Audio
Transcript
Source: Dick W – Dick W-2008-Atlanta-BB Workshop – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: dick-w-dick-w-2008-atlanta-bb-workshop-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:13:46
============================================================
From Matthews, North Carolina. Applause Hey, everybody. Good afternoon. Isn't there anything going on this afternoon other than this? How come you're all here? Certainly something going on out there. I'm Dick W.. I'm a real alcoholic. I'm a member in good standing of the Indian Trail Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is in suburban Charlotte. My address is Matthews, and that's all you need to know about me now, I guess.
You'll probably find out some more things about me in the morning if you show up. They try to get their money's worth out of you here. I want to thank the committee for asking me to be here with you this weekend. They get their money's worth out of you by giving you a workshop to do in addition to being the tail end speaker on Sunday morning. They asked me if I'd do a little seminar with you on the history of AA and the history of the Big Book, and that's what I'm going to do this afternoon.
I'm going to do a little sharing with you about the way I understand some of the phenomenal events that led up to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not a guru. I'm not an archivist. I'm not an expert in this subject. I am interested in the subject. I will tell you this as we do this, that if you're interested in some of the people and the events and some of the trivia that seem to make this interesting, if you're interested in that, there's plenty of history out there.
There's plenty of information available out there for you to access, especially in this day of computers and all that. I get some of my stuff off of Barefoot's World. Barefoot has got a lot of good AA stuff in there, and it's authentic stuff. I'm not going to use much of Barefoot today, but in my kind of eagerness to look at the history of AA and just read some of the stuff that's important to me about the AA program and about the big book, I kept stumbling across some books and some people that I read about and that I used their stuff.
And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the spiritual roots of AA, the history from a spiritual nature of God's hand and putting together the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is available for you and me today, that wouldn't have been without God's hand in it right from the beginning. Some of the information or most of the information I get comes from an author by the name of Mel B. Mel was one of the editors and major contributors to Bill's biography, Pass It On.
Mel has written his own books, and I have found the data that he uses in his books to be accurate and certainly as a result of a lot of good research, and there's no junk in there. He wrote a book called New Wine, the inference about that. You heard this morning if you were here for Ken's presentation that we don't in AA, we aren't required in AA so much to learn new things as to unlearn old. And it says that in the members' eye view of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is my favorite pamphlet put out by the General Service Office, that that's what AA does.
It doesn't require so much for me to learn new things as to unlearn old things. And the concept of new wine comes from a biblical reference which says you can't put, or you shouldn't put new wine in old wineskins, because if you put new wine in old wineskins, the old wineskins will bust, break, and you'll lose your new wine. And the same theory that Barker uses in his book New Wine, where I got the spiritual roots information that I use in the spiritual roots history of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm not a guru, I'm not an expert, okay, just a guy who kind of gets intrigued about some of this stuff and continue to read and study a little bit as time goes on and as my ability to absorb gets less and less.
[00:05:08]
That'll happen to you someday. I'm going to start with a guy by the name of Frank Buchman. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to show you three paths, three alternate, unassociated paths involving people that don't know each other and events that have nothing to do with one another that come together one day as Dr. Bob and Bill get together in the gatehouse of the Seiberling Estate in Akron, Ohio on May 12, 1935.
And the first line of events or timeline that I'm going to use starts with a guy by the name of Buchman. Frank Buchman was born in 1978. His father ran a saloon. He accepted abstinence as a youngster. He became an ordained Lutheran minister. And his first job as an ordained minister was the director of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where'd Mary go, YMCA youth program for orphaned boys. And he took that job in 1905.
And in 1907, he had an argument with the board of directors over the food budget. And he got mad. He got angry. And he did what most of us alcoholics would do. He left. Gone. Mad. Filled with resentment. And had this baggage that he was carrying around with him. And he found that although he was an ordained minister, he couldn't minister anymore. His ability to minister stopped. And he wandered around with this baggage for a year.
