The Wright Connection

Interactive Transcript

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0:00

Moderator Welcome to the Tuesday Night Recovery Speakers History Workshop. Thank you all for joining us tonight. And tonight, we have a great presentation led by Chris J. on The Right Connection. The Right Connections for Alcoholics Anonymous.

0:14

Moderator And we meet here every Tuesday night at the same time using the same Zoom ID. This meeting is being recorded. All past audio presentations are available at recoveryspeakers.com. I did share a link in the chat to where you can find all of those recordings. And Recovery Speakers, this Tuesday night meeting is not affiliated with any 12-step organization, though our focus is on the history of AA and other 12-step fellowships.

0:42

Chris RecoverySpeakers.com is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to preserving and sharing the audio history of AA and the 12-step movement for today and for future generations. We send a daily email featuring a speaker talk from our archive. Recordings of these meetings and flyers for upcoming presentations are also sent in the daily emails. If you'd like to subscribe, you can use the link in the chat or send me an email at info at recoveryspeakers.com, and I will get you added to our email list. And if you are able to support our work, contributions are appreciated, and the donation link is in the chat.

1:23

Chris And yes, all of your donations are appreciated. And tonight, we will have Q&A at the end of the presentation, so if you have any questions for Chris throughout his talk tonight, please write them down and be ready to ask your questions at the end of the meeting. And I am going to close the chat during the presentation. I will open that back up at the end. And that is it for me.

1:53

Chris I'm going to go ahead and turn it right over to Chris and ask him to unmute. Are you there, Chris? Yeah, did I get it done? Yep. Take it away.

2:05

Moderator Thank you. Good evening. My name is Chris, and I am an alcoholic. Grateful for the opportunity to share with you tonight. to Tim and Mike and the wonderful resource that Recovery Speakers History Meetings have been for a lot of us as we, many of us members, have benefited from the opportunity to become better informed by virtue of this opportunity.

2:29

Chris So I encourage you to take seriously their suggestion that you might pitch in a little bit to help keep the budget working, because I know it's expensive to do what they do. Tonight, we're going to share a little bit of history. I'm no Pulitzer winner, I was talking about once earlier, but I am not. And so I'm trying to weave together a bit of a tale that I find inspiring. I find a certain amount of serendipity in the contributions of this family to our fellowship.

3:04

Chris And so I call this the Wright Connection, because that was the maiden name of three sisters that will be spoken of here, and their brother Morris. And briefly, they were born over in Milford, Indiana, but their father passed away in 1911. The girls were all in the eight, nine, ten range, and shortly thereafter, their mother moved them over to Eastern Ohio, near the community of Steubenville and Mount Pleasant. But so anyway, just a little bit of background on that family. So these were the Wright Connections for AA, and some really kind of influential early members.

3:42

Chris They were the Wright Connections for Clarence Snyder. We know Clarence from his second edition story, The Home Brewmeister, and another man that he helped get 12-step, Albert, or as he was known, Abbey Golrick. He wrote the second edition story. These were both actually the second and third edition. He thought he could drink like a gentleman.

4:04

Chris These guys were both in the Cleveland area, and they were greatly benefited by the Wright Connection. We learn a lot about Clarence from his big book story, and we learn a little bit about his family and his big book story, The Home Brewmeister, and also from a really important book written by Mitchell Kay, How It Worked. The little red and yellow edition down at the bottom was the first edition, expanded later on. I don't have the publication here, but it's vastly more information in Mitchell's second edition of this book, and I encourage you to read this. As it says here, the story of Clarence H.

4:47

Chris Snyder in the early days of alcoholic phenomenas in Cleveland, Ohio. And Mitchell was indeed sponsored by Clarence. So he had great opportunities to learn from Clarence and to learn about Clarence's sobriety journey. And of course, that involves his family because, well, we'll get into that. It was also the Wright Connection for these ladies here, the really important early members, Marty Mann, whose story, Women Suffer Too, and Sylvia Kaufman, whose story, The Keys to the Kingdom, were all in the Pioneer section, or those are both in the Pioneer section, and in the second, third, and fourth.

