The Clancy Imislund Collection

Clancy Imislund - (AA) of Venice CA (1927-2020)

Clancy grew up in a Norwegian Lutheran family in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. As a teenager his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor was to hitchhike to San Francisco, where he joined the Merchant Marine, and then the Navy. As a sailor he was introduced to whiskey, which helped him cope with life, for a time. After the war he returned home and married Charlotte and enrolled in college. But his drinking progressed along with the frequency of nights spent in jail. Clancy made and broke many vows to change. After college he moved the family to Texas. In Dallas he built a career as an advertising executive. In El Paso, where he taught at Texas Western College and drank in Juarez Mexico. At one point directed the Grand Opera at the University of Texas in Austin. In Texas, Imislund had great jobs, but he always lost them, falling victim to what he would describe as the recurring “spring in my gut” that made him restless, eventually turning the world from “Technicolor to black and white.” Charlotte packed up the kids and resettled into a one bedroom apartment, when Clancy failed to return from a trip to buy groceries. Clancy eventually went to Los Angeles, where he was ejected from the Midnight Mission, a rescue mission in downtown LA. The night he was ejected he walked into his first AA meeting. For a time he lived in an abandoned car behind the AA meeting. Eventually he sobered up, and was able to hold a job in advertising. After five years the family reunited. Clancy started the Pacific AA Group, sponsored many, and spoke everywhere he was invited. In 1974 he became the managing director of the Midnight Mission, where years before he had been thrown out. Clancy appeared in several movies over the years, playing minor character roles. Clancy died on August 24, 2020, at 93 year of age. His cause of death was from the complications of COVID-19. At the time he was recovering from hip surgery at a rehabilitation facility. Clancy had 62 years of continuous sobriety at the time of his death. His influence continues throughout the recovery community world-wide.

“Nobody knows why it works,” he said. “The purpose of AA is not to make you dry longer and longer. The purpose of AA is to do very slowly what alcohol did fast. To change my perception of reality.”