The little Doctor Who Loved Drunks.

Polly · Senior Member

The little Doctor Who Loved Drunks.

Mr_David · MIP Old Timer

What a great story, Polly. Thanks...

Frodo · MIP Old Timer

Thanks for that.

TipsyMcstagger · Senior Member

I love reading about the history of AA. It opens my eyes to the reality that the program's existence alone is nothing short of miraculous. What else can you call it? It's a global, self-funded, highly successful recovery program that began as the vision of an institutionalized drunk. When I read about Ebby, Bill, Dr. Silkworth, etc. I feel this connection and affection for them like I do for a close uncle. Is that weird? Probably...oh well :)

Polly · Senior Member

TipsyMcstagger wrote:
I love reading about the history of AA. It opens my eyes to the reality that the program's existence alone is nothing short of miraculous. What else can you call it? It's a global, self-funded, highly successful recovery program that began as the vision of an institutionalized drunk. When I read about Ebby, Bill, Dr. Silkworth, etc. I feel this connection and affection for them like I do for a close uncle. Is that weird? Probably...oh well :)

Is it weired ? No way ! Its an empathy and understanding for all who walk in the door of AA.

January 1st of the Daily Reflections its all a God given Miracle :}

Keep working for it.

Polly.X

Polly · Senior Member

TipsyMc. I was reading this today and thought of what you posted here. Just wanted to share with you and others too.

Bill W's Last Message
Presented at The New York Intergroup Association annual dinner, Oct 10, 1970
in honor of Bill's upcoming 36th anniversary, Dec. 11, 1970
Bill was under hospital care for acute emphysema and was unable for the first time to attend the A.A. banquet at which his "last drink anniversary" had been celebrated annually. His greetings were delivered by his wife Lois to the 2,200 A.A. members and guests at the New York Hilton.

William G. 'Bill' Wilson
b. November 26, 1895. d. January 24, 1971
Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

My dear friends,
Recently an A.A. member sent me an unusual greeting which I would like to extend to you He told me it was an ancient Arabian salutation. Perhaps we have no Arabic groups, but it still seems a fitting expression of how I feel for each of you. It says, "I salute you and thank you for your life."

My thoughts are much occupied these days with gratitude to our Fellowship and for the myriad blessings bestowed upon us by God's Grace.

If I were asked which of these blessings I felt was most responsible for our growth as a fellowship and most vital to our continuity, I would say, the "Concept of Anonymity."

Anonymity has two attributes essential to our individual and collective survival; the spiritual and the practical.

On the spiritual level, anonymity demands the greatest discipline of which we are capable; on the practical level, anonymity has brought protection for the newcomer, respect and support of the world outside, and security from those of us who would use A.A. for sick and selfish purposes.

A.A. must and will continue to change with the passing years. We cannot, nor should we turn back the clock. However, I deeply believe that the principle of anonymity must remain our primary and enduring safeguard. As long as we accept our sobriety in our traditional spirit of anonymity we will continue to receive God's Grace.

And so -- once more, I salute you in that spirit and again I thank you for your lives.

May God bless us all now, and forever.

Its a wonderful connection and affection.

Polly.X

Polly · Senior Member

Dr. Bob's Last Message
Presented at
The First International Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous
July 28 - 30, 1950 at Cleveland, Ohio

In Memoriam
Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith
August 8, 1879 - November 16, 1950
Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
Listen to Dr. Bob's Last Message to the Fellowship

"My good friends in AA and of AA. I feel I would be very remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to welcome you here to Cleveland not only to this meeting but those that have already transpired. I hope very much that the presence of so many people and the words that you have heard will prove an inspiration to you - not only to you, but may you be able to impart that inspiration to the boys and girls back home who were not fortunate enough to be able to come. In other words, we hope that your visit here has been both enjoyable and profitable."

"I get a big thrill out of looking over a vast sea of faces like this with a feeling that possibly some small thing that I did a number of years ago, played an infinitely small part in making this meeting possible. I also get quite a thrill when I think that we all had the same problem. We all did the same things. We all get the same results in proportion to our zeal and enthusiasm and stick-to-itiveness. If you will pardon the injection of a personal note at this time, let me say that I have been in bed five of the last seven months and my strength hasn't returned as I would like, so my remarks of necessity will be very brief.

"But there are two or three things that flashed into my mind on which it would be fitting to lay a little emphasis; one is the simplicity of our Program. Let's not louse it all up with Freudian complexes and things that are interesting to the scientific mind, but have very little to do with our actual AA work. Our 12 Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service. We understand what love is and we understand what service is. So let's bear those two things in mind.

"Let us also remember to guard that erring member - the tongue, and if we must use it, let's use it with kindness and consideration and tolerance."

"And one more thing; none of us would be here today if somebody hadn't taken time to explain things to us, to give us a little pat on the back, to take us to a meeting or two, to have done numerous little kind and thoughtful acts in our behalf. So let us never get the degree of smug complacency so that we're not willing to extend or attempt to, that help which has been so beneficial to us, to our less fortunate brothers. Thank you very much."

Polly.X

Polly · Senior Member

The American Weekly Article About Dr. Bob, 1951

The American Weekly, March 11, 1951

Dr. Bob
His Only Monument Is a Plaque,
but the Thousands He Helped Rescue
From Alcoholism Will Never Forget Him.
By Booton Herndon

The kindly faced man lying in the white hospital bed raised his hand to the light, studied it calmly and then remarked to the nurse standing by his bed:

"I think this is it."

Thus Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith recently passed from the world. So, finally, the story of "Dr. Bob, beloved by 120,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous whom he had helped to find the way back to respectability and happiness, can be told. At the death of his wife, Anne, a year before, Dr. Smith's identity had been revealed, but the story of the co-founder of A.A. remained a secret.

Dr. Bob was a boy in New England, 72 years ago, and his mother sent him to bed at 5 o'clock every evening. Just as regularly did he secretly arise, dress, and slip out the back way to continue the game with his boyhood pals.

