In Memory

Loehr (Rusty) Young

Loehr (Rusty) Young



 
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04/01/10 02:52 PM #1    

Gerry Shields (History)

Yesterday (3/30/10) was my 31st anniversary (we call them birthdays) in Alcoholics Anonymous, a life changing experience which began with Loehr (as he wanted to be called after AS) or Rusty. As those of us who loved Rusty know well, he could be a pain in the butt. And so he was one weekend in 1977 when I, then on a downward spiral with alcohol, spent a weekend with him in NYC. I was on my way to a hoped-for life-changing job in Austria (which lasted one week!) and Rusty, himself a newcomer in AA, saw immediately that there was no life change in store for me without getting sober. I didn’t want to hear it and resisted mightily. I wanted to go to bars and he wanted to drag me to an AA meeting. The bars won out that weekend, but a few months later, home from Austria and beaten again, something led me to a treatment center where my days and years of sobriety began. Rusty planted the seed because I had resisted hearing anything about AA until that weekend in NYC. I am forever grateful to him and was able to tell him this before his early death. We never met again in person but his memory is dear to me and when I have a chance to “carry the message” (another AA saying) I do so very much in his memory. Rest in peace.

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