And he was seeking a solution to the way he felt so that he could minister again. And he went to a convention of evangelists in England. He was going to hear a world-renowned evangelistic speaker. And instead, he stumbled into a little old church and he heard a little-known speaker. Her name was Jessie Penn Lewis, a lady. And there was only 17 people in that meeting in Kestwick, England, that he heard Jessie Penn Lewis.
And Jessie Penn Lewis came up with six little ideas that Buchman found out from her that he might apply to his situation that would help him be rid of these resentments that he had and this anger and this baggage he was carrying around and maybe he could minister again. So he picked up on these six ideas. And one of them was that he had to make restitution. He had to make amends. He went back to where he was staying and there were six members of the board of directors that had argued with him about the food budget.
And he wrote letters of apology to each one of them and mailed them. And he found out that he could again minister. And so he took these six ideas that had been so meaningful to him and he found somebody else that was suffering from resentment and bitterness and anger and he shared it with them and now two people got it and then these small groups built up. And so Buchman became the founder and the main promoter of what we know as the Oxford groups that sprung up from that encounter in Kestwick, England in 1908 when he heard Jesse Penn Lewis make that presentation.
And so he began to carry this message throughout the world and promote the Oxford groups throughout the world. In 1918, ten years later, while Buchman is promoting the Oxford group activity, he's in Peking, China to promote the Oxford group there. And another fellow was there. His name was Sam Shoemaker. Same line, same timeline now. Buchman, Shoemaker. Shoemaker's in Peking, China. He's teaching mathematics to Chinese people.
He's a recent graduate of Princeton University. And he, in addition to teaching mathematics in Peking, he also had started a Bible study group of Chinese men. And that kind of petered out on him. It started with 22 guys in there and Shoemaker was giving it his best shot and it dwindled off and there didn't seem to be any interest and it dwindled down to seven people. And Shoemaker was resentful and angry at what had happened.
[00:10:03]
And so he was searching around for a solution. And he heard that Buchman was in town, so he went to see him. And he had a private audience with him. And he told Buchman what was going on. And Buchman told him what was wrong. See, Shoemaker thought he was going to tell, Buchman was going to tell him what to do with all these unappreciative Chinese men who weren't coming to his Bible study, but Buchman told him it was inside of him.
And it made him mad. And he went back where he was staying. He was angry at Buchman, but during the middle of the night, he says he tumbled out of bed onto his knees and he asked God for forgiveness for this anger and resentment. And he found out that he could minister to these men again and this group picked up. And so Shoemaker overcame his resentment and anger because of what Buchman had told him, because he used the six principles that were the basic tenets of the Oxford groups at that time.
Now Shoemaker went on to become an ordained Episcopal clergyman. And he ended up as the rector at Calvary Church in New York City, which is a large Episcopal church. And while Shoemaker was there at Calvary as the rector, he started two other operations that were affiliated with the church. One was Calvary Mission, which he started in 1926, which was a 57-bed mission halfway house for homeless alcoholic men.
And he also started a place called Calvary House, which was the headquarters of the Oxford groups in New York City at the time and where the Oxford groups met. So you got Buchman, now you got Shoemaker. You got Shoemaker in New York City at Calvary Church, Calvary House, Calvary Mission, going on into the 1920s. In 1931, several things happened. In the line that we're talking about with Buchman and Shoemaker, Shoemaker's going to a church convention in Denver, Colorado, and he runs into a fellow by the name of Bud Firestone on the train.
And Bud Firestone is a real alcoholic, and he's the second oldest son of Harvey Firestone, who was the founder and patriarch of the Firestone Rubber Company. And Shoemaker and Bud Firestone get together there, and Shoemaker shares with Bud Firestone the six ideas which might help him overcome his alcoholism. And he says they knelt in the compartment of that train and had prayer, and Bud Firestone began to apply these six ideas of the Oxford groups that Shoemaker had passed on to him, and he came back to Akron.
Bud Firestone came back to Akron where he lived. At the same time in 1931, totally unrelated, not related to any other events, some other things began to happen in another line. Unrelated, not allied events or people. There was a guy by the name of Roland Hazard. Now we know, we read about Roland Hazard in the books. But Roland is the son of a wealthy New England industrialist family who's a real alcoholic.
