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The
Hazelden Foundation held a black-tie dinner at the Grand Hyatt |
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Bill
Moyers |
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The
guests at dinner |
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I
went to this dinner almost three weeks ago but we were
waiting for the pictures to come in to illustrate the text. Judith
Moyers had invited me to be a guest of her and her husband
Bill.
I have great admiration for the Moyers. I met them when they were
producing a series for PBS on addiction and drug use, which I participated
in. Judith Moyers who co-produces with her husband is as unknown to
the audience as her husband is known. However, they are cut from the
same cloth in many ways and he is, off-camera, as he appears to be
on: sincere, empathic, curious, courteous, very sophisticated –
as anyone would be after a lifetime of exposure to so many aspects
of personality and society – and yet also just-folks.
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Judy
Collins performing |
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Hazelden,
the rehabilitation clinic in Minnesota, is of great
personal interest to Judith and Bill Moyers. One of their sons, saddled
with an abuse and addiction problem, attended, recovered and got out
into the world to begin anew. So they get behind this dinner every
year because it’s a fundraiser.
Another participant and also a big supporter of Hazelden
is Judy Collins who also had a son who, as she explained
to the audience before she sang one of her songs, had suffered from
addiction and drug and alcohol abuse. He too went into rehab and cleaned
up his act for several years before relapsing. It killed him. The
sorrow is in the mother’s songs.
Although: the hope and the prayer is there too. There is something
about the woman’s voice – if you’ve ever been a
fan, the haunting pureness of her notes, that seems heaven sent. There
are strong traces of her Irishness, and a sensibility thoroughly modern
American. Accompanying herself as well as by a pianist, she performed
several songs for the audience. But it was more than a performance;
it expressed emotionally the tone of the evening.
Larry Kudlow, the economist and media personality
who had a great fall several years ago because of drugs and alcohol,
spoke. Everyone heard about his disaster because he had a highly public
profile. He went to Hazelden. On this night he told us about himself
as a man in his mid-fifties, in recovery, a man who willing and able
to face himself, put himself before his god and his fellows and put
himself back on track. Very matter-of-factly, without a flourish of
embellishment, this very solid-looking businessman told us how he
remains day by day in the process of recovery and the work and focus
it entails.
At the end of the program Bill Moyers stepped up to the podium and
read to the audience a letter from his son after having completed
his rehab program and going out into the world again where he got
involved in helping others as well as got married and started a family.
The son’s letter expressed to his father his fears, his exhilaration
and his hopes. The letter and its reading by the father, confirmed
to this audience in the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt, that We are not
alone, a message that escapes many if not most of us humanoids much
of the time. We are all in this together, every damned last living
breathing one of us.
I left the Hazelden dinner (they raised several hundred thousand dollars
for the clinic’s budget) feeling unusually reassured. However
temporarily that might be. This is what I always get from being in
the presence of Bill and Judith Moyers. In a way, they are like angels.
At least for me. Who knows? Maybe they are. There must be some about.
Even in these treacherous times. |
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Mrs.
and Dr. Thomas McLellan with Anne Hovland |
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Peter
R. Dolan, Alan D. Schwartz, and Lawrence Kudlow |
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Margaret
B. Hassett with her daughters Brooke and Meg |
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Susan
Varga and friend |
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L.
to r.: Jill West, Mrs. and Mr. Tom Galligan, Mrs. Marvin
Seppala, and Dawn Severson; Joan and Marvin Koslow. |
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Jim
Kane and Alton Wilson with a friend |
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David
and Connie Clapp, Judith Moyers, and Eli Wallach |
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Catherine
and Robert Sculthorpe and friend |
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Sara
Fagin and Barry Spector |
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Judith
and William Moyers with a friend |
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Ellen
Breyer, Lawrence Kudlow, and Alan Schwartz |
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William
and Allison Moyers with Judy Collins |
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Ellen
Breyer, Judy Collins, and Judith Moyers |
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Dr.
Marilyn Mason with Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Michalis |
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Cheryl
McKinley, Mike Schiks, and Judith Moyers |
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