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

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Roy’s influence to our Dayton group (let alone to SA in general). We were a floundering group between 1998 and 2001, with a reputation in Dayton (as one person later admitted to me) as “the place to go if you don’t want to recover!” Then in January 2001, a few of us went to the SA International Conference in Los Angeles and heard Roy present this new idea called the “Absolute Surrender.” He distributed copies of an article he had written called “Lust Recovery: Part II” (ESSAY, 2000, Issue Two). We took the article back to Dayton, and asked members to lay aside the reading of Sexaholics Anonymous for a while and instead read this article. They agreed—and lives began to change.

Deeply inspired by Roy’s challenge in the article to work with other sexaholics, two of us began practicing an activity we had recently heard about called “daily renewals.” We obtained a daily renewal sheet from an SA member in the New England area, and began taking turns calling each other daily and asking and responding to the questions. We began to experience a new level of accountability, support, friendship, and challenge.

We wanted to share our excitement with our failing group but received no support from the membership at the time. Therefore, inspired by Roy’s challenge in the article to work with newcomers, we developed a process that provides newcomers with basic guidance so that they can develop sound recovery practices from day one. Our lives—and the lives of the people who experienced this newcomer orientation—continued to change, all inspired by Roy’s thoughts in that article.

A year or so after the 2001 International Conference, a group of us went to a weekend conference in West Virginia where we heard Roy speak. He spent some private time with a few members of our group because word had spread that something special was going on in Dayton and he wanted to support us.

I was able to keep in touch with Roy over the years and receive his wisdom during some challenging times in our group’s history. I have met very few people with such single-hearted devotion to God and recovery. I am saddened for his family and for the wider SA family at his loss, but also I rejoice for him, because he is now healed both physically of his pain and spiritually of his addiction. He is “cured” of lust. And I take comfort at the thought of his rejoicing before the Lord.

Peace,