He learned early to revolt against authority. When he went away to college he became a steady drinker. He had always wanted to be a doctor but his strong willed mother had always opposed it, and it was three years after he graduated from Dartmouth before he got up the courage to go to medical school. He drank so continuously he just did manage to get his degree. Once he went off on such a protracted binge that his fraternity brothers had to send for his father to straighten him out.

All this time Bob was corresponding with Anne, his high school sweetheart. That was as far as their courtship went. With the exception of two hard working years as an intern, he was seldom sober. Still, Anne, waiting for a miracle, married no one else.

The miracle happened, apparently, after a year-long period of heavy drinking left him terrified and on the wagon. In 1915 when he was 35 years old and some 17 years after he had first met her, he married Anne and brought her to Akron with him as his bride. They were happy for several years - until the Eighteenth Amendment was passed.

The Grapevine, the official magazine of Alcoholics Anonymous, explains in the weird logic of the alcoholic what happened then. Dr. Bob figured that since he'd soon be unable to get any more alcohol, he might as well drink up what there was. Despite prohibition, he never found it difficult to get more. From then on, he had a regular pattern. He began drinking every afternoon at four. Every morning he'd quiet his tortured nerves with sedatives and, trembling, go to work to make enough money to buy alcohol for four o'clock. That went on for 15 years.

In the meantime, a New York broker who had drunk himself out of prominence discovered that when he was trying to talk drunks into going on the wagon, he had less craving for liquor. This broker, known to A.A.'s as Bill W., went to Akron on a business deal in 1935. The deal fell through and Bill found himself once more a failure, with only 2$ in his pocket. He knew right away that he had his choice: find a drunk to talk to, or get drunk himself.

Fortunately, he found a drunk, Dr. Bob.

Bill moved in with Dr. Bob and straightened him out. When he and Dr. Bob wanted a drink, they'd go out and find a drunk to talk to. They sobered up a number of habitual drinkers in Akron that way and then their fame began reaching out to other cities. Slowly, gradually, the idea spread.

Almost before Dr. Bob and Bill, the co-founders, were aware of it, Alcoholics Anonymous was a going concern.

The book, Alcoholics Anonymous, was written. It is now in its 13th printing. People began to write in from all over the world. Some were alcoholics themselves, some were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives or friends of alcoholics. They all got an answer.

Dr. Bob, who had devoted half his life to drinking, still found himself a slave to alcohol - only now it was on the other fellow's breath. He personally visited some 5,000 in Akron hospitals, encouraging them. As his period of sobriety increased, more and more patients came to him, and it looked as though one part of his ambition, to own a convertible, might not be impossible after all.

Finally he made it. Last year he got a new yellow convertible. The Grapevine pictures him, at the age of 71, speeding through the streets of Akron in it. The long slim lines made even more rakish with the top down. No hat, his face to the sun, into the driveway he sped. Pebbles, flying, tires screeching, he'd swoosh to a stop.

And, just then, before he put 150 miles on the gleaming yellow convertible, Dr. Bob's malignant disease took a turn for the worse and he had to give up driving. He died a few months later.

Bill W. explained why there will be no imposing monument to this man who saved so many people from alcoholism. When it was once suggested, last year, Dr. Bob said: "Anne and I plan to be buried just like other folks."

And so only a simple plaque in the alcoholic ward of St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, where Dr. Bob did so much of his work, commemorates his work as co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Polly X

Polly · Senior Member

Dr. Bob's Memorial Service
24th Street Clubhouse, New York City, N.Y.
November 15, 1952

Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith

A meeting was held at the 24th Street Club House in memory of Dr. Bob. A recording of Dr. Bob's Last Talk was played and a portrait of Dr. Bob was unveiled. Bill W. then addressed the meeting.
Listen to Dr. Bob's Last Major Talk
Dr. Bob's recorded voice has come down to us across the air since he died in 1950. Some may say that his actual voice is still forever, but you and I know that is not so and that his spirit will be with us so long as this well loved society of ours endures. Now, I happen to be one who believes that people never die, that on beyond death there is another life and it could be that Dr. Bob is looking down upon us now, seeing us, hearing what we say and feel and think and have done in this meeting. I know his heart will be glad.
Dr Bob was a chap who was modestly and singularly against taking any personal acclaim or honor but surely now that he is no longer with us he can't mind, I don't believe and for him I wish to thank everyone here who has made this occasion possible and the unveiling possible, with all the work and love that that has entailed. Again, I wish to thank each and everyone.
In A.A. we always deal in personalities, really, this thing is transmitted from one to another and it isn't so much what we read about it that counts, it's what we uniquely know about of ourselves and those just around us who have helped us and who we would help. Therefore, I take it that you folks would like it better than anything else if I just spun a few yarns about Dr. Bob and that very early part of A.A. which we so often call the period of flying blind.
Of course you'll remember my little story about how a friend comes to me with the idea of getting more honest, more tolerant, making amends, helping others without demand for reward, praying as best I knew how and that was my friend Ebby.
As you heard Dr. Bob say, he had heard those things too from the same source, namely the Oxford Groups which have since as such, passed off the scene and have left us with a rich heritage of both what and what not to do. Anyway, a friend comes to me and I go to other alcoholics and try to make them my friends and some did become my friends but as you heard Dr. Bob say, not a darn one got sober.
Then came that little man that we who live in this area saw so much, him with kind of blue eyes and the white hair,' Doc Silkworth. You'll remember that Doc said to me, "Look Bill, you're preaching at these people too much. You've got the cart before the horse. This 'white flash' experience of yours scares these drunks to death. Why don't you put the fear of God into them first. You're always talking about James and the Varieties of Religious Experience and how you have to deflate people before they can know God, how they must have humility. So, why don't you use the tools that we've really got here, why don't you use the tool of the medical hopelessness of alcoholism for practically all those involved. Why don't you talk to the drunk about that allergy they've got and that obsession that makes them keep on drinking and guarantees that they will die. Maybe when you punch it into them hard it will deflate them enough so that they will find what you found."
So, another indispensable ingredient was added to what is now this successful synthesis and that was just about the time I set out for Akron on a business trip. It had been suggested by the family that it was about time that I went back to work. I went out there on this venture which as Dr. Bob said, "fortunately fell through." You heard him tell about the story in the hotel after I had taken a good beating and I was tempted to drink and needed to look up another alcoholic, not this time to save him but to save myself, for I had found that working with others had a vast bearing on my own sobriety.
Then, how we were brought together by a girl who was the last person on a long list of people I'd been referred to. The only one who had time enough and who cared enough and that was a girl in Akron, herself no alcoholic, her name was Henrietta Seiberling. She invited me out there and she became interested at once. She called Smiths and we learned Smithy had just come home with a potted plant for dear old Annie and he put it on the dining room table but as Annie said that just then he was on the floor and they couldn't come over at that minute.
You'll remember the next day how he put in an appearance. Haggard, worn, not wishing to stay and how then we talked for hours. Now I have often heard Dr. Bob say and I thought he said it on the recording that "it was not so much my spirituality that affected him," he was a student of those things and I certainly know that he was never affected by any superior morality on my part. So, what did affect him? Well, it was this ammunition that dear old Doc Silkworth had given me, the allergy plus the obsession. The God of science declaring that the malady for most of us is hopeless so far as our personal power is concerned. As Dr. Bob put it in his story in the book "here came the first man into my life who seemed to know what this thing alcoholism was all about."
Well, if it wasn't the dose of spirituality I poured into Dr. Bob, it was that dose of indispensable medicine to this movement, the dose of hopelessness so far as one doing this alone is concerned. The bottle of medicine that Dr. Silkworth had given me that I poured down the old grizzly bear's throat. That's what I used to call him.
Well, he gagged on it a little, got drunk once more and that was the end. Then he and I set out looking for drunks, we had to look some up. There is a little remembered part of the story. The story usually goes that we immediately called up the local city hospital and asked the nurse for a case but that isn't quite true. There was a preacher who lived down the street and he was beset at the time by a drunk and his name was Eddie and we talked to Eddie and it turned out that Eddie was not only a drunk but something which in that high faluting language we now call a manic depressive, not very manic either, mostly depressed. Eddie was married with two or three kids, worked down at Goodrich Company and his depression caused him to drink and the only thing that would stop the depression was apparently baking soda. When he got a sour stomach, he got depressed so he was not only drinking alcohol but we estimated that in the past few years he had taken a ton of baking soda. Well, we tried for a while, of course, we thought we had to be good Samaritan's so we got up some dough to try to keep the family going, we got Eddie back on the job but Eddie kept right on with alcohol and baking soda both. Finally, Dr. Bob and Annie took Eddie along with me into their house, a pattern which my dear Lois followed out to the nth degree later and we tried to treat Eddie and my mind goes back so vividly to that evening when Eddie really blew his top. I don't know whether it was the manic side or on the depressive side but boy did he blow it and Annie and I were sitting out at the kitchen table and Eddie seized the butcher knife and was about to do us in when Annie said very quietly "well Eddie, I don't think your going to do this." And he didn't. Thereafter, Eddie was in a State asylum for a period I should think of going on a dozen or more years but believe it or not he showed up at the funeral of Dr. Bob in the fall of 1950 as sober as a judge and he had been that way for three years.
So even that obscure little talk about Eddie made the grade. So then Dr. Bob and I talked to the man on the bed, Bill Dotson, who some of you have heard, A.A. number three. Here was another man who said he couldn't get well, his case was too tough, much tougher than ours besides he knew all about religion. Well, here it was, one drunk talking with another, in fact, two drunks talking to one. The very next day the man on the bed got out of his bed and he picked it up and walked and he has stayed up ever since. A.A. number three, the man on the bed.
So the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous was struck. I came back to New York after having taken away a great deal from Akron. I never can forget those mornings and those nights at the Smiths. I can never forget Annie reading to us and the two or three drunks who were hanging on, out of the bible. I couldn't possibly say how many times we read Corinthians on love, how many times we read the entire book of James with loving emphasis on that line "Faith without works is dead." It did make a very deep impression on me, so from the very beginning there was reciprocity, everybody was teacher and everybody was pupil and nobody need look up or down to the other because as Jack Alexander put it years later "we are all brothers and sisters under the skin."
A group started in New York, but let's turn back to Akron. Smithy, unlike me and the man on the bed was bothered very badly by a temptation to drink. Smithy was one of these continuous drinkers. He wasn't what you would call one of these panty waist periodic's. He guzzled all the time and apparently by the time he got to be sixty odd which was when he got A.A. He was so soaked in rum that he just had a terrible physical urge to drink. Long after he told me that he had that urge for something like six or seven years and that it was constant and that his basic release from it was in doing what we now call the twelfth step. So Smithy, greatly out of love and partly by being driven began to frantically work on those cases, first in City Hospital in Akron and then as they got tired of drunks in the place, finally over at St. Thomas where there is now a plaque which bears an inscription dedicated to all those who labored there in our pioneering time and describing St. Thomas in Akron as the first religious institution ever to open it's doors to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Ah, how much of drama, how much of struggle, how much of misery, how much of joy lies in the era before the plaque was put there. No one can say. There was a sister in the hospital, a veritable saint if you ever saw one. Our beloved Sister Ignatia. Dr. Bob mentioned her. He told how she would deny beds to people with broken legs in order to stick drunks in them. She loved drunks. She was a sort of female Silkworth, if you know what I mean. So finally a ward was provided and you remember that Dr. Bob was an M.D. and a mighty good one. Now you know that quite within the A.A. Tradition Dr. Bob might have charged all those drunks who went through that place for his medical services. He treated 5,000 drunks medically and never charged a dime, even in that long period when he was very poor. For unlike most of us to whom it is a credit to belong to Alcoholics Anonymous, it was no credit to a surgeon at that time. "It was lovely that the old boy got sober" his patients said, "but how the hell do I know he'll be sober when he cuts me up at nine o'clock in the morning." And so that frantic effort went on out there and it went on here and we got back and forth a little bit between Akron and New York. You haven't any conception these days of how much failure we had. How you had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait. Yes, the discouragement's were very great but some did stay sober and some very tough ones at that.
The next great memory I have is that of a day I shared with him in his living room in the fall of 1937. I, you remember had sobered up in late 34 and Bob in June 1935. Well, we began to count noses, we asked ourselves "How many were dry and for how long," Not how many failures, how many successes were there in Akron, New York and the trickle to Cleveland and in the other little trickles to Philadelphia and Washington. How much time elapsed on how many cases? We added up the score and I guess we had maybe forty folks sober and with real time elapsed. For the first time Dr. Bob and I knew that God had made a great gift to us children of the night and that the long procession coming down through the ages need no longer all go over into the left hand path and plunge over the cliff. We knew that something great had come into the world.
Then it was a question of how we would spread this and that was answered by the publication of the book and the opening of the office here. It was spread by our great friends who rallied about us. There were friends in medicine, friends in religion, friends in the press and just plain but great friends. They all came to our aid and spread the good news.
Meanwhile drunks from all over Ohio, all over the Middle West flocked into the Akron hospital where Dr. Smith and Sister Ignatia ministered to them. And I have no doubt that two out of three of those drunks are sober, well and happy today. So that achievement certainly entitles Dr. Bob to be named as the prince of all twelve steppers.
That was the end of the flying blind period, next we needed to discover whether we could hold together as groups. We had learned that we might survive as individuals but could this movement hold together and grow. On a thousand anvils and after a million heartbreaks the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous was also forged out of our experience and what had been a tiny chip, launched in the flying blind time on the sea of alcoholism now became a mighty armada spreading over the world, touching foreign beach heads. Of all that, this meeting here in this historic place in commemoration of Dr. Bob is a great and moving symbol. I know that he looks down upon us. I know that he smiles and we know that he is glad..

