JB Smiths Blog – Author @ books4free.com

I got sober in Atlanta, GA in 2005 -2006 initially, and then over the next decade, and the early days were filled with Woody Davis and I shooting the shit.

Woody was one of a kind, and I’d be lying if I said we always got along, but we did get along most of the time. We both liked chess, and in my early days hanging out at Starbucks. Woody and I were both degenerates about women too, especially in my early days.

I respected Woody right off the bat, because despite our cultural and upbringing differences, we were both from the South and we’d both been in jail and on the wrong side of the law as a result of our drinking and drugging, though his story is simply legendary compared to mine.

I wasn’t sure what to believe about Woody Davis’s story, it was just incredible, he’d claimed to be one of the first paratroopers into Vietnam, the very first African American paratrooper into Vietnam, and he’d served with medals after being drafted out of his home state of North Carolina. His story then continued on to working for the notorious NYC gangster Denzel Washington made the movie about, Frank Lucas, who was in fact from North Carolina, La Grange, though that’s about all the verification I’ve got on it. He only ever told me bits and pieces, and we got to know each other about the time the movie American Gangster was coming out, so it’s possible, and of course, equally possible his crime syndicate connections are embellished. I haven’t thoroughly researched.

His story, and how I heard about it is so powerful it shook the doubt and cynicism I had about sobriety down to my core though, after more threads of the story weaved together when I heard a speaker at the AA GA State Conference in 2007.

I probably had about 3-4 months sober in the spring of 2007 when I was asked to attend the GA State Conference that was held around Perimeter Mall that year, I most likely heard about it through Rule 62, at the 8111 clubhouse, my early sobriety stomping grounds.

While at the conference, I ended up sitting with Woody Davis, buried in the crowd with a thousand other garden variety drunks.

The speakers name eludes me, and I should look it up, someone will probably email me and I’ll update it but he told the story of his sponsors story first, building up the tension.

His sponsor had been a drunk in North Carolina, before the Big Book was even written, during prohibition. North Carolina had a vibrant bootlegging scene, and if you ever read about Nascar’s origin story it is just wild, but I digress. He was drinking moonshine one sunny day in the 1920’s and then he blacked out. Time travelled as I used to call it. I’ve woken up in a Florida Trailer park, covered in blood in Rice Street jail, downtown Atlanta, Chattanooga asking my brother to take me into the woods and kill me, and even once in Tijuana, to men with machine guns pushing me back to the border. So I can relate to blacking out and waking up in prison, unsure of how you got there, wondering when they are going to let you out. But they weren’t going to let him out he learned. They had arrested him for manslaughter as he’d run over and killed 2 or 3 young children while driving drunk, and as fate would have it, they were a Judge’s children. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The man telling the story went on to say the drunk went to prison in North Carolina and even back then you could still manage to get drink and drug inside prison, though of lesser quality, for years while locked away. Eventually AA was formed and brought meetings to the prison, and the man saw the light, got sober, and spent a decade or so staying sober and helping others to get sober as well. I am repeating this from memory, so if anyone knows these details or can track down that speaker I’d love to hear from them. Somehow, eventually the Governor or someone is released and helps to get the man a pardon. Where he is released after 20 years or so, and goes back to work in the prison, where is he respected and loved for helping so many people to get better and recover from alcoholism. The man eventually becomes the Warden of that North Carolina prison, and his sponsor, as the speaker begins to tell his story of alcoholism and how he ended up in the same prison, for killing someone in a black out, serving life and prison. Similarly, when the speaker was sentenced to life in prison, at first he just stayed and kept high or drunk even while in jail. Eventually AA meetings were forced on him and little by little, bit by bit he began to see the light as well. Eventually he too, still serving life in prison, helped other men to get sober and go out and live productive lives in the world, and that Warden eventually helped to get him pardoned and released from prison as well, and he went to go work at that same prison also. Now two men, reformed, pardoned and forgiven by the state for their horrendous acts while in active alcoholism.

My doubts around Alcoholics Anonymous all stemmed from my poor, drunk father telling me to my face AA didn’t work. “They sell alcohol everywhere Brandon”. But here was an incredibly miraculous story of two men, both condemned to life in prison, not only relieved of the burden of alcoholism, but also restored to respectable careers, all while saving people and helping them to recover as well. I was truly stunned listening to this now retired Warden of a NC Prison who’d begun his tenure there as a condemned man and ended up running the place. About that time Woody Davis looked at me and said “That was my warden. He helped me get off Death Row in GA, and into the North Carolina prison system where I was eventually set free. But he is the one who helped me.”

I was completely shocked, I had known he’d been in prison, but I did not know it was for murder, much less that he was ever on death row. But now, not one, not two, but three men, condemned to life in prison and one scheduled to be executed by the state, were literally saved by AA, through the wonders of God working through others, the butterfly effect. One man helping another and showing them sobriety is real and can be infectious, possible and miraculous! Surely three men like this, saved in succession was proof of a higher power at work.

Then too, that the thousands of people at the conference only heard about the two wardens, but here God saw fit to make sure I heard about Woody Davis, formerly condemned murderer on Death Row, was also saved by the works of AA. It was really the closest I ever got to a white light experience. There was just no way, God was not behind this providence and good will, and Grace, and Forgiveness. God is Good all the time we say.

Woody told me the story of how he got on Death Row. He was sitting on some weight, or a stash house of drugs, guarding it essentially, and they were also playing poker, and a gang of guys came in guns blazing. The robbers killed everyone around him, and they thought they got him too, but he grabbed one of their guns and killed them all, just before the cops came. He avoided drug charges because he didn’t live at the house, but they got him for murder, as everyone else was dead. I’ve never read the arrest report or his military record reports, but one day I hope to have the time to research it and write a book on it, because the whole story, is just amazing.

God works in mysterious ways. If I’d known Woody Davis had been on Death Row, I doubt we would have been as good as buddies as we became, but God saw fit I didn’t learn that until after we were friends. Even though we both grew up on totally different sides of the tracks in different circumstances and different times, I knew his pain of being a drug addict, and being in shitty places and the wrong times because of it. I loved Woody Davis and love him still. He passed away a few years ago, and I miss him. He didn’t even try to be but he was one of the first real voices of AA to me, because in AA, God speaks through us and if we use our two ears and mouth proportionally, you can often hear God speaking right to you through others.

To me he said, “AA is a miracle, and I have saved people even far worse than you. AA works if you work it, just give it a chance.” I’m very glad that I did as Xmas eve I’ll celebrate 20 years.

Miss you Woody!

He also told me to clean my car, take pride in the nice things recovery gives you, and he sure did always have a nice shiny clean truck!