Dave Anderson's barbecue sauce recipe might still be a secret, but the founder of the Famous Dave's barbecue restaurant chain didn't care to hide the story of his recovery from alcohol abuse in a speech Friday night in Duluth.
Anderson was the key guest speaker at the annual banquet for the Northland Campus of Minnesota Teen Challenge, a faith-based drug and alcohol treatment program.
"Before Christ, I had a whole different idea about getting sauced," Anderson told a full Greysolon Plaza ballroom.
Though his speech began on a lighthearted note -- he exhorted everyone to stand up and cheer: "I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!" -- Anderson's address turned more serious as he discussed the effect alcohol had on his life.
He said he was "a drunk" for 25 years and should've died on three occasions, including once in a car accident on Interstate 35W when his car left the ground three times.
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Anderson said he was saved when he found God as he lay on the floor of a treatment center, in which he had enrolled after an intervention.
"If I had not gotten saved that night, Famous Dave's would not be here today," he said.
"I'm not embarrassed to say that God changed my life," he said later. "I'm not embarrassed to say Jesus saved my life."
Anderson, the son of American Indians, grew up in Chicago. He said his family often took the train up to the Lac Court Oreilles reservation in Hayward in the summer. There he'd stay with his grandmother, who didn't have running water or electricity. He said he liked to look at the stars and think about how his life was like one of them.
Anderson, who also founded the Rainforest Cafe, opened the first Famous Dave's in Hayward in 1994. The company went public in 1996. He headed the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs from February 2003 until his resignation in February 2004.
Anderson spoke Friday at a benefit for Minnesota Teen Challenge, a program that uses a religious regimen and 24-hour supervised care for 13 to 15 months to help clients overcome alcohol and substance abuse.
Despite the name, the program serves clients 18 to 70 years old.
The 44-bed, all-male Duluth campus opened at
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2 E. Second St. in March 2006. Brandon Peterson, assistant program dean, said 31 men are enrolled in the program. Many are from the Iron Range, and some are transfers from the Twin Cities, he said.
Jay Wilcox, a 27-year-old who now lives in Hermantown, graduated from the program in June.
The Brainerd native said his descent into trouble started around age 12, when his father's absence left him without a role model to follow.
"I turned to the wrong crowd -- drugs," he said. "I landed myself in prison at age 16."
After being released, Wilcox said he sold drugs for seven years. Enrolling in Minnesota Teen Challenge, he said, changed his life.
"Where I'd be without Teen Challenge is prison," he said.
"It might be a relatively small program in numbers," Wilcox said of the Duluth program. "But you're helping one person at a time, one guy at a time."
