A few can do a lot for many.
All they need is an idea, a dream, and the power to will things to happen.
Two Fort Worth men, the late city councilman, businessman and political consultant Jim Bradshaw and businessman Clifton Morris, had an idea and a dream. They didn’t just chase it. They tackled it.
Every year that dream, that vision, becomes reality when hundreds gather in Fort Worth to learn about addiction and its power – its power to consume and destroy the lives of addicts and those around them.
This is a heartbreaking disease that requires total commitment and the help of a Higher Power to fight.
Bradshaw and Morris were part of the Recovery Resource Council in Fort Worth, which held a yearly fundraiser to aid the fight against alcoholism and drug addiction. The event was held at night and never raised more than $50,000.
The Council on Recovery in Houston, meanwhile, held a luncheon that sold out huge ballrooms and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On Nov. 19, 2004, Bradshaw and Morris gathered up Recovery Resource Council CEO Eric Niedermayer, former football star, renowned broadcaster and recovering alcoholic Pat Summerall as well as some other local folks and set out for Houston to watch the event and get a handle on why it was so successful. The men seized the dream, saw the art of the possible, and recreated their vision for Fort Worth.
The next year, the Fort Worth fundraiser was converted to a luncheon.
“Changing our event to a luncheon was the game-changer,” Morris said as he surveyed the crowd of 720 that attended this year’s event June 6 at the Fort Worth Hilton The luncheon raised nearly $300,000, according to Niedermayer.
The featured speaker was TV news anchor Elizabeth Vargas, co-host of ABC’s 20/20, who talked about her personal battle with alcohol and anxiety. Her struggle is detailed in her book, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction, and she shared her story in a candid TV interview with ABC colleague Diane Sawyer in 2016.
The event is now called the “Jim Bradshaw Memorial Stars in Recovery Luncheon” and always features a well-known personality. But the real stars are not onstage speaking. The true stars are those in the room who battle addiction. Some are fighting it successfully. Others have fought, lost, and are fighting again. Others are helping loved ones fight.
Many rely on a book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, that should be required reading for everyone. It’s a roadmap for living whether or not addiction is a problem.
There may be no more inspirational event in Fort Worth than the Recovery Resource Council’s annual luncheon. It can be an experience marked by intense heartbreak but it’s also one of unadulterated hope.
It’s also an event that consistently moves the needle toward understanding and compassion regarding a disease that most of us do not understand and that has been the focus of painful misperception.
People do not choose to be addicted, to be alcoholics, to live a life of despair. Think about it.
Fighting the disease is like wrestling a bear in a small cage. You have to beat the odds.
I believe it’s largely genetics but as Vargas pointed out the disease can take root in emotional and personality disorders. Hers was lifelong, crippling anxiety.
Her speech provided some numbers:
• Nearly 21 million Americans suffer from substance abuse disorders – more than the total afflicted by all forms of cancer.
• One in seven people in the United States is expected to develop a substance abuse disorder at some point in their lives.
• Alcohol abuse costs the country $250 billion each year.
• Only 10 percent of addicts get the help they need.
I guarantee that a lot of people thought more about all this on June 6 than they did the day before. Many folks beyond Bradshaw and Morris made this happen but I emphasize their contributions because I was with them on that decisive trip to Houston. My contribution to the effort was exactly nothing. All I did was take up space on the plane and listen to Summerall recall every detail of every football game he ever played in. It was amazing. Most of the great athletes I have known have great minds.
Bradshaw was successful in business and politics and even gave the late Jim Wright a tussle in a 1980 congressional race. He was a lovable and unforgettable character. His heart knew no bounds and I personally called on him many times for help with loved ones.
Morris is surely as close to a financial genius as there is and there are few Fort Worth businessmen who can rival his accomplishment of building AmeriCredit into a mountain of a company that ultimately was purchased by General Motors.
His success, though, like so many in the room at the Stars in Recovery Luncheon, has been even greater in his personal life and in helping educate the rest of us about alcoholism and addiction.
And that flight to Houston, organized nearly 13 years ago by two men who cared enough to dream, gave wings of hope and answers to prayers for countless others.
Richard Connor is president and publisher of the Fort Worth Business Press. Contact him at rconnor@bizpress.net