resilience. He credits God and a lifelong dedication to an anonymous 12-step recovery process for granting him the self-control and drive to carry on and thrive in business and in life without the crutch of alcohol consumption.

He took his recovery process so seriously that he found a meeting while on his honeymoon out of the country in Bermuda. This was decades before the acts of accessing information or finding nearby like-minded people were transformed by the internet and mobile technologies. Dave wasn’t feeling the urgent need, but with the encouragement of his new wife, Kay, he attended a meeting while she read a book in their hotel room.

Dave remembers the exchange starting with her asking: “Are you going to go to any meetings? Are you still doing okay?” He said he was fine, and she added: “I’m perfectly okay if you want to go to a meeting.”

Add his wife to the list of people instrumental to his 48 years of sobriety.

Through a one-on-one conversation recently, Dave shared that he didn’t deprive himself by officially giving up alcohol on Monday, April 26, 1976, after his first “meeting” with a father figure by his side.

“I gained freedom,” he asserted.

I interviewed Dave to dig deeper into his story, which is as colorful and inspiring as anything you will hear in a lifetime.

Growing Up

Dave was born in San Diego, California, and raised in a row house in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended parochial school at Immaculate Heart of Mary. His FBI agent dad—who worked for J. Edgar Hoover—and his mom, were both alcoholics.

He recalled being about 11 years old when in response to their alcohol-fueled fighting he started encouraging them to divorce. Not long afterward, he gave up.

“At 12, I started drinking.”

Dave said his “14 years of progressive alcoholism” included counseling from doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, prescriptions, and multiple emergency room visits. Among the many low moments, three events he recounted stood out to me as turning points:

• the substance-abuse deaths of two close friends;

• a horrific car accident in a company car; and

• a dinner conversation with his college roommate’s dad.

College: Joe and Rod

Dave’s two closest friends during his college years at the University of Maryland were Joe and Rod. “We took spring breaks together in Daytona and camped out on the beaches of Florida,” he said, “did drugs and drank.”

Dave met Joe, “a brilliant engineering student on scholarship,” in his freshman-year dorm and Rod a year later. “I met Rod because I had to go back to the dorms. I was in a frat that got kicked off campus.” Rod was a red-headed American kid who had grown up in India due to his dad’s work. At one point, Dave remembers Rod suggesting they use drugs, telling him: “You drink too much.”

”What brought us together was drugs,” he added. Their partying involved everything from traditional weed to hash, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), Purple Haze sativa marijuana, and mescaline.

Dave last saw them in June 1971 around college graduation, although Joe didn’t graduate.

“Joe jumped out of an eighth-floor window,” Dave shared. He either committed suicide or made the leap while on LSD, not realizing it meant certain death.

When Dave went to visit Rod at the communal-style farm he was living on to talk about Joe’s death—on a weekday at lunchtime—one of Rod’s farm mates directed him to the barn loft where Rod was sleeping the morning away.

“There he is—looks asleep,” said Dave. Then he spotted something troubling. “It was the first time I ever saw the spoon and syringe of heroin.” He remembers feeling sick at the sight of his friend. Within a month of that September 1971 visit, another friend called and asked if Dave had heard what happened to Rod.

“He overdosed on heroin in New York,” Dave told me.

First Job: Company Car

Dave’s first job after college involved selling beer of all things. His role in sales for a national brewing company was fitting given his natural charm, but it placed him precariously close to alcohol consumption and the culture created to encourage its use.

Thinking back on that time in his life, he said, “I suffered with a tremendous amount of depression and anxiety. I couldn’t wait to get to Thursday night or Friday. The drinking was a secret, and you think other people don’t know.”

But they did.

Dave recalled crashing a beer truck while on the job and in another incident, a company vehicle in a single-car crash at 4 a.m., which was so violent the car exploded after slamming into a telephone pole. Emergency workers treated him at the scene and took him home.

His drunk driving occurred in a different era that was more permissive. “They would take you home,” he said. “Today it’s different.”

He recognizes how fortunate it was that others—innocents—weren’t physically hurt in the accidents.

Still, despite avoiding consequences beyond his own destruction and property damage, being the funny drunk was losing its luster. He called his ongoing alcohol use and abuse “a slow death.”

Dinner with Jerry

If I were to turn Dave’s story into a movie, the background score for the scene where he’s asking a father figure about why he doesn’t drink—and how to stop drinking himself—would feature the 1969 Grammy Award-winning song, “Color Him Father” by The Winstons (written by Richard Lewis Spencer, Jr.).

Reading the song’s lyrics, it appears to credit a stepfather for his role as a father to a boy and his younger sister, and as a husband to the boy’s mother. The refrain of the song underlines the appreciation being granted:

Think I'll color this man father

I think I'll color him love

Said I'm gonna color him father

I think I'll color the man love, yes I will

Dave’s figurative stepfather in his shift to sobriety was named Jerry. He was the father of Dave’s college roommate, John. Through caddying at the local country club and other social situations with John and his family, Dave noticed that Jerry didn’t consume alcohol.

How did he muster the bravery to ask for help?