5:26

Moderator And I'm happy to say they're slated to be in the fifth edition of the book, Alcoholics and Phenomenas. So Clarence Snyder, he was caught in the middle of a very active, loving, close set of siblings. He was married to Dorothy Elizabeth Wright, and Dorothy and Clarence would have some very trying times as a consequence of Clarence's alcoholism. And there were lots of what, in Mitchell quoting Clarence, referred to as powwows when they would decide what to do with Clarence, because he had gotten to the point where he was unemployable and even his wife worked for Bauer Employment Agency. She was in the business of helping people get jobs, and she couldn't get her husband a job, because he'd kind of been blackballed in the industry.

6:18

Moderator He was working in kind of the finance industry at that time in Cleveland. He was kind of blackballed because of his drinking. These other siblings had some kind of notoriety of their own. Carolyn, the oldest of the four, was Hank Parker's second wife. Morris was best known as Clarence's brother-in-law, and there's a wonderful story about Clarence's brother-in-law here that you're going to hear this evening.

6:46

Chris But Morris, English right, he was a man's man. And then Dorothy, of course, Clarence's wife. And then Virginia, the youngest, happened to live in Yonkers, New York, and she would be the conduit by which Dorothy would hear about Alcoholics Anonymous. So Clarence marries Dorothy on April 1st, 1926. There's a little bit of humor in the idea that they married on April Fool's Day.

7:12

Moderator I'm sure there were times after that when she thought it was a foolish thing to have married this guy. But anyway, previously, just about four years earlier, Virginia, her younger sister, had married Myron McLeod. And so both of these women were married in Cuyahoga County in the Cleveland area. And then while Myron had worked in the publishing industry up in the New York area, Yonkers is about 45 minutes north of Bill Wilson's Clinton Street home. And so Myron and Virginia settled up there, and Myron was working in the publishing industry.

7:49

Chris Shortly after their marriage, Myron took her to a party, and there were some of his military buddies. It was World War I, and they got to doing some drinking, and his drinking quickly turned into alcoholism from her perspective. But there was a really, when I talk about serendipity, you know, is it odd or is it God, you know, or what Mike likes to talk about, that golden thread. His golden thread was the fact that Virginia's best friend was none other than Bill Wilson's sister Dorothy Strong, wife of Dr. Leonard Strong.

8:26

Chris And pardon me, my phone is making noise, I'm going to try to make it stop. At any rate, over the years, Virginia, and this predates Bill's sobriety, their friendship, over the years, Virginia would hear tales about Bill's drinking and the trouble it was causing. And then later on, she would hear different tales. In July of 1938, the Strongs were due to take a trip, they were going over to England, and they were taking an ocean liner, the SS American Farmer, and there was a bon voyage party. And because Virginia McLeod was Dorothy's good friend, she was kind enough to drive them to the docks in New York City.

9:10

Moderator And this is where she met Bill Wilson for the first time. They were going on a month-long vacation to England, Lois and Bill were there. And Bill just, coincidentally, if you know anything about the summer of 1938, Bill just happened to have a couple chapters of the book Alcoholics and I, The Misunderer's Arm. If you've read Bill Shaberg's book, you know that this was the time when they had started writing and they were also in the midst of trying to do some fundraising, you know. And so Bill just happened to have a couple chapters of this printed manuscript.

9:50

Moderator And so this is a letter from Virginia to Bill. This is a letter she wrote to him in 1960. This is on the Stepping Stones website, if you care to read it personally, it is a wonderful letter of reminiscence and I will be sharing extensively from this letter tonight. But Virginia says in 1960, looking back to that time in 1938, I think about the first time I met you. You had the printed manuscript of some of the chapters of the book and started telling me about it.

10:24

Chris Then feeling flowed over me, all around me, and I can't explain what an odd sort of power it was. As I read a few of the words of the manuscript, I felt I already knew them by heart. I got goose flesh and that strange power has been a factor in my life ever since. So Virginia started attending the meetings on Clinton Street. Most people don't know this.