Polly. XX

Polly · Senior Member

Another interesting read. :}

Origins of AA - Henrietta Seiberling
Transcript of Henrietta's remarks presented at Founder's Day, June 10, 1971

Henrietta Seiberling is the lady who introduced Bill Wilson to Dr. Bob Smith.

Henrietta Buckler Seiberling
May, 1972
In the spring of 1971, the newspapers reported the passing of Bill Wilson of New York City, who was one of the two co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. The other co-founder, Dr Robert Smith of Akron, Ohio, had passed on some years earlier. Shortly after Bill's death, the Akron Alcoholics groups asked my mother Henrietta Seiberling, to speak at the annual "Founders Day" meeting in Akron, which is attended by members of Alcoholics Anonymous from all over the world. She lives in New York and did not feel up to traveling, so they asked me to speak in her place. I agreed to speak but felt that it would mean most to them to hear some of her own words, so I called her on the telephone and asked her to tell me about the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous so that I could make sure my remarks were accurate. I made a tape recording of the conversation and played part of it at the 1971 Founders Day meeting, which was held in the gymnasium at the University of Akron with a couple of thousand people present. So many people have asked for a transcript of the recording that I have finally had one typed. Attached is a copy of the transcript, which follows the tape recording as closely as possible, with only my own remarks and some of the conversational asides and redundancies edited out. The first meeting of Bob and Bill, described in the attached transcript, took place in the summer of 1935 in Henrietta's house in Akron, which was the Gatehouse of Stan Hywet Hall, then my family's estate, now the property of Stan Hywet Hall Foundation. Henrietta was not an alcoholic. She was a Vasser college graduate and a housewife with three teenage children. She, like Bob and Bill, would be deeply disturbed by any inference that she or they possessed any extraordinary virtues or talents. On the contrary, they would all emphasize the power of ordinary people to change their lives and the lives of others through the kind of spiritual discipline so successfully exemplified in Alcoholics Anonymous. I am happy to make this transcript available to persons who are sincerely interested in learning more about Alcoholics Anonymous and its message. It is a way of sharing some of the insight's which made and still make Alcoholics Anonymous a vital force in people's lives. I ask only that the transcript be held in the spirit in which it is offered and not used for publicity or in an effort to magnify any individual.

John F. Seiberling

Henrietta's Home, The Gate Lodge
Where Bill W. and Dr. Bob Met,
5:00 P.M., Mother's Day, May 12, 1935
Transcript Of Remarks by Henrietta B. Seiberling

I would like to tell about Bob in the beginning. Bob and Ann came into the Oxford Group, which, as you know, was the movement which tried to recapture the power of first Century Christianity in the modern world, and a quality of life which we must always exercise. Someone spoke to me about Bob Smith's drinking. He didn't think that people knew it. And I decided that the people who shared in the Oxford group had never shared very costly things to make Bob lose his pride and share what he thought would cost him a great deal. So I decided to gather together some Oxford Group people for a meeting, and that was in T. Henry Williams' house. We met afterwards there for five or six years every Wednesday night.

I warned Ann that I was going to have this meeting. I didn't tell her it was for Bob, but I said, "Come prepared to mean business. There is going to be no pussyfooting around. And we all shared very deeply our shortcomings, and what we had victory over, and then there was silence, and I waited and thought, "Will Bob say something?" Sure enough, in that deep, serious tone of his, he said, "Well, you good people have all shared things that I am sure were very costly to you, and I am going to tell you something which may cost me my profession. I am a silent drinker, and I can't stop." This was weeks before Bill came to Akron. So we said, "Do you want to go down on your knees and pray?" And he said, "Yes." So we did.

And the next morning, I, who knew nothing about alcoholism (I thought a person should drink like a gentleman, and that's all), was saying a prayer for Bob. I said, "God, I don't know anything about drinking, but I told Bob That I was sure that if he lived this way of life, he could quit drinking. Now you have to help me." Something said To me - I call it "guidance" - it was like a voice in the top of my head - "Bob must not touch one drop of Alcohol." I knew that wasn't my thought. So I called Bob, and said I had guidance for him - and this is very important.

He came over at 10 in the morning, and I told him that my guidance was that he mustn't touch one drop of alcohol. He was very disappointed, because he thought guidance would mean seeing somebody or going someplace. And then - this is something very relevant - he said, "Henrietta, I don't understand it. Nobody understands it." Now that was the state of the world when we were beginning. He said, "Some doctor had written a book about it, but he doesn't understand it. I don't like the stuff. I don't want to drink." I said, "Well, Bob, that is what I have been guided about." And that was the beginning of our meetings, long before Bill ever came.