And the family, the Hazard family, had tried to get Roland to all the best psychiatrists and get him all the help that they could get him in this country, but they ran out of options because he was still seriously alcoholic. And so they decided to look at world-renowned psychiatrists that they might put Roland under the care of. And they had three that they were selected from. One was Sigmund Freud, the other was Alfred Adler, and the third choice was Dr. Carl Jung.
Now they approached Freud and Freud was too old and he wasn't taking any more clients or any more patients, and so they got turned down with Freud and they went to Adler and Adler's schedule was full and he couldn't see him. Ended up with Dr. Carl Jung. And Roland went under the care of Dr. Carl Jung in Europe for a year. Saw him every Thursday for a year. One of the things you ought to know about these three world-renowned psychiatrists is that both Freud and Adler…
is that both Freud and Adler were atheists, and they did not believe in the existence of
[00:15:04]
a power greater than human power, or the existence of God. But Carl Jung, the only one out of the three, he believed in the existence of a God and a power greater than human power, which had the power to relieve people of a lot of difficulties. It's important to remember that. Now, Roland doesn't know Shoemaker or Buchman or any of these other people. He's over here on another line visiting Dr. Carl Jung. And Dr. Carl Jung tells Roland about the solution to his problem. Dr. Carl Jung tells Roland that he's got to have a spiritual experience which will rearrange his life. He says old ideas are displaced and replaced by new ones, what we talked about this morning. And he said, this is what's got to happen to you, Roland. So Roland knows about a solution of a power greater than human power. The people on the top line, Buchman, Shoemaker, they know about a little program of action, got six steps, six ideas. Roland knows about the solution. Here's it from Dr. Carl Jung.
Also in 1931, in a completely unrelated series of events involving unrelated people, some stuff's happening in New York City. A guy by the name of Charlie Towns in the late 1920s, he opens a hospital as a dry-out place for alcoholics called Towns Hospital. Now, Charlie Towns was the first person that we know that believed that it was better for industry and commerce to try to rehabilitate employees who were alcoholics and get them back on the job more financially appropriate for industry and commerce to do that. And it was to fire the people because of their alcoholism and have to retrain new ones. So Charlie Towns opened a hospital in Towns Hospital in New York City for the rehabilitation of alcoholics, a drying-out hospital. And he wanted somebody to head up the alcoholism part of that program.
And he stumbled across a doctor by the name of William D. Silkworth. Now, Silkworth was a neurologist, well-educated, had had a private practice, had invested some of his savings in the stock of a private hospital, and had lost everything in the 1929 stock market crash. And he was broke and he needed a job. So Silkworth went to work for Charlie Towns at Towns Hospital for $40 a week, heading up the alcoholic ward at Towns Hospital. So in 1931, you got three things occurring that are totally unrelated involving people that don't have a clue about each other. You got Brookman and Shoemaker up here going, and Shoemaker at Calvary. You got Rowland going to Dr. Carl Young here in the solution. And you got Silkworth going to Towns Hospital to treat alcoholics. Two years later, in 1933, Bud Firestone is in Akron. He's working with the Oxford groups in Akron, practicing the six ideas of the Oxford groups, which were surrender, examine your sins, sharing and confessing, restitution, continuance, and the idea that those who have been changed must change others. Six ideas. Bud Firestone is going to the Oxford groups in Akron, and he's attending Oxford group meetings, and he's applying these six ideas to his own recovery from alcoholism.