10:51

Chris You hear about the men who were attending the meetings, Fitzmayo, Hank Parkhurst and others, but there was a lady in the midst because she was looking for a solution for her husband. He was an alcoholic and she was suffering. And when I read you this quote, you'll have a picture of how she was suffering. Those meetings at your house on Clinton Street, I loved them with such a fierce, marvelous determination that I actually braved the physical hazards of Myron's grim disapproval of my interest in that bunch of drunks. Here again, that's from her 1960 letter.

11:30

Moderator So essentially, what she's sharing with me, if I read between the lines, is that she was a victim of spousal abuse for attending these Clinton Street meetings. But it was so important to her that she took the risk. So meanwhile, back in Cleveland, Dorothy had confided in her minister, Dilworth Lupton, about Clarence's drinking. Dilworth Lupton was the minister at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Cleveland. And this is the church where Dorothy was a member.

12:01

Chris So she begins, Dr. Lupton, he says to her, he says, Dorothy, I've been able to help a lot of people, but this is one problem, alcoholism, that I have not been able to help people with. The best I can suggest is that you pray for him. And of course, I'm sure that Dorothy was continuing to pray for her husband, but we know that a lot of this had to be prayed into the fellowship, and it was not an overnight matter. Here there's a gentleman in Cleveland who happens to be also an archivist for the Unitarian Church who was kind enough to share Dorothy's membership card.

12:44

Chris And you can see from all the addresses on this membership card that they moved around a lot. So, Clarence's drinking had gotten to the point, as I said previously, where he had become unemployable. In the fall of 36, there was this family powwow, and Clarence had this last chance to take a job driving with Morris. Morris did not drive for Werner Truck. This is just a truck from that period to kind of give you an idea of what it was he would have been driving.

13:18

Moderator Something similar. But anyway, Clarence tucked away a few coins, wrapped them up tight in a handkerchief, because he had the shakes bad when he wasn't drinking. And he was hoping that he could find a way to get to a drink sometime on this trip. And so, they get in this truck. He's terrified about driving this thing.

13:42

Chris You know, that's back in the days of manual transmissions, of course. And as I said, Morris English Wright was a man's man. Morris probably learned to drive military trucks because he was a veteran of World War I. But Clarence gets drunk in Albany, New York, and he had gotten to New York. Morris was under strict instructions, don't let him out of your sight.

14:08

Chris But Morris was tired. This was prior to the development of interstate highways. And so, they had been going over state roads, street routes across northern Pennsylvania and up to Albany. And essentially, Clarence sneaks out. He takes his coins to a bar.

14:24

Chris He gets drunk. A fellow who was interested in him for other reasons, according to Clarence's story, was plying him with drinks. And Clarence climbed out the window of the bathroom at the bar in order to get away from this guy. And he's going back to this truck and getting in the truck. He's trying to be slick about it.

14:49

Chris But Morris is sleeping on the seats, and Clarence had to get up to the sleeper, and he steps on his brother-in-law's face. And so, Morris was not a happy camper. And the next day, he dropped him off at the docks in New York City, where he was taking his load for delivery. And he basically told Clarence, never come back to Cleveland again. Now, I'm going to take a segue for just a second, because I believe people like Morris Wright need to be remembered.

15:23

Chris Morris English Wright, as I said, was a World War I veteran. He served in the Army from June of 1917 to April of 1919. He was in some of the most gruesome fighting in World War I. He was subjected to mustard gas. He was wounded in action, cited for bravery, honorably discharged as a sergeant.

15:44

Chris And it's due to men like him that those of us who enjoy the freedoms of democracy are able to have the quality of life that we enjoy. So I have to salute men like Morris Wright. So he had started this small trucking business, and he'd taken Clarence on this last-ditch ride to New York and left him there. And there's more details on this in Mitchell's book on pages 26 through 30. So Clarence is on the bum in New York, and he shows up after a while.

16:19

Moderator This is mostly through 1937. After being on the bum in New York for quite some time, doing anything he could to get a drink or to get some food, living pretty grubby, he would do things like go into an auto mat where some working stiff was eating his lunch, and his hands were all grubby and grimy from being basically a homeless guy living on the streets, and he would put a hand on the person's sandwich. And he said, sometimes I would get punched, but usually they they would just get up and walk away. And so this is how he was feeding himself. But so he shows up at Virginia McLeod's home and he thinks she owes her one because of some incident that happened previously where Virginia stayed with him for a while, I guess when her and Myron were not doing well.