Now let me recall some of Bill's very words about his experience. Bill, when he was in a hotel in Akron and down to a few dollars and owed his bill after his business venture fell through, looked at the cocktail room and was tempted and thought, "Well, I'll just go in there and get drunk and forget it all, and that will be the end of it." Instead, having been sober five months in the Oxford Group, he said a prayer. He got the guidance to look in a ministers directory, and a strange thing happened.

He just looked in there, and he put his finger on one name: Tunks. And that was no coincidence, because Dr. Tunks was Mr. Harvey Firestone's minister, and Mr. Firestone had brought 60 of the Oxford Group people down there for 10 days out of gratitude for helping his son, who drank too much. His son had quit for a year and a half or so. Out of the act of gratitude of this one father, this whole chain started.

So Bill called Dr. Tunks, and Dr. Tunks gave him a list of names. One of them was Norman Sheppard, who was a close friend of mine and knew what I was trying to do for Bob. Norman said, "I have to go to New York tonight but you can call Henrietta Seiberling, "When he told the story, Bill shortened it by just saying that he called Dr. Tunks, but I did not know Dr. Tunks. Bill said that he had his last nickel, and he thought, "Well, I'll call her."

So I, who was desperate to help Bob in something I didn't know much about, was ready. Bill called, and I will never forget what he said: "I'm from the Oxford Group and I'm a Rum Hound." Those were his words. I thought, "This is really manna from Heaven." And I said, "You come right out here." And my thought was to put those two men together. Bill, looking back, thought he was out to help someone else. Actually, he was out to get help for himself, no thought of helping anyone else, because he was desperate. But that is the way that God helps us if we let God direct our lives. And so he came out to my house, and he stayed for dinner. And I told him to come to church with me next morning and I would get Bob, which I did.

Bill stayed in Akron. He didn't have any money. There was a neighbor of mine, John Gammeter, who had seen the change in my life brought by the Oxford Group, and I called him and asked him to put Bill up at the country club for two weeks or so, just to keep him in town. After that, Bill went to stay with Bob and Ann for three months, and we started working on Bill Dotson and Ernie Galbraith.

The need was there, and all of the necessary elements were furnished by God. Bill the promoter, and I, not being an alcoholic, for perspective. Every Wednesday night I would speak on some new experience or spiritual idea I had read. That's the way we all grew. Eventually the meetings moved to King School. Some man from Hollywood came, an actor, and he said that he had been all over the country and that there was something in the King School group that wasn't in any other group. I think it was our great stress and reliance on guidance and quiet times.

Bill did a grand job. We can all see in his life what the Oxford Group people had told us in their message: That if we turn our lives to God and let him run it, he will take our shortcomings and make them valuable in His way and give us our hearts desire. And when I got the word that Bill had gone on, I sat there, and it was just as if someone had spoken to me again on top of my head. Something said to me, "Verily, verily, he has received his reward." So I went to the Bible, and there it was, in Matthew VI. Then I looked at Bill's story in Alcoholics Anonymous where Bill had said that all his failures were because he always wanted people to think he was somebody. In the first edition of the book, he said he always wanted to make his mark among people. And by letting God run his life, God took his ego and gave him his hearts desire in God's way. And when he was gone, he was on the front page of the New York Times, famous all over the world. So it does verify what the Oxford Group people had told him.

Father Dowling, a Jesuit Priest, had first met our group in the early days in Chicago, and he came to Akron to see us. And then he went on to New York to see the others. And he said to one of the four men, "This is one of the most beautiful things that has come into the world. But I want to warn you that the devil will try to destroy it." Of course, it's true, and one of the first things that the devil could have used was having money, and having sanatoriums as the men were planning. Much to Bob's and Bill's and Ann's surprise, I said, "No, we'll never take any money."

Another way where I saw that the devil could try to destroy us was having prominent names. The other night I heard on TV special about alcoholics, a man explaining why they are anonymous. And he showed that he didn't really know why. He just said that it wouldn't do to let people know that you were an alcoholic. That's not the reason. In fact, the surest way to stay sober is to let people know that you are an alcoholic because then you have lost something of yourself. I would say that the second way that I saw that the devil would be trying to destroy us was to have any names. Those you think that they are prominent or that they have become leaders, all fail people because no one is on top spiritually all the time. So I said, "We'll never have any names."

I feel that the whole wonderful experience of Alcoholics Anonymous came in answer to a growing great need in the world, and this was met by the combination of Bill, who was a catalyst and promoter, and Bob, with his great humility (if you spoke to him about his contribution, he'd say, "Oh, I just work here.) and Ann, who supplied a homeyness for our men in the beginning.

And I tried to give to the people something of my experience and faith. What I was most concerned with is that we always go back to faith. This brings me to the third thing that would be destructive to the early days, Bob and Bill said to me. "Henrietta, I don't think we should talk too much about religion or God." I said to them, "Well, we're not out to please the alcoholics. They have been pleasing themselves all these years. We are out to please God. And if you don't talk about what God does, and your faith, and your guidance, then you might as well be the Rotary Club or something like that. Because God is your only source of power." And finally they agreed. And they weren't afraid any more. It is my great hope that they will never be afraid to acknowledge God and what he has done for them.

The last AA dinner that I went to, over 3,000 people were there. And it was the first meeting that I went to which I was disappointed in. There were two witnesses there, a man and a woman, and you would have thought they were giving you a description of a psychiatrist's work on them. Their progress was always on the level of psychology. And I spoke to Bill afterwards and I said that there was no spirituality there or talk of what God had done in their lives. They were giving views, not news of what God had done. And Bill said, "I know, but they think there were so many people that need this and they don't want to send them away." So there again has come up this same old bugaboo - without the realization that they have lost their source of power.

This makes me think of the story of the little Scotch minister who was about to preach his first sermon, and his mother hugged him and said, "Now, Bobbie, don't forgot to say a word for Jesus. Your mother always wants a word for God."

