BUTCH

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

BUTCH

“Only By Grace”

When I was 18 months old, my mother, uncle and I were in a car accident while on the way to visit my father at an Air Force base in Texas. Both my uncle and my mother were killed while I was found in the back seat, unharmed. I went to live with my 67-year-old grandmother while my father was serving in the Air Force. When I was eight years old, I received notice that my father had died in London, England. It was then, I felt like an orphan, and maybe started my journey of feeling lost and forsaken. I remember always feeling insecure and never equal to others.

Around the age of 14, I took my first drink, and it seemed that one magic moment changed my life. All of a sudden, I wasn't bashful or afraid to talk to girls. I could even dance, or so I thought. Alcohol was doing for me what I could not do for myself.

All of a sudden, my perception of life changed. I went on to architectural school at the University of Arkansas and continued drinking. By that time, smoking pot and other miscellaneous drugs became part of my life. Somehow, I graduated from the University and moved back to Eureka Springs, starting my own design firm.

In the early ’80s I finally met the girl I’d been looking for. She was an attorney, owned her own house and best of all, she drank scotch. After dating for six weeks, we got married, and I moved to Little Rock. I started work with an architectural firm then landed my dream job. I became the Executive Director of a State Agency with oversight over the Historic District around the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol.

At this point, I’d been drinking daily for years. With the progression of alcoholism, I was now drinking during the day and eventually started my morning with a drink, to calm my nerves (so I justified). The disease had caught up with me and I could not stop from picking up that first drink. I would wake up in the morning and had to have a drink. Of course, I had a good excuse as my wife was divorcing me. I also had a lot of other issues at work. Eventually, I was fired for drinking on the job. At this point, I had no job, no wife, and no place to live. I decided to move back to my hometown. I was moving back to die. It was then I started living in what I called my hooch, which in reality was an eight by ten metal storage building with a bathroom. I was now unemployable, helpless, hopeless, and did not see any future but was still drinking. If I was awake, I was drinking. I thought about killing myself but was too afraid that I wouldn't be successful. I wasn't afraid of dying, I was afraid of living.

In October of 1996, while in my car waiting for traffic to pass on the highway, an old girlfriend showed up in my driveway. She ended up taking me to her house and reading to me about a recovery program for sobriety. I realize today, that was a miracle or what I now consider God working in my life. If she would have been three minutes later, I would have missed her and I would be dead from alcoholism. That was the start of my 25 years of sobriety, a day at a time and sometimes a minute at a time.

Several years later, I became chairman of the board for the treatment center where I detoxed. I started my own architectural firm and got elected to the Eureka Springs City Council serving five terms and was then elected mayor. The only person in over 40 years who has served two four-year terms as mayor of Eureka Springs. Going from being homeless and jobless to being the Mayor to Chairman of the Board. Only by the grace of God could I have done this.