17:16

Chris And so he rolls in, she's not at home, she finds him in the house playing around on the living room floor with her daughters and she gets more than a little bit upset. And she grabs him and yanks him out of there and throws him in the back of her car and takes him back down to New York again. And again, don't ever show up again. But then Virginia tells Dorothy about Dr. Bob.

17:46

Chris She says, if that bum ever comes back to Cleveland, you make sure he goes to see Dr. Bob Smith in Akron. And so Clara Snyder's sobriety is largely traceable to the fact that Virginia McLeod was best friends with Bill Wilson's sister Dorothy, that Virginia was inspired by the example of Bill's sobriety and she knew enough about early AA, about Bill's trip to Akron and his connection with Dr. Bob, that she took the action of contacting her sister and telling her sister, if that bum ever shows up again, you send him to Dr. Bob Smith.

18:26

Moderator And so that's what happens. It was a little circuitous. There were a couple of times, he went to Dr. Bob's office once and got freaked out and took off. And then later on, he was admitted to Akron City Hospital and he gets out and they go to attend an Oxford group meeting at the Williams home.

18:48

Moderator Dorothy did not want to go to this meeting. I encourage you to look at page 160 of your big book sometime. Because this meeting, these types of meetings are described on that page. And this is what happened in the home of T. Henry and Clarice Williams.

19:06

Chris Many a distracted wife has visited the home to find loving and understanding companionship among women who knew her problem. And certainly that's what Dorothy found. She thought to herself, if I could only have friends like this. And then many a man yet dazed has stepped over the threshold of that home into freedom. And that home is on Palisades in Akron, Ohio.

19:31

Chris It's a tutor home, as you can see there. There's a lot of tutor homes in Akron. And this is the early experience that they had. This was in February of 1938. And so Clarence would catch fire.

19:46

Moderator Clarence was sponsored by Dr. Bob. And he would do a tremendous amount of work to facilitate the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous. By 1940, the membership of AA in Cleveland, Ohio was 450. At the same time, the membership in Akron was 200 and the membership in New York City was 150.

20:05

Moderator So Cleveland, in about two years time, had eclipsed New York by a factor of three in AA membership, largely due to the tireless promotion efforts of Clarence Snyder. And he got some breaks, he got some breaks. He would also, among his early contributions, Clarence would write the first pamphlet ever on sponsorship. And when Bobby Berger would get requests for information about sponsorship, she would direct them to the Cleveland Central Committee to get this pamphlet. Meanwhile, as I said, the book was being written.

20:38

Chris Bill had given Virginia those couple chapters and throughout 38 more chapters would be written. And by February of 39, they're ready to produce this multi-lith edition. And they were, the pamphlet was being written in the form of a pamphlet. And they were, this is a page from the book that started it all, just showing what they were doing. They were essentially distributing these multi-lith editions in order to get doctors, psychiatrists, and ministers, and other people who came in contact with alcoholics to take a look at this and see if the message was sound from their perspective.

21:16

Chris And indeed it was found to be. They did get some suggestions, some very important suggestions. And so they ended up taking this rather raggedy looking transcript to Cornwall Press in March of 1939. Dorothy Snyder there on the left was one of the people who was up there with Hank Parkhurst, Bill Wilson, and Ruth Hock for the purpose of getting the final edits done, the proofreading and so forth. And Dorothy shared in her 1954 oral history, she shared some wonderful perspective on this.

21:48

Chris She says, I can still see you speaking to Bill. Bill was doing the oral history interview. She said, we were reading parts, different phrases to you and you would weigh those phrases. Did this really say what you meant? Would it really help somebody?

22:05

Chris Would it offend this group, that group, or the other groups? And after one of those discussions, Hank was sort of pounding on you that a certain phrase was perhaps too strongly put. I can still hear you say, well, I don't want the thing to be so insipid that they don't get the idea of what they have to do to get sober. So that's just an amazing perspective from Dorothy. And she was, here again, a non-alcoholic.