And then there is one other thought I'd always like to stress, and that is the real fact of God's guidance. People can always count on guidance, although it seems elusive at times.

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives, September 11, 1973
At the request of my mother, Henrietta Seibeling,
I am sending to you the attached transcript of remarks on Alcoholics Anonymous.
Sincerely,
John F. Seiberling
Member of Congress.

Polly · Senior Member

Bill Dotson - AA Member #3
"The Man On The Bed"

On a Friday night, September 17, 1954, Bill Dotson died in Akron, Ohio.
"That is, people say he died, but he really didn't," wrote Bill Wilson. "His spirit and works are today alive in the hearts of uncounted AA's, and who can doubt that Bill already dwells in one of those many mansions in the great beyond."

Bill Dotson, the "Man on the Bed," was AA number 3. At his death, he had not had a drink in more than nineteen years. His date of sobriety was the date he entered Akron's City Hospital for his last detox, June 26, 1935. Two days later occurred that fateful day when two sober alcoholics visited him: Dr. Bob Smith of Akron, Ohio, and Bill Wilson, a guest of Dr. Bob's from New York.

A few days before, Dr. Bob had said to Bill: "If you and I are going to stay sober, we had better get busy." Dr. Bob called Akron's City Hospital and told the nurse, a "Mrs. Hall," that he and a man from New York had a cure for alcoholism. Did she have an alcoholic customer on whom they could try it out? She replied, "Well, Doctor, I suppose you've already tried it yourself?"

Then she told him of a man who had just come in with DT's, had blacked the eyes of two nurses, and was now strapped down tight. "He's a grand chap when he's sober," she added.

Dr. Bob prescribed some medications, and then asked her to transfer him to a private room. He also put him on a diet of sauerkraut and tomatoes. That's all he was allowed to eat during his hospitalization.

The nurse told Dr. Bob and Bill that Bill Dotson had been a well-known attorney in Akron and a city councilman. But he had been hospitalized eight times in the last six months. (Bill Wilson sometimes said "six times.") Following each release, he got drunk even before he got home.

Bill's wife, Henrietta Dotson, had talked to Dr. Bob and Bill earlier. When she told her husband she had been "talking to a couple of fellows about drinking" he was furious at her "disloyalty." When she told them that they were "a couple of drunks" Bill didn't mind so much.

Henrietta apparently had quite a conversation with the two men, and she told her husband that their plan for staying sober themselves was to tell their plan to another drunk.

Years later, Bill Dotson reflected on the jumbled thoughts in his mind as his wife left and he began to lapse back into withdrawal stupor: "All the other people that talked to me wanted to help ME, and my pride prevented me from listening to them, and caused only resentment on my part, but I felt as if I would be a real stinker if I did not listen to a couple of fellows for a short time, if that would cure THEM."

So Dr. Bob and Bill talked to what may have been their first "man on the bed." They told him of the serious nature of his disease, but also offered hope for a recovery. "We told him what we had done," wrote Bill, "how we got honest with ourselves as never before, how we had talked our problems out with each other in confidence, how we tried to make amends for harm done others, how we had then been miraculously released from the desire to drink as soon as we had humbly asked God, as we understood him, for guidance and protection."

But Bill Dotson was not impressed. He said, "Well, this is wonderful for you fellows, but can't be for me. My case is so terrible that I'm scared to go out of this hospital at all. You don't have to sell me religion, either. I was at one time a deacon in the church and I still believe in God. But I guess he doesn't believe much in me."

(Like so many of us on first coming to AA, Bill Dotson thought he was "different.") But he did agree to see Dr. Bob and Bill again. They came again the next day, and for several days thereafter. When they arrived on July 4, they found Bill's wife, Henrietta, with him.

Eagerly pointing at them, he said to his wife: "These are the fellows I told you about, they are the ones who understand."

Before they could say anything, he told them about his night, how he hadn't slept but had been thinking about them all night long. And he had decided that if they could do it, maybe he could do it, maybe they could do together what they couldn't do separately.

It was apparently on that day that he admitted he couldn't control his drinking and had to leave it up to God. Then they made him get down on his knees at the side of the bed and pray and say that he would turn his life over to God. Before the visit was over, he suddenly turned to his wife and said, "Go fetch my clothes, dear. We're going to get up and get out of here."

He walked out of that hospital on July 4, 1935, a free man, never to drink again. AA's Number One Group dates from that day.

That Fourth of July they had plenty to celebrate. So they had a picnic. The Smiths, Bill Wilson, the Dotsons, and Eddie Riley, the first alcoholic they tried to help were there. (Eddie didn't get sober at first, but later he did, and Eddie said in a talk that there were two firsts in A.A. -- the first one who accepted the program and the first who refused it.)

Within a week, Bill Dotson was back in court, sober, and arguing a case. But at first his wife was doubtful. He had previously gone on the wagon and stayed sober for long periods. But then he drank again. Would this time be different? And he hadn't had that sudden transforming experience that Bill Wilson talked about.

When Lois Wilson visited Akron in July of 1935, Henrietta shared these fears with her, and asked Lois whether she ever worried about her Bill drinking again. Lois answered without hesitation, "No. Never."

The message had been successfully shared a second time. Dr. Bob was no fluke. And apparently you did not have to be indoctrinated by the Oxford Group before the message could take hold.

The three worked with scores of others. "Many were called but mighty few chosen; failure was our daily companion. But when I left Akron in September 1935, two or three more sufferers had apparently linked themselves to us for good," wrote Bill.

Dotson's story was not included in the first edition of the Big Book. Ernest Kurst seems to think it was because Bill Dotson's "credentials," were apparently too blatant: highly respectable upper middle-class background, above average education, intensive youthful religious training which had since been rejected, and former social prominence recently nullified by such behavior as his assault on two nurses.

In a 1952 discussion with Bill D., he was asked why his story hadn't appeared in the first edition of the Big Book. He said that he hadn't been much interested in the project or perhaps had even thought it unnecessary. He also said that Bill Wilson had come out to Akron to record his story, which would be in the next edition of the book. It appears in the Big Book as "AA Number Three."

