Dr. Bob
William (Bill) Griffith Wilson was born in a small room behind a bar in East Dorsett, VT., to Gilman and Emily Wilson. 1901. Professor William James lectures at University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Lectures published as "The Varieties of Religious Experience" in 1902 Bill's father, Gilman, deserts the family. Bill's mother, Emily, moves to Boston and becomes an Osteopathic Physician. Bill and sister Dorothy live with maternal grandparents, Fayette and Ella Griffith. Bill's first "success" making a boomerang - "a fitting irony."
Bill goes to France, Bill visits Winchester Cathedral and is stirred by a "tremendous sense of presence." Reads epitaph on headstone of a Hampshire Grenadier.
Oct. 1929
Lois on motorcycle
Bill's "first love", Bertha Bamford, dies after surgery in New York.
Bill began a three year depression. 1914
World War I 1914
Bill enters Norwich University - a military college with strict discipline.
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| Clarence Snyder "Home Brewmeister" |
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Bill and Ebby
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Wilson was astounded to find that Thacher had been sober for several weeks the guidance evangelical Christian Oxford Group. Wilson took some interest in the group, but shortly after Thacher's visit, he was again admitted to Towns Hospital to recover from a bout of drinking. This was his fourth and last stay at Towns hospital under Doctor Silkworth's care and he showed signs of delirium tremens. It was while undergoing treatment with The Belladonna Cure that Wilson experienced his "Hot Flash" spiritual conversion and quit drinking. Earlier that evening, Thacher had visited and tried to persuade him to turn himself over to the care of a Christian deity who would liberate him from alcohol. According to Wilson, while lying in bed depressed and despairing, he cried out, "I'll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!" He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity. He never drank again for the remainder of his life.
Wilson described his experience to Dr. Silkworth, who told him, "Something has happened to you I don't understand. But you had better hang on to it"
US Enters WW1 1918
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Jim Burwell
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Stock Market Collapse
1929
Henrietta Buckler Seiberling (March 18, 1888 – December 5, 1979) was a member of a Christian Fellowship group named the Oxford group. She and others of the Oxford group founded Alcoholics Anonymous.
Back in Brooklyn and Wall Street. Living with Lois's family - unemployed. Disease progressing. 1930-34
Bill in "An Alcoholic Hell". 1931
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Bill and Lois
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Bill's business deal in New Jersey - drank Apple Jack and drunk three days. Contract cancelled.
1933-34.
Prohibition ended.
Summer 1934
Dr. Silkworth pronounces Bill a "Hopeless Drunk." Rowland Hazzard returns to America and becomes involved in Oxford Group.
1934
Emmett Fox publishes The Sermon On The Mount. Aug. 1934
Rowland Hazzard and Cebra persuade court to parole Ebby Thacher in their custody. Ebby sobers up at Oxford Group at Calvary Episcopal Mission, Sam Shoemaker.
Nov. 1934
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Bill has "Hot Flash" spiritual experience at Towns Hospital. Dr. Silkworth assured Bill he was not crazy; rather a "psychic experience upheaval" or "conversion." BILL NEVER DRANK AGAIN. The next day Ebby brought Bill a copy of William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience. Bill reads Varieties of Religious Experience", an explanation of need for Pain, Suffering, Calamity and "Deflation in Depth" and the "Simultaneous Transmission of Hope." The two "Halves" are joined into a "Whole."
Bill returns to Oxford Group and works with other alcoholics, also at Sam Shoemaker's Calvary Mission and at Towns Hospital, emphasizing his "Hot Flash" spiritual experience. He noted they "seemed to do better" talking of their common problems, but no success in sobering up others. Bill develops belief that alcoholics are resistant to the "Four Absolutes" of the Oxford Group. 
1935
Bill reached realization of: I need another alcoholic. "He starts making telephone calls. This is the final founding moment of A.A. Rev. Walter Tunks Referred to Norman Sheppard. Then referred to Henrietta Seiberling, an Oxford Group adherent. She arranged a meeting the next afternoon at the Seiberling Estate with Dr. Bob Smith.
Robert Holbrook (Bob) Smith: Born in St. Johnsbury, VT., Aug. 8, 1879. Dartmouth College, Pre-Med at University of Michigan. M.D. at Rush Medical College, Chicago, IL. Internat City Hospital, Akron, OH. Proctologist. His wife, Anne was a friend of Henrietta Seiberling. They brought Dr. Bob to Oxford Group meetings for 2-1/2 yrs. He continued to get drunk regularly.
