When the steel gate of a prison clangs shut behind you, you never forget the sound.

Ask Dave. W. It had been 17 years since he´d done time in the Monroe State Prison, when he was invited to speak at an A.A. meeting there.

"It was their annual Christmas party, almost 17 years to the day since I´d gotten out It was a moment of triumph, but a moment of fear too when they slammed the gate behind me." But that was then, and his life was now. He gave his speech, went home to Edmonds and continued the recovery path. He´ll have 41 years on Sept. 26.

Dave´s first encounter with Monroe started with a sentence for burglary-he calls it a "bunglery"-where he did 14 months before winning his parole. That sentence was preceded by time in the King County jail, and it was there that he first heard of something called Alcoholics Anonymous, in late 1949. "A guy from A.A. came to the jail and told us he´d spilled more booze than any of us had ever drunk. That made an impression."

While in Monroe, he joined the New Hope group and began to think of his post-prison life. "I was scared about the future. How was I going to explain that gap in my resume? But a guy named Walt Q., who´d brought us a meeting, said he had a friend in Seattle who was opening a shoe store. He was sure the man would give me a job and not ask any questions, and that´s what happened. I became a shoe salesman in a Karl´s Shoe Store on Third Avenue."

Dave lost track of Walt for many years, but finally tracked him down, sober in Phoenix, to thank him. "I was so grateful. He did so much for me." Walt died four years ago, 56 years sober.

Dave came out of Monroe a sober member of A.A., "but it took a while for the concept to register. I had a slip one night, and the next night I had another one-that lasted 16 years."

Although he´d been a blackout drinker since he was 14 back in Iowa, Dave was one of those strange alcoholics who was also a high bottom drunk. "Ten years out of the joint, I was working my way up the social and economic scale. I was living in Innis Arden. Drinking never interfered with my work. I was married and had a son. I thought I had proved I wasn´t a bum."

But there were harbingers. For example, he spent his honeymoon in the Vancouver, B.C., city jail for drunk driving. "We had two of the most expensive rooms in town," Dave recalled, "one in the Georgia Hotel and the other in jail." And what did his bride think of this introduction to marriage? "Well, she had her problems too." They are long since divorced.

"There was a lot of crap in those years," Dave said-"couple of DUIs, drunk in public. I was a bright lights drinker-never drank alone. It was strictly a social thing with me." He once took a demo from an auto dealership for a tryout, spent the night at a bar and took a cab home. For two days, he had no idea where he´d left the car. On the third day, the car salesman called.

"What do you think? Have you decided yet?"

Dave said he hadn´t. The third night, he found the car in a garage. He took it back and told the unbelievably patient salesman that he´d decided not to buy it.

But Dave and cars continued to have their troubles. "I was divorced, living in Edmonds and working downtown. I always stopped for a drink before I went home, sometimes a lot more than one. So I woke up one morning with a feeling that I´d done something. I didn´t know what, but I´d totaled two cars in the last two years. I went out and checked the car. It looked okay. "I decided I was going to call A.A.. but didn´t around to it. Then came this phone call. ´Mr. W.?´ Yessss. ´Well, I´m the person whose car you hit last night.´ I´d done something no self-respecting alcoholic was supposed to do: I´d left my card on her windshield and so I said I was the one who´d hit her car.

"The damage was minor, but the minute she hung up, I called A.A. Intergroup put me in touch with a friend who´d been sober these past 16 years. That was Sept. 26, 1967.He told me he wanted me to see how A.A. had changed in that time, that there were groups now where guys still had two cars in the garage. So he took me to Wedgewood for my first meeting. I went there for several months before they told me I needed more than one meeting a week, so I made the supreme sacrifice and found a second one." Doctor´s Choice is his home group now.

Growth was slow. "I used to go to the (late lamented) Big Hall on Thursday nights to the Step meeting. I spent a lot of time at the First Step table, till the secretary finally told me I´d better move on to the Spiritual table."

And along about this time, "Boy meets girl. Her name was Lorraine, and I thought somebody really needs to be nice to her. Two years later, we were married, and it lasted 29 years, till her death 10 years ago."

Always a salesman, Dave worked at a number of Seattle men´s stores. He was successful, he says, because he never drank during the day and took Dexedrine to overcome the hangovers. He did have a heart attack when he was 32, but says he´s had no further heart trouble. He feels his health is good. There´s diabetes and arthritis, "but what can we complain about at 80?" He does regular swimming pool exercises to relieve the arthritis.

Dave was four years sober and managing a men´s store when he was offered the post of coordinator of the Alcoholism Outreach Program in Everett. "We were the pioneers," Dave said. This was 1971, when treatment programs were new. His job was to supervise a tiny staff, and to "grow the program." That he did. When he left 5 ½ years later, the program had 20 employees and many sober graduates. "I still run into people who tell me they got sober there," Dave said.

He had a little formal training in alcohol treatment programs, most notably at University of California-Santa Cruz, but "my creds were A.A."

After a half decade of that service, Dave needed more money, and "besides, I felt I´d paid my dues." So he went back to his old standby, selling shoes for Nordstrom´s. "I´ve always been a salesman," he said proudly. When he finally hung up the foot measurer, he still wasn´t through. He took a time job for the next 10 years with a non-profit which developed housing for recovering substance abusers.

"Realistically, renting housing to recovering alcoholics is a crap shoot," Dave said. "But I still believe strongly in providing that housing. All we can do is try to help in that way."

Burned out again, he´s really and truly retired now and devoting his energies to A.A. "The biggest thing fro me has been 12 and 12 study groups, getting into the Steps. Tablemate saved my ass in the early days. It ´s still used by some groups." (Tablemate is an unofficial pamphlet on recovery, widely popular until its use was discouraged as unapproved A.A. literature.)

"I was an Intergroup delegate back in the ´60s, but working in the field of alcohol, I didn´t feel I could do A.A. service. It´s tough to know where one ends and the other begins. But the best thing we can do is get our clients into A.A.

"I still sponsor people. Mostly people with five, ten, twenty years. New guys usually don´t seek me out, but they like to talk to me. I have a friend who´s 17 years old.

"I´ve seen a lot of change in A.A. over the last 40 years." Dave has no problem with people talking about drugs other than alcohol in meetings, provided alcohol comes first in the discussion. Many newcomers use more than one substance. "I was a dual abuser myself," he said, "but we didn´t talk about it back then. Pot, Dexedrine-if I´d stuck just to booze, I´d become nasty. Speed and pot and I was happy. I quit ´em all at once.

"But I´ve had guys storm at me for saying I was a drug abuser. The purists still exist big time."

Dave says the most important thing about A.A. to him is that he feels that he´s a part of something important. "I was a joiner-Elks, Rotary, yacht club-but I never felt a part of anything till I came here. And I want to say, too, that I feel like I was ordered to come here by a judge-me. My biggest motivation has been the desire to be a good father. There was a time when I wasn´t, but today I am. I am no longer burdened by guilt."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.