Old timers in Akron, according to Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, "recalled that Bill Dotson, was indeed a grand chap when sober. They remembered him as one of the most engaging people they ever knew."

One said: "I thought I was a real big shot because I took Bill D. to meetings," Another noted that, though Bill Dotson was influential in the area he was not an ambitious man in AA. "He wasn't aggressive, just a good A.A. If you went to him for help he would give you help. He would counsel with you. He never drove a car, but he went to meetings every night. He'd stand around with his thumbs in his vest like a Kentucky colonel. And he spoke so slowly, you wanted to reach out and pull the words from his mouth. I loved to be around him. He put you in mind of a real 'Easy Does It' guy -- Mr. Serenity."

His wife, looking back in 1977, described him as "a great alcoholic who, like other alcoholics, didn't want to get drunk." She reportedly remembered telling her pastor, "You aren't reaching him. I'm going to find someone who can, if I have to see everyone in Akron," and she prayed with the pastor of another church that someone her husband could understand would visit him in City Hospital, where he had been admitted with "some kind of virus."

I have found no reference to his age when Bill and Bob found him, but Bill keeps referring to him in the literature as "old Bill D." [Bill Dotson was 43 when Bill and Dr. Bob found him, just 3 years older than Bill and 13 years younger than Dr. Bob.]

In a memorial to Bill Dotson, Bill Wilson wrote: "The force of the great example that Bill set in our pioneering time will last as long as AA itself. Bill kept the faith -- what more could we say?"

Polly · Senior Member

TipsyMcstagger wrote:
I love reading about the history of AA. It opens my eyes to the reality that the program's existence alone is nothing short of miraculous. What else can you call it? It's a global, self-funded, highly successful recovery program that began as the vision of an institutionalized drunk. When I read about Ebby, Bill, Dr. Silkworth, etc. I feel this connection and affection for them like I do for a close uncle. Is that weird? Probably...oh well :)

EBBY T.

The Man Who Carried The Message To Bill W.
By Walter L.

In 1960, at the Long Beach, California Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson wrote this dedication in an AA book that he gave to Ebby Thacher.

"Dear Ebby,
No day passes that I do not remember that you brought me the message that saved me - and only God knows how many more.
In affection, Bill"

It was Ebby who found relief from his alcoholism in the simple spiritual practices of the Oxford Group which was an attempt to return to First Century Christianity - before it was complicated and distorted by religious doctrines, dogma and opinions. The program offered by Ebby to Bill involved taking a personal moral inventory, admitting to another person the wrongs we had done, making things right by amends and restitution, and a genuine effort to be of real service to others. In order to obtain the power to overcome these problems, Ebby had been encouraged to call on God, as he understood God, for help.

Bill was deeply impressed by Ebby's words, but was even more affected by Ebby's example of action. Here was someone who drank like Bill drank - and yet Ebby was sober, due to a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. The results were an inexplicably different person, fresh-skinned, glowing face, with a different look in his eyes. A miracle sat directly across the kitchen table from Bill. Ebby was not some"do-gooder" who had read something in a book. Here was a hopeless alcoholic who had been completely defeated by John Barleycorn, and yet, had in effect, been raised from the dead. It was a message of hope for an alcoholic - that God would do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Bill continued to drink in a more restrained way for a short while, and then was admitted to Towns Hospital on December 11, 1934. Ebby visited him there on December 14th and essentially helped Bill take what would become Steps Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight.

But that "boost" from Ebby's visit wore off and that night, Bill's feeling of hopelessness deepened and a terrifying darkness yawned in the abyss. As the last trace of self-will was crushed, Bill said to himself, with neither faith nor hope,

"I'll do anything, anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!"

The Conference approved biography, Pass It On, quotes Bill as describing this experience:

Then, seen in the mind's eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought, "You are a free man." I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the light and the ecstasy subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. As I became more quiet, a great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a Presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world."

Ebby had carried the message of the Oxford Group to Bill with great care and dedication---that recovery from alcoholism was possible using spiritual principles, but only if it was combined with practical actions. Bill Wilson never took another drink, and left Towns Hospital to dedicate the rest of his life to carrying the message to other alcoholics.

Ebby, however, took a different path, one that caused him to have a series of relapses. The man whom Bill Wilson called his sponsor could not stay sober himself, and became an embarrassment. There were periods of sobriety, some long, some short, but eventually Ebby would, "fall off the wagon," as he called it.

More revealingly, Ebby referred to his periods of sobriety as, "being on the wagon." For an AA to regularly use this sort of language is an indication that the commitment to sobriety is temporary in nature. If there is an "on the wagon" then there is an "off the wagon" too. And that was the on/off cycle of Ebby's drinking.

Ebby was born on April 29, 1896, into a prominent and well-to-do family in Albany, New York, with roots going back before the American Revolution. His grandfather started a railroad wheel manufacturing business in 1852 and became the main supplier of wheels for the New York Central Railroad, as well as Mayor of Albany Two other members of Ebby's family were also mayors of Albany, including his older brother, "Jack." One of New York State's most beautiful parks, located on the Helderberg escarpment southwest of Albany, was donated by the widow of Ebby's uncle, John Boyd Thacher and is named after him.

Ebby's full name was Edwin Throckmorton Thacher and he can be said to have arrived in the world with "a silver spoon in his mouth." It is possible that because of his upper-class origins, with servants waiting on him and the respect brought by his family name, Ebby developed the attitude that life should always be easy for him. He was 'entitled', it seems.

Lois Wilson shared her insights into Ebby in her biography, Lois Remembers, and stated that while Bill wanted sobriety with his whole soul, Ebby appeared to want just enough sobriety to stay out of trouble. In addition, Lois said, "Beyond that crucial visit with Bill, Ebby seemed to do very little about helping others. He never appeared really a member of AA. After his first slip, many harmful thoughts seemed to take possession of him. He appeared jealous of Bill and critical, even when sober, of both the Oxford Group and AA." Lois felt that it was important that AA's know why Ebby was not considered the founder of AA. Ebby carried the message to Bill, but he never followed it up with the years of devoted action needed to develop the AA program.

