{"id":21341,"date":"2026-03-11T10:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T10:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/craig-melvin-his-fathers-sobriety-restored-their-relationship\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:11:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:11:58","slug":"craig-melvin-his-fathers-sobriety-restored-their-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/addiction-and-recovery\/craig-melvin-his-fathers-sobriety-restored-their-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Melvin: His Father’s Sobriety Restored Their Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dad\u2014Pops\u2014was in al\u00adcohol rehab<\/a>. He\u2019d been there for eight weeks, down in southern Geor\u00adgia. I would be his first visitor, and I was nervous. I didn\u2019t know what to expect, mainly because I could hardly remember ever seeing my dad sober.<\/p>\n

\"Craig
As seen in the Oct-Nov 2021
\n issue of<\/em> Guideposts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the flight down and then the drive from the airport, my anxiety only grew. I hadn\u2019t spoken to him since he\u2019d been admitted. No one had. I\u2019d written him a couple letters, mostly keeping things light. Of course, Pops and I very rarely held conversations that were anything but surface. We didn\u2019t talk much at all. What would I say to him now?<\/p>\n

We\u2019d done the intervention on a Sunday morning at my brother Ryan\u2019s house in Columbia, South Carolina. It was Mom, Ryan, our cousin Kevin and the therapist we\u2019d worked with. She had told Mom to have Pops\u2019s bag all packed and ready to go. Ryan had offered some pretext on why my dad needed to come over\u2014to help fix a door. Pops prided himself on being handy, even when he was loaded. Ryan went to pick him up.<\/p>\n

Eleven o\u2019clock in the morning, Pops was already drunk and disheveled. The minute he ambled in the door and saw us sitting there, an older white lady\u2014the therapist\u2014in our midst, he knew something was up. I could see it in his eyes. Pain, understanding, defi\u00adance, surrender. I couldn\u2019t tell which. Maybe it was all of those things at once.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard that every alcoholic comes to the point where they know the jig is up, whether they\u2019re ready to admit it or not. After years of struggle, I\u2019ve come to accept that alcoholism<\/a> is a disease\u2014more important, a family disease. Pops\u2019s dad, a \u201cwino\u201d as Pops referred to him, lived in squalor to the end, drinking himself to death. Mom\u2019s fa\u00adther was an abusive alcoholic.<\/p>\n

Pops did a lot to make something of himself, serving in the Air Force, then working for the post office for 40 years, the graveyard shift and any other hours he could pick up. The man was a tireless worker, drunk or sober, and had only recently retired.<\/p>\n

His most precious possession was a 1973 Pontiac LeMans. That car broke down so many times, I\u2019d be drafted to help him, huddled under the hood, hold\u00ading a flashlight, handing him a socket wrench. All the while, Pops would barely say a word.<\/p>\n

It was hard for my dad to con\u00adnect with people<\/a>. Maybe that\u2019s why he gave himself the excuse of a six-pack. To lubricate a conversation. After work, he would spend hours at a place that Mom used to call the Cut. Not a club or a bar but some\u00adone\u2019s backyard\u2014literally a cut be\u00adhind a few houses.<\/p>\n

He and his pals would hang out, drinking, smoking cigarettes, shooting craps and talk\u00ading. Maybe Pops was just all talked out by the time he made it home. He was definitely ready for bed.<\/p>\n

My friends called him \u201cthe ghost\u201d because he was never around. At 10 or 11 years old, playing second base in Little League, I summoned the cour\u00adage one night to tell him that it would be nice if he could show up for a game. The next day, I came up to bat and gazed down the left-field line. There was Pops, watching me. Pleased as a boy is to see his dad in the stands, it also unsettled me. Did he really want to be there?<\/p>\n

For the intervention, we\u2019d written letters and read them aloud, telling stories like that, saying how much he mattered to us and what his alcohol\u00adism had stolen from us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kevin talked about his late mom, Dad\u2019s beloved sister, and how disappointed she\u2019d be to see her brother like this. I described how much my wife, Lindsay, and I wanted our kids to have a real grand\u00adfather, the kind that al\u00adcoholism had robbed me of. Mom\u2019s letter was all about wanting her hus\u00adband back. I heard her say heartbreaking things she\u2019d never said before. Not in front of any of us.<\/p>\n

Pops just sat there. And then he started crying.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something unnerving for a son to see his father cry. This is true at any age, maybe a response to the taboo against men displaying emo\u00adtion. The one time I\u2019d seen Pops break down was at his mother\u2019s funeral. She\u2019d been hit hard with Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a>; the first time I noticed was at a Sun\u00adday dinner when she tried to pry open the microwave with a butter knife.<\/p>\n

Her decline and loss escalated his drink\u00ading. Like many men of his generation, Pops hid his feelings rather than re\u00adveal them and appear weak. Watching him cry now, I understood that alco\u00adhol was a way for him to wall off those emotions\u2014fear, anger, hurt. <\/p>\n

We finished reading our letters. The therapist gently told my dad that there was a place he could get help about two hours away and that Kevin was ready to drive him there. I fully expected Pops to say, \u201cHell, no. Screw this.\u201d Or he\u2019d make some vague prom\u00adise to change on his own. Instead, he got up, hugged us and then said, \u201cLet\u2019s go.\u201d I was nonplussed.<\/p>\n