22:37

Moderator She loved an alcoholic and she was trying to be supportive of this early fellowship. Dorothy would do a lot to try to promote the book Alcoholics Anonymous. She was going around in bookstores in Cleveland with that multilith edition, trying to get orders for the big book because they didn't have any money. They had run out of money in publication efforts and most of us are familiar with the fact that the big book largely sat in the warehouse at Cornwall because the group didn't have the money to get all the copies out at one time. And so they had, and they were being trickled out a little bit.

23:20

Chris So, but we get to publication day, April 10th, 1939. And so all the authors were given a free copy. And then the book's publication date is generally thought of as April 10th, but April 11th, Tuesday, was the next scheduled meeting at Clinton Street. And who but Virginia McLeod was the first person to purchase a book for 350. She was the first human being ever to buy the book Alcoholics Anonymous, a non-alcoholic.

23:48

Moderator And this book is occasionally on display there. They sometimes have to put it away because they are concerned about deterioration, but it's occasionally on display at the general service office archives in New York. And, you know, I think a wonderful thing that it was, is directed to that location where so many members can enjoy it. Virginia over the course of the years would get many, many members signatures in that big book. And so it is chock full of the signatures of early members.

24:22

Moderator Virginia happened to be, as I said, at that April 11th meeting, that's where she bought that book. But there was another lady that was really gonna make quite a mark in the fellowship and in the education on alcoholism, Mrs. Marty Mann. And Marty Mann attended that first meeting. You may wonder, you know, like the group didn't have any women members at that time.

24:48

Moderator Florence Rankin was, I don't know whether she was in New York at that time, but, you know, Florence Rankin was certainly, didn't have stable sobriety and didn't have a lot of resources. So who do you think it was that Bill Wilson sent up to Blythewood to pick up Marty? It was indeed Virginia McLeod. Virginia McLeod was helping Bill with 12th step work in the early New York group before there were any women members available to do so. And here from that 1960 letter again.

25:22

Chris And then I went up to get Marty Mann to bring her home for a few days with us. Do you remember this Bill? What an experience. I had never been to a San. I will never forget my first sight of Marty pacing the floor in such a state of utter, utterness, a state which I cannot express, but which scared me so badly I could hardly move or talk.

25:50

Chris She was not dressed. And I said, are you ready to come with me? She said that would, what should I wear? Anyway, I finally got some clothes on her and got her home. The impact of that experience will never leave me ever.

26:06

Chris However, the next day I got her up to Ray C. at Carmel and he took over. So Marty goes to Blyth, from Blythewood to Virginia's home in Yonker to stay with them. And then ends up that she goes down to work with Ray Campbell. So these next couple of slides are courtesy of Marty Mann, courtesy of Miley T, the eminent historian on Marty Mann.

26:32

Chris And this is a picture of Marty and her two sisters at Blythewood. And here we have some tribute to Marty and her work with the National Council or National Committee, I guess it was, for education on alcoholism. And Marty, there are lots of great books out there about Marty. But Virginia worked with another woman. Then you asked me if I would be willing to drive down to East 29th Street and pick up one very sad sack alcoholic gal named Sybil D.

27:05

Chris Wow, what an experience that was. Bill, I really poured my whole heart, strength and soul into Sybil. God gave me a strength and wisdom I never had before. I love Sybil and she seemed to love me in her way. It sounds like Sybil didn't maintain sobriety.

27:23

Chris Here again, this is from that 1960 letter, which I'm encouraging you to read again and again. Another member that was greatly influenced by the Wright Connection was Abby Goldrick. He talks about how the story of his introduction to AA starts with the activity as his wife. She had a hairdresser who used to tell her about a brother-in-law, who would happen to be Clarence Snyder. And he had been quite a drinker and some Dr.

27:53

Moderator Nacker and it helped straighten him up. And Clarence and his sister-in-law, the hairdresser called at the house, called at the Goldrick house. And I was introduced to them and Clarence proceeded to put on his 12 step work. Now, this hairdresser was none other than Morris English Wright's wife, Edna Pearl Wright. And so this is a excerpt from the census that shows that she was working as a hairdresser at this time that he was working in the rubber industry.