Now there are two other important people who are also attending the Oxford groups in Akron. They're up here. They're on the Brookman, Shoemaker, Bud Firestone line. One of them's name is Walter Tonks. Walter Tonks is an Episcopal clergyman who happened to be the rector at Harvey Firestone's church. And Walter Tonks was active in the Oxford groups, the only clergyman in Akron who was really active in the Oxford groups there. Another person who was attending the Oxford group meetings, although she wasn't an alcoholic, and of course neither was Tonks, was a gal by the name of Henrietta Seiberling. Henrietta Seiberling was the estranged wife of the son of the Seiberling family, who were the founders of the Goodyear rubber company. And
[00:20:07]
Henrietta was going through this divorce, and she had all of this baggage associated with the separation and divorce, and she's living in the gatehouse of the Seiberling estate. She's been kicked out of the main house, and she's going to the Oxford groups to learn about these six ideas that will help her deal with her difficulty. Now Henrietta is an important person here, and so is Walter Tonks. Henrietta knows about Dr. Bob. Henrietta knows that there's a physician out here in the community, and his name is Robert Holbrook Smith. And so she's going to invite Dr. Bob and his wife Anne to an Oxford group meeting. Now Dr. Bob doesn't know he's going to be invited, so she invites Anne. And she tells Anne, she makes no bones about it, she tells Anne when she's setting the thing up, she says, look, this is serious business. She told her, there's going to be no pussyfoot in the room. And we know this because later on, in later years in 1971, at the Founders Day in Akron, they asked Henrietta if she would speak at Founders Day in Akron, and she was sickly, old and feeble, and she didn't feel she could do it, but she dictated a tape of what she would have said if she was there. And her son, John Siberling, who was then a member of the U.S.
House of Representatives, had that typed, and you can find that, and it's got that language in there. She says, she tells how serious she was with Anne Smith when she set up this first meeting of Dr. Bob and Anne to come to the Oxford group, when she says, we mean business. There's going to be no pussyfoot in the room. This is serious business. And so Anne and Dr. Bob began to attend the Oxford groups in Akron, along with Tonks and Henrietta and Bud Firestone in Akron, Ohio. 1933, Roland comes back from his visit with Dr. Carl Jung. Remember, Roland knows what the solution is, spiritual experience. He doesn't have any clue on how to produce it. He just knows that he's got to have one if he's going to overcome his alcoholism. And so he goes to Calvary when he gets back here. He begins to go to Calvary House and attend Oxford group meetings and become active at Calvary Mission working with the men there, the alcoholic men at Calvary Mission. Roland doesn't know that this stuff going on in Akron. Roland doesn't know about Bill. Roland doesn't know about Silkworth. Roland doesn't know about Charlie Townes. Totally unrelated events with unrelated people. In 1933, the same year, Bill makes his first visit to Townes Hospital under the care of Dr. Silkworth. Dr. Silkworth had been there for three years. He'd been studying alcoholics, and although he wasn't a psychologist or a psychiatrist, he was a neurologist, he came up with a new idea about alcoholics. And he said that, and he tells us in the book, he decided that there were two things wrong with the alcoholic, with me. And one was that there was something different physically about me that I couldn't drink successfully. And the other thing was that there was something mentally about me that I couldn't quit successfully. And he determined that that was a fatal combination. And so this was a theory that Silkworth developed while he was studying alcoholics at Townes Hospital, and lo and behold, who shows up but Bill Wilson. A real alcoholic. We know, and we read about Bill Wilson in the book, that he was not a borderline case.