Pops was 67 years old. This was the most coura\u00adgeous thing he\u2019d ever done<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Decades before, in the 1990s, another addic\u00adtion loomed: gambling. Video poker machines had popped up all over. On pay\u00adday, Pops would cash his check, then drop by Tom\u2019s Party Shop\u2014the closest li\u00adquor store\u2014and squander every cent. That put a lot of pressure on Mom financial\u00adly. She was a schoolteacher. Together they\u2019d saved enough to buy a house in a good neighborhood and eventually send me to college. Now the pressure was killing her.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Ryan and I would join Mom in the car, and she\u2019d drive over to Tom\u2019s, where she\u2019d try to stanch the flow. Once she sent me inside too. There was Pops, slouched in front of a slot machine, tapping the buttons with one hand, a cigarette in the other, a trusty Budweiser at his side.<\/p>\n

I swore I\u2019d never be like him. I searched everywhere for role mod\u00adels. Other father figures. It never occurred to me back then that Pops had never had his own role model<\/a> to look up to, a father who modeled good parental behavior. As I have since learned, alcoholism is a fam\u00adily disease. It afflicts everyone, even through the generations, derailing healthy family dynamics.<\/p>\n

Video poker was finally banned in South Carolina in 2000. Pops was able to quit gambling cold turkey, giving us a glimmer of hope that the drinking might follow. Instead, it only got worse. Alcoholism is a pro\u00adgressive disease.<\/p>\n

I may have avoided becoming a drinker, but I couldn\u2019t escape the feel\u00adings that Pop\u2019s drinking created. The emotional wreckage, the anger and re\u00adsentment <\/a>that boiled up inside. It ate at me that he wasn\u2019t around most of the time. Early in my journalistic career, I was supposed to do a live on-camera interview with Pops. He went AWOL. Didn\u2019t show up. Didn\u2019t even call.<\/p>\n

That hurt so much. Why couldn\u2019t he get the monkey off his back? Why couldn\u2019t he do something? I found during my early twenties that I had trouble maintaining close relation\u00adships. Like many children of alcohol\u00adics, I feared intimacy and questioned my self-worth, as if Pops\u2019 drinking had left a hole inside me.<\/p>\n

Somehow Mom stuck with him. The first in her family to go to college, she also got a graduate degree. She was incredibly strong, her love stron\u00adger than Pops\u2019 alcoholism. There were times she carried our family single-handedly. If I have achieved any degree of professional success, it\u2019s thanks to my Lord and Savior and to Betty Jo Melvin. In that order.<\/p>\n

What took me so long to grasp that alcoholism really is a disease? Not just a lack of willpower or self-discipline but a clinical illness.<\/p>\n

The turnaround came through a colleague whose stepfather had lost his son to drugs. He\u2019d started a non\u00adprofit helping people help their loved ones overcome addictions<\/a>. I had lunch with him, and he connected me with another guy. That got the ball rolling.<\/p>\n

The more I learned, the more I under\u00adstood. Becoming a dad helped too. Like I said, I didn\u2019t want my kids to know a grandfather who was always clutching a can of beer. We had to get Pops some help.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always believed in the power of prayer. I pray all the time\u2014in the dressing room, in the car at night. I think that\u2019s the relationship God wants us to have. This ability to hold a conversation with him, wherever you are. The intervention we did with Pops was one of the hardest things I\u2019d ever done. Saying all of that raw stuff to his face. Now I was praying for Pops to re\u00adcover<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod, please, please hear that prayer,\u201d I said over and over as I drove to my dad\u2019s rehab.<\/p>\n

Pops and I had agreed to meet in front of the main building. I stepped out of the car and walked over to him, and Pops gave me this huge, beautiful hug. We\u2019d never really been big hug\u00adgers before, but, man, there it was. I started to cry, and so did he. At that moment, I knew things were going to be different. Rehab was working. Prayer <\/em>was working<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We went inside and had breakfast, and Pops introduced me to his new friends. He showed me his room. Then he gave me a letter. Sort of his origin story. How his mother\u2014a saintly churchgoing grandmother to me\u2014 had given birth to him in a prison. She was serving time for bootlegging, the only way she could think of to make some money to compensate for her husband\u2019s alcoholic incapacity. As I said, a family disease.<\/p>\n

I keep that letter in my safe. It\u2019s that valuable. The first letter that Pops had ever written to me in his life. All thanks to rehab.<\/p>\n

When my dad got out, we forged a new relationship based on openness, honesty<\/a> and affection. It isn\u2019t always easy dealing with our emotions. We have long heart-to-heart conversa\u00adtions. He\u2019ll tell me I work too hard. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to miss out on the kids\u2019 soccer games,\u201d he\u2019ll say, and I laugh. This guy telling me not to work too hard? Yet it\u2019s as if he\u2019s sharing all the wisdom that got bottled during his drinking years.<\/p>\n

One day, Pops mentioned some\u00adthing about one of my broadcasts. \u201cWait. You watched that?\u201d I asked him, surprised.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d he said. \u201cI watch all of your stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, sure, <\/em>I thought. So I asked Mom, and she said it was true. Some days I\u2019m on for four hours. Pops will hang in there for the whole thing.<\/p>\n

I thought about that day in Little League when I was so surprised to see my dad in the stands and wondered if he really even wanted to be there. Now I knew. He did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

For more inspiring stories, subscribe to <\/em>Guideposts<\/strong><\/a> magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Craig Melvin is the author of Pops: Learning to be a Son and a Father <\/em>available wherever books are sold.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My dad\u2014Pops\u2014was in al\u00adcohol rehab. He\u2019d been there for eight weeks, down in southern Geor\u00adgia. I would be his first visitor, and I was nervous. I didn\u2019t know what to expect, mainly because I could hardly remember ever seeing my dad sober. 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