Excerpt from the updated version of SET FREE

When called upon to share his testimony, Bill Richardson would often use Psalm 40:1-3 as a biblical description of the depths to which addiction had taken him and the heights to which the grace of God has raised him. Verse 2 says, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay.” Bill’s life began in a farming community near Charlottesville, VA. He was next to the youngest of six children. As a family, they were occupied with farm chores as well as church activities. They were faithful in their church attendance on Sundays, both morning and evening. Sunday School was a must for the children.

Revival services were held at least once a year, and the family would attend nightly. Despite all of this exposure to the gospel, Bill did not respond in faith. He continued to live in his own willful way. During his high school years, he began to smoke and drink occasionally. As he explained it, “I wanted to be popular, I wanted to belong to the crowd… I thought that to achieve these goals I had to drink and smoke.” In the year following his high school graduation, drinking became more and more a necessity. He left home to enlist in the army at the beginning of World War II. After being rejected because of rheumatic heart disease, he sought employment in Newport News, VA. Getting a job in those war years was not difficult, but for him, keeping one was.

For several years he was employed by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, but his drinking caused him to lose that job. He was drinking morning, noon and night. During the years of his employment he married and had a son. As his drinking became a consuming passion in his life, he was separated from them. In and out of jail, his situation became increasingly desperate. His family sought medical and psychiatric help for him. He was confined to private and state hospitals which provided temporary sobriety, but when released he automatically returned to his old haunts and habits. His physical condition became progressively worse. As he described it, “While under the influence of alcohol alcohol I was unable to breathe without the aid of artificial respiration or oxygen. Alcohol was paralyzing my respiratory system.”

In desperation and at the suggestion of the doctors, his family committed him permanently to a state mental hospital. It was there that the first ray of light shone on the dark, hopeless scene of his life. A distant relative with whom he drank on many occasions visited him. Russell told Bill that he had recently returned from a place in the Pinelands of southern New Jersey where he had found deliverance from alcohol through Jesus Christ. He told Bill that if he sincerely desired help there was hope for him, regardless of medical predictions. Bill expressed his willingness to go to the KESWICK Colony of Mercy if his family would arrange for his release from the hospital.

He arrived at KESWICK in March of 1955 during a Month End Conference. As he heard the way of salvation clearly presented, his heart was stirred. About two weeks later one of the staff members, a former alcoholic, met Bill in the hallway and suggested that they go into the prayer room and talk. Jack helped him understand the simplicity of the transaction of faith for salvation, and Bill accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. His testimony drawn from Psalm 40: 1, 2 was “I cried unto the Lord and He heard my cry… and set my feet upon a rock.” For the first time in many months, peace, quietness and hope filled his heart. As he read his Bible, prayed and listened to messages from God’s Word day by day, the desires of the old life faded away.

He found freedom not only from alcohol but from smoking. Despite the fact that the customary stay in the Colony at that time was three months, he stayed for a full year. Leaving KESWICK was a major challenge in light of his past life, but he now depended on the Lord entirely. He was truly committed to the One whom the Apostle Paul declared “is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him” (2 Timothy 1:12). A Colony graduate living in Atlantic City offered Bill a place in his home until he could obtain employment. A further test of his commitment came after he had been living and working in Atlantic City for five months.

He wanted to go to Virginia to visit his family and to talk with his estranged wife about a possible reconciliation. While he was still in the Colony, he had made a brief visit, and his wife had indicated that she might consider this possibility after he finished finished his time at KESWICK and proved himself for about six months. Just before he was to make the second visit, he received word from his sister that he should not bother to make the trip because a divorce had been granted his wife and that she had married another man. Apart from the grace of the Lord and the prayer support of God’s people, he might have reverted to his former ways of dealing with disappointment. But he was committed to follow the Lord regardless of this traumatic blow.

After Bill became established as a Christian business man and faithful servant of the Lord, God brought into his life a lovely Christian lady who became his wife. They arranged to have his son spend summers with them and then enabled him to attend a Christian high school and college. Bill’s first and only employment interview was at the Chalfonte- Haddon Hall Hotel in Atlantic City. They desperately needed bus boys for their dining rooms. The personnel director, knowing a little of his background, hired him with the understanding that he would not have to serve drinks. Because he proved himself so dependable, he advanced rapidly from bus boy to Steward to Assistant Manager of the Catering Department. After ten years, his job was abolished, leaving him without work. Summer employment opened for him in Cape May, NJ, as Dining Room Manager for the Christian Admiral Hotel. By the following fall he was hired by the Historic Towne of Smithville as banquet manager and was promoted to Director of Sales. Everywhere that Bill worked, he was recognized as a conscientious and dependable employee and a highly respected manager.

His Christian testimony was tactfully shared with many people, and he was instrumental in arranging for some who struggled with alcohol addiction to enter KESWICK Colony. Despite his busy employment schedule, he was able to take an active role on the original board of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission. Among other areas of service were the Gideons of Atlantic County and the Atlantic City Keswick Fellowship.

One of the verses Bill Richardson used in giving his testimony was “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Roman 8:2). This verse summarized that which took place when he committed his life to the Lord. He never wavered from that commitment — it was for life.

by Pastor Bill Raws, Director Emeritus & Grandson of Founder