Despite his failure to follow through after his vital visit with Bill, Ebby still seemed to feel he was not recognized adequately for his contribution to the start of AA. His employer for many years in Texas said that Ebby, "kind of thought the world owed him a living, to a certain extent. He thought he never got the recognition that he should. That was stuck in his craw for years."

Another AA who had known Ebby in Texas said that, "Ebby held a deep resentment for Bill, Dr. Bob, and others, because he felt he was more the founder of what was to become AA than anyone else". In the author's opinion, this resentment may be the reason for his repeated "slips" in the program.

Ebby also had the idea that he needed the right woman and an ideal job in order to stay sober. The implication is that if he didn't have the perfect woman and the perfect job, he couldn't stay sober. And he didn't stay sober. AA members know that sobriety has to be sought without any conditions, that we have to be "willing to go to any length to get it" and that "half measures availed us nothing."

Some of Ebby's own letters bring to mind Lois's observation noted earlier, that Ebby seemed to be "around" AA, but never really "in" it. Typical correspondence from AA's devotes substantial discussion to the AA Program and the application of the Steps to their own lives. Ebby's letters avoid these topics and are significant for what they don't say. In 1954, Bill wrote that Ebby now, "shows more signs of really joining AA than ever before." The implication is that Ebby had shown less commitment to the AA program before then, but even at that time, there were still substantial doubts about his sincerity.

Earlier, in 1947, his sister-in-law received a letter from Ebby, and she wrote back suggesting that the answer to his problems was to devote himself to helping others and then continued,

Ebby drifted in and out of sobriety, and in and out of AA, with many AA members trying to help him regain a more stable sobriety. The person who was ultimately successful was Searcy W., who had established a hospital for alcoholics in Texas. Early in 1953, Searcy had asked Bill what he would like to see happen in AA, and Bill said, "I would like for Ebby to have a chance to sober up in your clinic." Several months later, it came to pass, and after a short slip in 1954, Ebby remained sober for seven years.

In 1961, Ebby's girlfriend died and the next day Ebby got drunk. He apparently still believed that his sobriety was conditional on having the right woman, and now she was gone. Ebby moved back to New York and lived at several places for the next two years, one of which was at his brother Ken's home in Delmar, a suburb of Albany. He had emphysema, the same disease that caused Bill's death, and was in poor health, his weight having dropped from 170 to 122 pounds.

Ebby eventually came to Margaret and Micky McPike's farm outside Ballston Spa, New York, in May, 1964 and it was under their loving care that he finished the final two years of his life, dying sober on March 21, 1966. While at McPike's farm, he never even attempted to get something to drink although he never attended any AA meetings. Still, AA visitors were frequent and AA principles were in constant evidence, permeating the entire atmosphere at McPike's. Dr. Bob said that the AA program boiled down to love and service and that was the essence of Margaret and Micky McPike, who helped more than four thousand persons to recover from alcoholism. Ebby was one of them.

AA's agree that no matter what happens to them, the most important thing is to not pick up that first "sucker" drink. Once alcohol is placed in our bodies, the results are physically inevitable in the same way that once a dose of castor oil has been taken, all the mental will power in the world is of no avail. Our problem as alcoholics centers in our minds, in having an entire psychic change as a result of taking the actions set out exactly in the 12 Steps. It is said in the rooms, "If you do what we did, you'll get what we got." Ebby was unable, for whatever reasons, to put the AA program of action into his life on a regular basis.

All of his life, Ebby was overshadowed by the recognition and success of his father and grandfather and in his own generation, by the accomplishments and respect given to his older brothers. This may have developed in him a sense of "never good enough" so familiar to alcoholics. It is also likely that his privileged childhood accentuated the sense of self-importance and self-focus that the AA program requires us to deflate at depth.

If Ebby had been recognized as the founder of the AA program, it would have given him respect and recognition far surpassing anyone in his family. After Bill received the message of recovery from Ebby, he devoted the rest of his life to helping other alcoholics. If Ebby had been willing and able to take similar actions of love and service, he would have been a co-founder with Bill Wilson. But he would not, or could not, do the day-to-day work with others needed to bring AA into a concrete reality.

Rather than realistically looking at his own shortcomings in establishing AA, Ebby wallowed in resentments, the greatest obstacle to sobriety and the number one killer of alcoholics. Perhaps Bill was thinking of the example of his sponsor, Ebby, when he wrote the many strong statements in the Big Book condemning resentments. For whatever the reasons, Ebby never seemed to give himself completely to the simple program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There are many others who achieve periods of sobriety yet relapse from time to time. They are not to be condemned, but welcomed back into the Fellowship. Their experience is a lesson to others that alcohol as an enemy is indeed cunning, baffling and powerful. If anyone might feel smug or superior, he or she should be grateful that they have not gotten that bad - yet.

If there is a Higher Power, then by implication there is a lower power. And the lower power can never win, unless we give up. Despite many slips, Ebby never gave in to the lower power and always came back. He ran the race; he kept the faith and died sober. Ebby deserves to be honored for carrying the message of spiritual recovery to Bill and for acting as his sponsor. Whatever his problems may have been with sobriety, Bill was always grateful to Ebby and so should all AA's.

Bill said, in "The Language of the Heart", "Ebby had been enabled to bring me the gift of grace because he could reach me at depth through the language of the heart. He had pushed ajar that great gate through which all in AA have since passed to find their freedom under God."

Much of the above material is synthesized from Ebby's biography by Mel B., Ebby-The Man Who Sponsored Bill W., published by Hazelden. Other material was taken from sections of Conference approved books listed in the reference section below. Comments and inferences in the article are the opinion of the author.

References:
Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Box 459 Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163.

Polly.X

StPeteDean · MIP Old Timer

TipsyMcstagger wrote:
When I read about Ebby, Bill, Dr. Silkworth, etc. I feel this connection and affection for them like I do for a close uncle. Is that weird? Probably...oh well :)

No not at all. We're all family in here. I cried when the volunteer, who opened the door to Dr. Bob's house, said "Welcome home".