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Searcy R. Whaley died September 30, 2003 at the age of 93, after a life of significant joy and service to others. "Trust God, clean house, help others" was his motto..."and it doesn't have to be done in that order!" He was born March 30, 1910 in Funston, Texas, to James and Etta Whaley. For 57 years, Searcy was an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
In 1948, at the insistence of AA's co-founder Bill Wilson, Searcy attended and graduated from the Yale School on Alcohol Studies. He came back to Dallas and Lubbock. Soon thereafter, Dr. Jellinek moved the Yale School on Alcohol Studies from New Haven, Connecticut to TCU in Fort Worth and renamed it the Yale Institute on Alcohol Studies in the Southwest.
Searcy was hired as field representative to make talks to churches and schools about the disease of alcoholism, how the alcoholic could be helped, and that they were worth helping. It was a community problem and therefore a community responsibility. This was a new approach for many in Texas.
Dr. Jellinek became ill and unable to carry on with the school studies. He asked Searcy to establish some hospitals where alcoholics could go, sober up, and be taken to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Beginning in 1949, Searcy established alcohol hospitals (the predecessor to today's drug and alcohol treatment centers) in Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, and Carlsbad, New Mexico. Alcoholics were brought in there for one week and paid $125 which included their doctors, hospital, nurses, and medications. They were taken to Alcoholics Anonymous and 75 percent of them stayed sober.
Searcy later became a staff member of the Yale Institute on Alcohol Studies in the Southwest at TCU in Fort Worth. He continued his alcoholism educational work from that time until the day he died, traveling internationally to spread the message of hope and recovery from alcoholism.
Searcy is survived by his loving wife Margaret--one of the earliest al-anon family group members.
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