In Loving Memory…

William A. Brewer IV 2/28/52 – 2/13/25

This guy asked me to help him with the 12 steps in November of 2013 at the Berkeley Fellowship, in Berkeley, CA. He had been chronically homeless for many years prior to this, had had 9 years of sobriety at one point, but had a complicated mental illness from a brain injury at age 21, which made him constitutionally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.

In Berkeley, there is no “men with the men, women with the women” – and Wm asked me to help him and I remembered the responsibility statement – “When Anyone Anywhere Reaches Out For Help, I Want The Hand of AA Always To Be There – And For That I Am Responsible.” Alcohol being no respecter of persons – means to me that – AA is not a respecter of persons either – if someone asks me for help it really doesn’t matter if they are male or female, honestly.

William comes from the typical alcoholic family – father – alcoholic / absent and mother bipolar very abusive. He was the oldest of 5 kids and none of them speak to each other anymore. The kids were very badly abused by the mom – and the dad. The dad was a CIA Crew Chief – and grandfather was a Brigadier General. This is not great.

At his heart, Wm was a good guy, always trying to help others less fortunate than he. This sometimes meant that he would give his last morsel of food or his last dollar or his last cigarette … and he had an honorable discharge from the Air Force. He was on SSD for his mental illness. He also was very intelligent and had a photographic memory and was offered a full ride to Princeton which somehow he was not able to accept because it meant his dad, would have to pay for it.

He did work for the Lawrence Berkeley Labs at one point and then became a CNA. He had a way with children. When I met Wm in 2013, he was homeless.and there was literally no housing in the GREED infested Boomtown of Berkeley. In fact, the City Council paid the dispensaries to give the homeless people free weed to keep them sedated.

Wm was sleeping in the rectory of the Catholic Worker’s Church and eating at wherever and showering at Planet Fitness.

My friend Steve came through town in early 2014 and told me to bring Wm back to our hometown because there was a sudden influx of money in the VA for honorably discharged vets, so we packed up the Subaru and returned to my home…

When we got back, we stayed with one of my sponsees – We got him in to the VA Domiciliary and they kept in their program for 8 months. In November of 2014, there appeared a HUD Voucher for him with me as his unofficial caretaker and an enormous apartment – across from a supermarket. It was a miracle.

We lived there happily for 5.5 years – until I had a car accident and was hospitalized for a month. At that juncture, Wm became manic and since then – 2019, his manic episodes have lasted longer and longer, when it finally came to this one which was more than 4 months long. I had to move out when I got out of the hospital because Wm’s mania was too chaotic for me to live with.

In November of 2024, I had had enough and just felt so bad for Wm as well – he had left me an incredibly scary message and I begged God to release Wm from his misery however that would work out and also to release everyone else who had to deal with him, as well. Wm was doing a lot of crazy things to the people in the building at that point.

3 months later, in late January, Wm went into the hospital for pneumonia and within a month, he passed away from pneumonia due to complications from COPD and Dysphagia.

I received so many blessings from helping Wm.

“Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be. It may mean the loss of many nights’ sleep, great interference with your pleasures, interruptions to your business. It may mean sharing your money and your home, counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts, sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night. Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected. A drunk may smash the furniture in your home, or burn a mattress. You may have to fight with him if he is violent. Sometimes you will have to call a doctor and administer sedatives under his direction. Another time you may have to send for the police or an ambulance. Occasionally you will have to meet such conditions.” p. 97, Alcoholics Anonymous