Harry "Tim" Henry said he started his day drinking "with the usual crew" at the Empire Tavern. He followed that with a nap in his apartment at the Hotel Donaldson, before ambling over to the Chatterbox Lounge on NP Avenue for an afternoon round of drinks.

He then went to the bank for more cash, but the bank had closed. He headed back to the Chatterbox for more drinking.

As he was walking by what was the Vogel Law Office, he was so inebriated that he collapsed and hit his head. Two men jumped out of their car and rushed over to see if he was OK.

"I don't know where they were from or anything," Tim said. "They just jumped out of their car and pulled me up."

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It was a revelatory moment.

"I knew that it was time to quit," he said.

Tim went back to his room at the Hotel Donaldson and spent the weekend drying out cold turkey. On Monday, he slugged down a bottle of Pepsi, then headed to the VA Hospital to get professional help.

He's been dry since.

To celebrate his 40 years of sobriety, he took out a classified ad in The Forum.

On page C10 of the July 26 newspaper in the "miscellaneous" column, tucked between an ad urging people to take in foreign exchange students and another offering truck rails for $100, is Tim's blessing on his unknown good Samaritans:

"Thank you gentleman (sic) from Aug. 5, 1977 for picking me up off the sidewalk by Vogel Law office. I haven't had a drink since. You changed my life."

Three strokes, one heart attack

Tim is a longtime denizen of Fargo's downtown.

Downtown regulars know him. Mornings he leaves his apartment and hits the streets with the help of a motorized wheelchair.

At Sandy's Donuts and Coffee Shop on Broadway, he enjoys most-favored-customer status. There is still a short line at 9 a.m., but staffers smile, call his name, and come from behind the counter to fuss over him.

"Tim, how are you? What would you like? A coffee? A doughnut?" they ask.

A yes to both.

The first half of Tim's life featured a lot of hard work - and hard drinking.

He was born in 1937 in Galesburg, N.D., where he grew up and graduated from high school. He was tagged with the name Tim by his older brother, who dubbed his baby brother "Tiny Tim" after his birth.

He spent two years in the U.S. Army, then began a series of jobs: road construction, hauling potatoes in Idaho, working in a plywood plant in Oregon, drilling test holes to find minerals out West, tending a bar in Laramie, Wyo.

He had the first of three strokes in December 1973. He had a couple of drinks at a Laramie Eagles Club, went to a friend's place to eat, and "the next thing I knew, I wake up in the hospital."

When he was recovered enough, he hopped on a bus and went to live with family in Galesburg. "I thought I was going to come right out of it," he said.

On Christmas Eve came the second stroke. He walked five steps out of the bathroom "and went down."

That put him in a hospital in Mayville, then the VA Hospital in Fargo.

By the spring of 1974, he had suffered a third stroke and a heart attack.

Throughout that year, he fought health problems: a nocardia infection, a collapsed lung, tuberculosis, a liver infection.

His weight dipped to 120 pounds. "I couldn't even stand up," he said.

Tim quit smoking April 1, 1975. "It was stupid to be on TB drugs and smoking," he said.

But the bottle still had him in a vice grip.

'A lot of joy'

In 1976, he was in a vocational rehabilitation program in Fergus Falls, Minn., and at the end of a night of drinking, he collapsed, and was taken to the Fargo VA Hospital again.

His epiphany finally arrived on that Fargo street in August of '77.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" Tim said he asked himself afterward.

He could have been robbed, killed, or left to die, all for another drink, he said.

"I knew that it was time to quit," Tim said.

But the strokes and other ills had hobbled him. In the eyes of hiring managers, he was unemployable.

"They're not going to hire anyone who can't drive equipment" or pick things up, Tim said.

So he's filled his time with puzzles, visiting with people, and the occasional trip West to see places and people he knew as a younger man.

"Tim gets a lot of joy out of people. Everybody up and down the street knows him," said Vern Hunter, a longtime friend.

Hunter said Tim in his drinking days was a troublemaker who let his hygiene and manners slide.

"Now, just the opposite. He's turned things around," Hunter said.

Ten years ago, Tim slipped after coming out of the shower, fell, and cracked a vertebra in his neck. He can stand, but he uses the wheelchair to get around, he said.

Despite that, Tim said he's thankful.

"With all the problems I had, I never figured I'd live to 60," Tim said.

And he says he wouldn't mind being able to thank the men who picked him up that day, 40 years ago.

"It taught me the meaning of the most important thing," Tim said. "Staying alive."