28:24

Chris So later on, Clarence and Bill would come back and then they extracted a promise from Abby to go down to Akron City Hospital. And the next day, Dorothy borrows Morris's automobile while he's at work. And she and Bill Wilson take Abby Goldrick down to Akron City Hospital to work with Dr. Bob. Now, as I said, Clarence was a tireless 12-stepper and there was a lot going on in Cleveland in 1939.

28:53

Chris The book had come out. Clarence claims that he started the first ever meeting called Alcoholics Anonymous because they took the name of the book. And these are five articles, the L. Rick Davis articles from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that were published over, it was about an eight day stretch. They weren't consecutive days, but it was roughly October 20th through October 27th of 1939.

29:18

Chris And these articles would do a tremendous amount to gain publicity for Alcoholics Anonymous, to create book orders. This was, I think the next month, the Morris Markey article would come out. And so AA's beginning to get some real publicity, but it starts here in Cleveland with this great media attention. And then about a month later, Dilworth Lupton had been approached again by Dorothy Snyder. And she knew that this fellowship needed publicity.

29:47

Chris And this was a very influential minister in town. She also had approached Lupton earlier and was put off by him because of the association with the Oxford groups. While he was still going to the Oxford group meetings at the home of the Williams, Dr. Lupton didn't want to have anything to do with it because he felt like nothing good could come out of the Oxford group. The Oxford group had some theological perspectives that weren't always acceptable, certainly not to Catholics.

30:20

Chris Frank Buchman was known to be very critical of Catholics, but to a universalist Unitarian such as Dilworth Lupton, I'm sure also that their theology was a little narrow from his perspective. In this article, there's this wonderful quote, and I don't think I'm gonna be able to get it, but essentially he makes the statement that you can no more wrap religion up with dogmas than you can push all of the world's sunshine through one window. And essentially this Mr. X and Alcoholics Anonymous article would have a tremendous impact again, and Mr. X was none other than Clarence Snyder.

31:01

Chris So this family, as Dorothy would say, because of the blessed fact of Clarence's sobriety, the whole family went overboard for AA, and of course that's the right family, her and her siblings. Like I said, there was explosive growth in Cleveland, 450 members by 1940, and Clarence started that first Big Book meeting ever. They used the book Alcoholics Anonymous, first Big Book meeting, if you wanna know who started it, Clarence Snyder started it. And then he pioneered one-on-one sponsorship as well. And then Abby Golrick was a patent attorney by training and a good organizer.

31:38

Moderator And Abby Golrick would start the Cleveland Central Committee, which was, I believe, AA's second inner group. I think Chicago got started just a little bit earlier. Another early member was touched, I mentioned Sylvia Coughlin earlier. Dorothy, in her 1954 oral history, points out that after Clarence got sober, and this is also in Dr. Bob and the Good Old-Timers, after Clarence got sober, my sister Carolyn, who is a nurse, went up to Chicago with a multi-list clip copy of the book and took it to a doctor she knew.

32:13

Chris And he was so impressed, he said, I have just the person, a woman patient of mine. And Dr. Seth E. Brown of Evanston, Illinois, which is where Sylvia was really from, was Evanston, adjacent to Chicago, was Sylvia Coughlin's doctor, and he's the one that presented her the multi-list Alcoholics Anonymous. And so here again, we have a member of this family doing pretty important 12-step work.

32:40

Chris If you ever get a chance to go to the Seibling Estate, to the gatehouse where Bill and Bob met, this plaque is on the wall, and this plaque reflects the letter that was written from Henrietta Seibling to her sister in August of 1939, and it refers to Sylvia Cumming. It says, it has been quiet here, but I have been busy trying to help some of our poor alcoholics, quote-unquote, get adjusted to a new way of life. I can seem to help the younger ones. There are such periods of depression, and we have them coming from Chicago, Detroit, Ravenna, and all over. A woman is arriving from Chicago today.