May 12, 1935 5:00 P.M.
The Alcoholic Foundation established as a trusteeship for A.A.
May 1938
Beginning of the writing of the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
Dec. 1938
Twelve Steps written.
1939
Here are the steps we took that are suggested as the program of recovery:
Step 1~ We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2~ Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3~ Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 5~ Admitted to God, ourselves and another person the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 4 ~ Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step 5~ Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step Six~ Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step 7~ Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8~ Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9~ Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10~ Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11~ Sought thru prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry that out.
Step 12 ~ Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Membership reaches 100.
April 1939
The book Alcoholics Anonymous published.
Withdrawal from association with Oxford Group complete. Oxford Group renamed
"Moral Re-Armament."
1940
AA.'s Co-founders
Dr. Bob and Bill W.
A seemingly unplanned meeting in Akron, Ohio in 1935 between two men, both of whom were termed "hopeless" alcoholics, began a program of recovery that has helped millions find sobriety and serenity. Bill W. was one of those men. In fighting his own battle against drinking, he had already learned that helping other alcoholics was the key to maintaining his own sobriety, the principle that would later become step twelve in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. A stock broker from New York, Bill W. had traveled to Akron, Ohio on May 12, 1935 for a shareholders' meeting and proxy fight, which did not turn out his way. Fighting desperately to maintain his sobriety, his immediate reaction was, "I've got to find another alcoholic. A few inquiries lead him to a meeting with an Akron surgeon, forever to be remembered simply as "Dr. Bob," who had struggled for years with his own drinking problem. The effect the meeting had on Dr. Bob was immediate, as he tells it in his own words and soon he too put down the bottle (June 10, 1935), never to pick it up again. The bond formed between the two men would grow into a movement that would literally affect the lives of millions. Starting in an upstairs room at Dr. Bob's home at 855 Ardmore Avenue, in Akron, the two men began helping alcoholics one person at a time. In took four years to get the first 100 alcoholics sober in the first three groups that formed in Akron, New York, and Cleveland. But after the publication in 1939 of the group's "text book" Alcoholics Anonymous and the publication of a series of articles about the group in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the development of A.A. was rapid. Membership in the Cleveland group soon grew to 500.Response was so overwhelming, the group found itself sending out members, who had only a short time in the program themselves, to work with other new members. This was a key point in the development of A.A. For the first time, the founders learned that recovery was something that could be "mass produced" and was not limited to the ground that they themselves could recover. After a dinner in New York in 1940, given by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to publicize the group, membership soon grew to 2,000. An article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941 resulted in another growth period and membership in the United States and Canada rose to 6,000.By 1951, Alcoholics Anonymous had helped more than 100,000 people recover from alcoholism and by 1973 more than one million copies of The Big Book had been distributed. Since that time the fellowship has continued to grow and has become worldwide. A number for Alcoholics Anonymous can be found in the white pages of virtually every local telephone directory.
Bill meets Dr. Bob. Bob still drinkin. Bill tells Bob of his experiences with alcohol; of the hopes, promises, and failures; the obsession, compulsion, and physical allergy; of Ebby's visit and simple message, "show me your faith and by my works I will show you mine." Dr. Bob understood with sudden clarity - the difference with the Oxford Group. "The spiritual approach was as useless as any other if you soaked it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself." The purpose of life was not to "get" , it was to "give." Bill had presented Dr. Bob four aspects of one core idea:
(1) Utter Hopelessness (2) Totally Deflated
(3) Requiring Conversion (4) Needing Others
June 1935
Dr. Bob has last drink. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS FOUNDED
June 11, 1935
Dr. Bob suggests they both start working with other alcoholics. June 28, 1935
Wilson said of Thacher, “Ebby pushed ajar that great gate through which all in AA have since passed to find their freedom under God.” Thacher is revered for his role in helping millions of people around the world get sober since AA was founded in 1935. Thacher’s out-of-the-way gravesite in Section 56, Lot 24, midway up Middle Ridge Road, is one of the most visited sites in the cemetery. AA members make pilgrimages to Thacher’s grave and leave tokens of sobriety and other personal items, including notes and letters, to the man known as Ebby in AA circles, where the identities of members are kept private.
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