Pictured in this 1970 photograph of staff from the Alcoholism Counseling and Recovery Program:

1st Row – John Hanson, Myra Albert, Glen Yeats, John Spence, Ben Wright.
2nd Row – Patrick Salisbury, Al Smith, Luis Polanco, Emile Summers, Casey Jones, Dave Davis, Russell Duke.

ACRP was established in the summer of 1970 as one of the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity) War on Poverty Programs that was funded through the PMSC (Portland Metropolitan Steering Committee). It was the first program in the Northwest that exclusively hired recovering alcoholics as counselors. Al Smith (Klamath), Luis Polanco (Azteca), Emile Summers (African American), Glen Yates (Apache), Casey Jones (a former WW II pilot), and Jay Renaud were hired as counselors, and Myra Albert was the receptionist / secretary. All were AA members who were hired before John Spence, MSW (Gros Ventre / Sioux) was brought on as the program director. Russell Duke and Pat Salisbury, two sober clients, were later hired as counselor trainees. Two young peace activists, vegetarians and Buddhists, Ben Wright and John Hanson, and a sober African American, Dave Davis, were also hired as counselor trainees.

During 1970, the first year of the project, some of the ACRP staff members were recruited by Steve Askenette (Menomonee) to be on the original board of NARA, Inc. (Native American Rehabilitation Association of Portland), an Indian half-way house which originally operated a rent-free house in Northwest Portland. NARA/NW, Inc. is still in existence after 30 years of operating residential and outpatient treatment programs and an urban Indian health clinic in Portland.

Also in 1970, fourteen ACRP clients occupied an empty house on SE Taylor that was owned by the City of Portland. Neil Goldschmidt, a newly elected City Councilor, helped us keep the clients from getting evicted and twice introduced city statutes that allowed ACRP staff members (as a newly incorporated non-profit called Harmony House) to keep this half-way house rent-free for two six-month leases. Harmony House, Inc. was also given another house rent free in the Albina area that was owned by Emanuel Hospital and was formerly occupied by the Black Panthers. This half-way house later was turned over to an organization that became known as Freedom House, Inc. Harmony House later opened a third house in NE Portland and a treatment program in Salem.

Since this was in the days when public drunkenness was still a crime and before Hooper Detox was opened, ACRP counselors usually went to the city jail each morning to visit people arrested the night before and the judge usually went along with their recommendations. During the early 1970s, ACRP also partnered with the Outside In Clinic for referrals and the two programs used to hold “Love-Ins” (as Al Smith and Luis Polanco called them) where ACRP staff would take clients out for recreational therapy to the mountains, rivers, and ocean beaches. No formal research was ever conducted on program effectiveness of ACRP before funding ended in the mid-1970s from PMSC (Portland Metropolitan Steering Committee, the parent OEO agency), but lots of evidence of counselors and clients who maintained sobriety and went on to become counselors at NARA, Hooper Detox, Harmony House, Sweathouse Lodge, Red Willow, and other treatment programs.

Pictured in this 1970 photograph:

1st Row – John Hanson, Myra Albert, Glen Yeats, John Spence, Ben Wright.
2nd Row – Patrick Salisbury, Al Smith, Luis Polanco, Emile Summers, Casey Jones, Dave Davis, Russell Duke.

READ – The View From Under The Bridge, Oregonian March 1971. Long article on ACRP staff and the development of Harmony House.