33:23

Chris The doctors in the hospitals there are relieved to find something that helps. So the doctor was Seth E. Brown, and the woman coming in from Chicago was none other than Sylvia Coughlin. And Sylvia's story is the keys to the kingdom. She refers to the fact that the book came out in 1939, and that her doctor gave it to her.

33:47

Chris In the 40s, this family continued to have some impact and involvement. Around April 1st, April 10th, around April 10th, 1940, Hank Parkhurst had gone to Cleveland. He's visiting probably. probably Carolyn. He had met Carolyn by then, and also he's staying in a boarding house and the census then shows that both Hank and his son Henry and also Clarence Snyder all staying in the same boarding house because unfortunately the Snyder marriage would not stand.

34:16

Chris They ended up divorcing. But it's likely that this is where Hank started claiming that Bill was getting rich on the big book and later events show that Clarence also thought Bill was getting rich on AA and there was a lot of antagonism between Clarence Snyder and Bill Wilson. But there's also, I saw at the History Roundup, there's some evidence that there were efforts to make amends because there's a letter there that has Bill Wilson writing to Clarence Snyder basically responding to an amends letter from Clarence and Bill in his very magnanimous way said, it is not you that don't amend but I. And so this is evidence that they were trying to apply the principles and we all do that imperfectly, right? And like I say, there was this developing relationship with Carolyn Wright.

35:12

Moderator And Carolyn's, you know, there's just a little timeline. She would marry Hank in 41 and that would happen in New Jersey and then they would move later on up to West Haven, Connecticut. Looks like I lost an N there in West Haven. And then she would work up there for some while before as a nurse in the West Haven area. And then later on, she would divorce Hank.

35:39

Moderator In 1948, there's a letter where Hank tells Clarence that she was going to be seeking a divorce. She was actually traveling to Nevada because the residency requirements were less there before she could file a petition for the divorce. And then she would live and move out to La Jolla, California, which is where Myron McLeod had been stationed in the military and where he and Virginia had their home part of the time. They actually maintained their home in Yonkers and also a home in La Jolla and they would travel back and forth. And, but Carolyn was out there from 1948 until she passed away in 1974, as was Dorothy.

36:21

Moderator Here's a little bit about that marriage. And their home in West Haven. Hank was in the porcelain business, but he continued to drink. He employed Clarence Snyder in this porcelain business and that business relationship was really rocky, probably a consequence of Hank's drinking. And their correspondence shows that sometimes Clarence had to take his pay in stock because Hank wasn't always liquid enough in his business to pay cash when due.

36:50

Moderator And there's a letter from Dorothy to Clarence that reflects that this was a pretty rocky marriage. And like I say, in December of 48, she goes after a divorce. And of course, you know, Hank's drinking off again on again. You can see from this picture of Hank at this time, he doesn't look like the prosperous aspiring businessman that he looks like in the very popular picture in the three-piece suit. He can see the puffy face and so forth.

37:23

Chris He doesn't look as healthy. And that's thanks to Mitchell, I have that picture. Anyway, Dorothy writes about Hank and some mid-40s correspondence she had with Clarence. And she states that she was sick about Clarence going into business with him in the first place. And she said, Carolyn left for Connecticut yesterday.

37:44

Chris This is April 1947. Enough said, because I always get high blood pressure when I think of Hank, especially after what happened to you both. So, she's seeing the impact of both the relationship with Hank Parkhurst and his continued drinking on both her sister and Clarence, who I think she still maintained a very cordial relationship with. But there's more to the story. Here's where the serendipity comes, you know, and that golden thread that Howard used to talk about.

38:16

Moderator Because over the course of the next 20 years, Virginia McLeod, Myron McLeod and Dorothy would all become acknowledged alcoholics and join Alcoholics Anonymous. So, these people who had done so much to lay the groundwork were actually beneficiaries of the life-changing fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think there's a beautiful serendipity in that, that they found their way out and yet they had been like pioneering non-alcoholic participants at the time. So, by the grace of God, the right connection was not just the right connection for Alcoholics Anonymous, not just for all these members, these four people that I've spoken about tonight, that are all published authors in our big book, but for this family and the right connection for all of us, because we're all inspired by their sobriety to take advantage of their experience, experience, strength and hope and apply it to our own lives. So, I'd like to thank so many friends that helped me with this.

