55 years of recovery

By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Two recovering clients of the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic credit the clinic with turning their lives around.
"When I walked into the clinic, I was emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically bankrupt. There was nothing left of me, and I didn't want to live and I didn't want to die. And by the grace of God, I got there," said Rose S., who was treated at a clinic satellite in Howland.
"Neil Kennedy was that bridge that got me across to recovery. It is giving me my life back. It's giving me a second chance at life," she added.
"Every morning I woke up wanting to die," said Tim R., describing how he felt almost 41/2 years ago before he called the clinic for the first time. "It was in the walls of the clinic that I learned that I didn't have to live the way that I was living anymore if I didn't want to."
Promises
"There are 12 traditions in this program, but, most importantly right now, for me, there are 12 promises. All of those promises came true for me and more," Tim added.
Rose and Tim were among the speakers at a ceremony marking the 55th anniversary of the clinic's founding, which was attended by about 100 people Thursday at Youngstown State University.
Alcoholics Anonymous tradition calls for withholding the last names of people involved in the recovery program.
The ceremony began with the unveiling of a plaque on Lincoln Avenue just east of Fifth Avenue marking the site where the Alcoholic Clinic of Youngstown was founded in 1946 as the nation's first private, nonprofit free-standing alcoholism treatment facility.
In 1947, Neil Kennedy founded the Youngstown Committee on Alcoholism Inc. to educate the community about alcoholism as an illness and to operate the clinic, and Kennedy became the clinic's first executive director.
Kennedy, a recovering alcoholic who attended AA meetings in Akron, was sponsored in AA by its co-founder Dr. Bob Smith. Kennedy started the first AA group in Youngstown in 1939.
Site, name change
The clinic moved to its main campus location on Rush Boulevard in 1967 and changed its name in 1991 to the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic.
During the ceremony, Luceille Fleming, director of the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, presented a certificate of appreciation from Gov. Bob Taft to Jerry Carter, who has been the clinic's executive director since 1977.
"I want to remember the still-suffering alcohol and other drug dependent people for whom we exist and to thank the community of recovering people from whom we draw our spiritual sustenance. Connected together, we have become something very special that we are here to celebrate today," Carter said.
"Together, by God's will, we have become, and will continue to be, a small, but significant, part of a power greater than alcohol and other drug addiction, a power that can help and heal our friends, our families, our community and ourselves," Carter concluded.
milliken@vindy.com