When I started my journey of recovery, I was not prepared to call myself a sexaholic. Even though my life was unmanageable, I knew I had a problem with sex, and I was attracted to men, I did not believe I was powerless over lust.

Dear Fellow SA Members:
This quarter I would like to share my deep gratitude for Roy K.’s impact on my life, as I have expressed in my following letter to him.

The Middle Tennessee Fellowships will once again host the winter International Conventions. Our theme describes the result of following the journey of Twelve Step Recovery: when we thoroughly follow this path, we will have a spiritual awakening and enter into the “Fellowship of the Spirit.”

The Reno, Nevada group has two meetings a week and four regular members. We have a website and are working on other ways to pass the message about our meetings, in a manner that is attractive and not promotive.

Following are the last three paragraphs from Roy’s final letter to the fellowship.
I love this fellowship—with the whole history of its problems and adversity. God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Writing from your heart the vision splendid,
Endowing SAs hence to know God’s power,
Let love for fellow members be unended,
Let the healing Twelve flourish and flower.

I remember being at an SA retreat in Oregon in 1995, when an old-timer named Harry gave Roy a hug during a speaker meeting, forgiving him for something. I was quite moved.

In September 2007, I attended my first regional conference in Irvine, CA. This was my first conference and the first time I had driven alone early on a Saturday morning (for 1 ½ hours) for my recovery. I was 29 years old and two years sober.

I lost my father a year ago. I know that he was liberated from the old body that tormented him. However, I never knew for sure that he looked upon his death as a spiritual passage to a higher level of consciousness.

I first met Roy at a meeting at a regional convention in Irvine, CA in 2006. As the meeting was about to begin, I heard someone whisper, “Hey, there’s Roy K.!” The room was crammed with maybe 50 people, and I spent the rest of the meeting trying to guess which one he was.

I was riding the elevator at the convention in Philly a few years ago. I think it might be the last Roy attended. The elevator door opened, Roy stepped in, and he asked if this was the way to the newcomers meeting.

Though I did not know Roy personally, I was deeply moved by the news of his death. I heard him speak once at an International Convention in New Jersey and I liked him: a dignified-looking older gentleman. Roy’s passing reminds me of the great gift SA has been in my life, a gift which I would not have today were it not for this man.

In January 1994, I attended my first SA convention in Rochester, NY. After the Friday evening session, I joined a small group of people standing around Roy. I’ve been fortunate on a few occasions to meet certain rare individuals who have the true gift of presence. Roy was one of them.

Roy K., the founder of our program, died peacefully last September. He had suffered from cancer. He was in his early eighties.

Dear SA Fellowship:
I am writing to you on behalf of the SAUK Intergroup. At our last meeting in London, we read out loud Roy K.’s article “The Searchlight of the Spirit” from the September ’09 ESSAY. We also sadly learnt of Roy’s death.

I had been attending SA for two months when I ventured out to Nashville for the January 1990 International Convention. Seeing that sea of people in that ballroom, I was sold on the SA fellowship. But not on what it stood for.

It was 1993 and I was barely three years sober when I flew with my sponsor to my first big convention in Nashville, TN. I can remember how excited I was to meet all those wonderful long-time-sober members whose voices and stories I knew from the tapes!

I never had the opportunity to meet Roy personally, but I feel the same about him as what I’ve heard he said about all of us: that we are his family. I first encountered the White Book in 1985, when I was in a recovery group that met in a counseling center.

In July 1985, a man loaned me a copy of an earlier version of the White Book. I read it twice in two weeks. My mind was numbed by remnants of the lust drug, and I couldn’t take in a lot of it. But what I remember is the tremendous feeling of hope I felt after decades of misery and failure.

I was at the airport and I was struggling with same-sex lust. Roy was at the airport also. He said, “Let me pray with you.” I said, “I’m struggling with that guy over there.”