39:19

Chris And again, this is a work in process. So, there's nothing's ever done when you're doing history research, you know, we're always researching. And I invite anybody who's got any information to share or perspective, I'd be happy to hear from you. I'll pass. Thank you so much, Chris.

39:40

Moderator Great job and so interesting seeing the connection with all of the people in the early days. So, thank you for that. And now we do have some time for questions. If anyone has a question for Chris, please use the raise hand function and I will call on you as you raise your hands to unmute. Any questions?

40:03

Chris All right, we got one from Lynn, you can go ahead and unmute. Oh, well, thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed that. I've heard so much about Clarence over the years. But so wonderful hearing about some of the history.

40:19

Chris You had mentioned that it, wherever you're reading from, or about, I guess, Clarence, I think, his story, you said, this comes from page 168 in the big book. 160, 160 is what I was referencing. Okay, okay. And page 160 is the description of events in the home of T. Henry and Clarence Williams in Akron, Ohio.

40:40

Moderator And that's the early Oxford group meetings that the earliest AA members were attending before it was called Alcoholics Anonymous. The fellowship didn't take that name until about the time the book was published. Okay, well, thank you very, very much. My pleasure. Thank you, Lynn, for the question.

41:00

Chris Any other questions tonight? Jen, you can go ahead and unmute. Right. Chris, wonderful presentation. It was great to hear the story.

41:08

Moderator I had a question about, I think, was it Dorothy's book that, or was it Virginia that had the first copy of the big book? It was Virginia. Virginia. Do you, and you said something that there was names in it, or was that names in it, or was that from a different text? So that is on display at GSOs at times?

41:33

Chris Yes, and I'm betting that they probably don't have the pages with all the names in it. I think, and actually, first of all, Jen is my friend, and she's a member of the Area 53 Archives Committee along with me, and she's done a tremendous contribution of work to that committee. But I believe we have some mimeograph copies of some of those pages of all those signatures in our archive, so we can find them. Do you know how GSO got that? I don't know for sure.

42:08

Moderator I could probably get pretty close. I know that there was a past delegate, Paul C., who was a really important source of information for me, and he had actually, he knew Virginia McLeod when she was living in La Jolla, which is, for those of you who don't know, La Jolla is San Diego County, so just below the city of San Diego. And there was an Alano club there that actually, they would attend meetings together fairly regularly, so he knew her. And Paul, I think, had something to do with her being interviewed for an oral history, and I believe that was done, I used to think it was done in the 80s, but I'm pretty sure now that it was done in the 70s, because she makes a statement that she was 18 years sober at that time. She would actually die with 34 years of sobriety, 30, 36 years of sobriety.

43:07

Chris She died in 1994. So, but yeah, Virginia is one of those great, like, unsung heroes in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous. She has some marvelous stories to tell. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Jen.

43:21

Chris Any other questions tonight? Well, then I will allow everyone. I see a fella's hand up there, and it looks like Ron. Ron, you can unmute now. We can hear you.

43:34

Chris Okay, I have some more recent history that I need to pass on to somebody that's like Chris's, or anybody that's recording this stuff. Thank you. Ron, if you'd like to, I can put my contact information in if you want to share. I would appreciate it. One of the funny things was I listened to an album on tape, and it was actually Bob's son, and he married an alcoholic.

44:03

Chris Yes. And he left when he was 17, and he didn't return to the home. His dad got sober when he was 17. He left when he was 18 and didn't come back until it became a museum. And he says, God's got a sense of humor because there's 12 steps from the sidewalk up to the front door.

44:25

Chris Yes, Dr. Bob's home is on the National Register of Historic Places, and I strongly encourage members to go to Dr. Bob's home. I am an ambassador for Dr. Bob's home among my other involvements, and there's great history there.

44:42

Moderator There's great history there. All right. Well, thank you so much, Chris. I am going to now allow everyone to unmute, and you're welcome to thank Chris and stick around for some fellowship if you'd like. And thanks again, Chris.

44:58

Chris Thank you, Chris.

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

The Wright Connection

The Wright Connection

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