Saturday, April 24, 1976

“I woke up in my apartment, 10 a.m., had been drunk for two days. Made a batch of frozen daiquiris or Manhattens, sat in my bathrobe, smoking cigarettes, and my younger brother calls.” When Dave’s brother Paul arrived later that day to visit, he looked around, took it all in, and asked: “Have you seen this place? If you keep this up, you’re going to die.”

Sunday, April 25, 1976

When Dave woke up the day after his brother’s visit, he remembers thinking he needed to change his ways. “I’ve got to change. Paul might be right. Maybe I’m killing myself. Maybe this is out of control.”

Rehabilitation facilities weren’t commonplace in the 70s like they are now. “I cleaned my apartment, did not drink at all, and called my friend John.”

In what turned out to be a life-saving conversation—and at a minimum, life-altering for the better—Dave floated the idea of leaning on John’s dad, Jerry, for advice.

As a recovering alcoholic, Jerry had a father’s sense about Dave’s struggles. Not just the outward signs, but also the self-reflection raging inside his head and the worry weighing on his heart.

“He knew that when I drank it was typically too much,” Dave said. “And he knew what I did not know—that I was probably an alcoholic. I knew he didn’t drink and wanted to find out why.”

Monday, April 26, 1976

Jerry and Dave went out and had dinner together. As they worked through typical dinner conversation, Jerry asked Dave if there was anything else he wanted to talk about. “He was doing the 12-step work,” said Dave, “giving back.”

Dave eventually asked what had been on his mind: “John says you don’t drink and who I am right now is not someone I want to be for a long time.” He explained to Jerry that while he thought he was a lot of fun when drinking, his good friends were telling him he needed to stop.

Then Jerry saved Dave’s life with nine words: “There’s a meeting down the street in 20 minutes.”

In his first 12 months of sobriety, Dave went to close to 400 meetings. “That first summer, I went every night, and on Saturdays and Sundays, two or three meetings,” he said.

Dave called that first meeting “the first few minutes of the miracle.”

“God used Jerry to get me to that meeting. I am sober and here today not just because I took the first step, but because Jerry took the twelfth step,” he added. Jerry was a prominent, middle-aged businessman when he escorted 26-year-old Dave to his first recovery meeting.

“I stayed in touch with him, but Jerry was never my mentor or sponsor in the program,” Dave said. Jerry stayed alcohol-free and lived into his 90s.

“In the beginning, I met a couple men who became my sponsors,” Dave said. “I liked their demeanor and thought maybe I’ll get to know them.” Dave explained that first-time or early attendees to meetings are tasked with spotting someone they think might be helpful in their sobriety journey.

His sponsors took that virtual handoff from Jerry and in different ways, continued saving Dave’s life for the decades he has remained sober.

Family Matters

Dave’s college roommate John, Jerry’s son, has retired in Maryland with his wife of 50-plus years, after a long career as a boat pilot responsible for safely moving ships longer than four football fields with drafts over 40-feet deep through the Chesapeake Bay and the narrow and shallow ship channels leading to Baltimore.

Dave’s younger brother, Paul, served as dean of the business college at Longwood University in Virginia. He is retired now in Maryland. “Paul was the good brother who was a college athlete and never got involved with substance abuse,” Dave noted. “Maybe because he saw what my life looked like making horrible choices.”

“My mother drank and smoked and was quite the character right up until she died at age 83,” Dave said. My parents divorced when I was 19, and I don’t think mom ever truly understood why I stopped drinking. My dad also died at 83 but five years before my mother. At age 76, I took dad to his first recovery meeting after his drinking was completely out of control and his second wife was ready to throw him out. When he died, I think he had stopped drinking but I’m not completely sure. At least he got it under control and his wife never gave him the boot.”

Dave’s father-in-law was a heavy drinker, and he believes that was one of the reasons Kay was attracted to him: Dave had chosen sobriety. “I didn’t drink when we met, and to this day she has never seen me take a drink,” he said. “My wife drinks like I never knew how to—a glass or two of wine on occasion and then stops.”

Dave’s five kids grew up with a father who didn’t drink. “When they were teenagers, they were told a lot about why I stopped,” he said. “They even heard me talk about it publicly. On a couple occasions, I would be a guest speaker at their high schools.”

Life Today

Dave estimates that he has taken 100 people to their first anonymous recovery meeting since Jerry extended his hand to him over 48 years ago. He now goes to about 20 meetings a year.

“I have not ‘graduated’ but my healthy sobriety has allowed me to give tons of time to family, career, church, and just plain old giving back activities,” he said. “God has been so good to me!”

When I think back to the man I met at that retreat on Sam’s farm in late spring—and when I close my eyes to revive some of the most therapeutic moments of vulnerability that we all shared, but specifically that Dave Barrett offered without hesitation—there’s now a soundtrack playing:

Think I'll color this man father

I think I'll color him love

Said I'm gonna color him father

I think I'll color the man love, yes I will

That “Color Him Father” blessing granted to Dave by Our Father, and John’s father, Jerry, has been magnified now for almost five decades.

And it continues.

I think I’ll color him father.

About the Author: Dave Schuellerman is a professional writer and communication consultant with 30 years of experience helping B2B and B2C companies inform and influence targeted audiences. Learn more about his background, perspective, and available services such as executive and corporate communication, thought leadership content strategy and program management, and feature writing at FEND Communication. Ready to engage on a project? Reach him directly at schuellerman@gmail.com.