Comment by Paul Molloy on Monday, Aug 27 at 03:05 PM

I went back and look at this 6/11/04 interview and was stuck how like Reagan Mike Deaver was. Humble, talented and interested in common things. As a recovering alcoholic I got to know Mike and he helped with Oxford House - a self-run, self-supported recovery house that grew from one I started in 1975 to more than 1,250 around the country. Mike spoke at a convention we had and became a lasting friend. His former boss Ronald Reagan became indirectly involved with OH when Ed Madigan told him about Oxford House and the fact that we had rejected a federal earmark in the pending Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Madigan repeated a story I told him that when I had approached the then Bd of Directors of OH - made up of 13 house presidents - 8 Black; 5 White - they had rejected government money by saying I would ruin OH by getting gov't involved. I had told Madigan I had created a bunch of Black Barry Goldwaters and Madigan had told Reagan. His only commented was "Golly Gee, does Nancy know about Oxford House?" Soon Dr. Ian MacDonald - then at the Reagan WH - visited one of the houses near Chevy Chase Circle [August 1988\. The 13 men there said the same thing- Paul will screw this up by getting government involved. When MacDonald asked when they had their last vacancy they said in March and when asked they noted that 24 had applied. When MacDonald said he thought that when a house was full a few in the group rented another house. They said yes but it took them about 2 years to save $5,000 the amount needed to rent a house in that neighborhood. Mac Donald then suggested a loan program whereby each state that received federal funding for alcoholism and drug addiction would set up a revolving loan fund to loan 6 or more recovering individuals up to $4,000 [repayable in 24 months\ to rent another house. That served as a catalyst for national expansion and we now have 1,276 Oxford Houses throughout the country with almost 10,000 recovering folks living in them at any one time. Paul Molloy 301-589-0539