He was seriously alcoholic. So while Bill Wilson's there, we know about in the book that Dr. Silkworth told him what he had learned from studying alcoholics. That there was something that the primary thing for us to understand, or for Bill to understand, was that he had a physical allergy. That he had an abnormal reaction to alcohol. And because of that, he couldn't drink. And that he
[00:25:00]
would never be able to drink successfully. And he told Bill that. And he said, Bill, you can't quit successfully either, because I found out studying alcoholics, that you have this mental obsession. You don't know anything, it'll make you feel as good as that stuff will. And because of that, from time to time, you'll drink. Your mind's going to tell you a lie. It's going to tell you this time it's going to be different. Might as well be drunk and feel as bad as I do. And so Bill, who doesn't know anything about the solution, doesn't have any idea about a planned program of action, which is six ideas that he could apply. He learns about the problem. The problem is a physical allergy and a mental obsession. He learns it from Silkworth. So if you're still with me on these three timelines, you got Buchman and Shoemaker and Bud Firestone and Tunks and Henrietta and Dr. Bob up on the top line. In the middle line, you got Roland and Dr. Carl Young and Roland going to Calvary. And on the bottom line, you got Charlie Towns, Silkworth, and Silkworth's first discussion with Bill about alcoholism, about his problem. The top line knows the solution, six ideas. The middle line, Roland, I mean, they know the practical program of action, six ideas. The middle line, Roland, knows the solution, spiritual experience, found that out from Young. Bill knows the problem, physical allergy, mental obsession, can't drink, can't quit. Bill doesn't know what the solution is. Bill doesn't know about a planned program of action, which if he uses, he could apply it. The next year, in 1934, let's look at the top line. Dr. Bob becomes active in the Oxford groups in Akron, along with Firestone and with Tunks and with Henrietta and Dr. Bob's wife Anne, they're going to Oxford group meeting. Got a little program of action, six ideas. Hadn't got a clue about the solution. And got a clue about the problem. A guy by the name of Abby Thatcher is going to enter the picture now in the middle line. Abby is the son of the Thatcher family from Albany, New York. Thatcher Wheel, Iron and Wheel Works, they started a manufacturing company, made railroad wheels for railway cars for the New York Central Railroad. Became a prominent Albany, New York family. Abby's father had been the mayor of New York, he had two brothers, or Albany, had two brothers who were who were going to be mayor of Albany. But Abby wasn't falling in with the rest of the family. Abby was having some trouble. They called him Abby because his real name was Edwin Throckmorton Thatcher. So they called him Abby for short. I would have shortened my name too.
But Abby was the black sheep of the family and Abby kept getting in trouble. We know the story that Abby, they finally, the family said to Abby, why don't you, we got a job for you, Abby. We got this summer place up in the Berkshire Mountains, why don't you go up there and take care of that for us? You just be the, you just be the overseer of that property and get it painted up and keep it under repair and make it livable and keep it livable and that'll be your job. Abby thought that was good. And of course we know from the story that Abby couldn't stay out of trouble. Abby's alcoholic. And he was there and he painted the house and one day came out and the pigeons were crapping on his new paint job and he took a shotgun, he took his dad's old shotgun and he began to shoot pigeons off the house and this developed, you know, other houses are wrong. And the police came to visit him, told him, Mr. Thatcher, quit doing that. Don't be causing any disturbances around here. And they gave him the alcoholic answer, you needn't worry. I've learned my lesson.
A little while later, one morning, he's driving his father's old car around and he's drunk early in the morning. And he drove right into this house and ends up in the kitchen with his car. And he's drunk and he gets out the driver's door and there's a lady in the kitchen, she owns a house, and he doffs his hat and he says, morning.
[00:30:00]
a fine morning for a cup of coffee? And so she's a narrow-minded lady. She doesn't understand about this. So she calls the law on him and the law comes and they arrest Debbie and they take him before this judge, Judge Graves. And Judge Graves knows about the disease of alcoholism. Judge Graves has got a son who's an alcoholic. His name is Seabrook. And Seabrook happens to be buddies with Roland Hazard. Amazing like that. How about that? So they bring Abby before Judge Graves and Abby's going to do some hard time. Or, Judge Graves said, I'm going to turn you over to these guys because they seem to have had some success in not drinking. They seem to have found a solution. I'm going to turn you over to them and if you can stay out of trouble, you'll stay out of jail. So they take Abby and they assign him to Roland and Roland puts him in Calvary Mission in New York City to begin to recover. So in 1934, you've got Dr. Bob and the others in Akron. You've got Roland and Abby making this relationship. And remember that Roland is telling Abby about the solution because Roland found it out from Dr. Carl Jung. And we know that Bill makes his second and third visits to Towns Hospital in New York City where he learned about the problem from Dr. Silkworth. And so we know that also late in 1934, late November 1934, that Abby, who's staying at Calvary Mission, where he knows the solution because Roland told him what the solution is, a need for spiritual experience, where he's been practicing the six ideas of the Oxford Group. He knows that the Oxford Group's sixth tenant says those have been changed, must change others. And he said, I wonder who I could help. And he said, I wonder. He's an old friend of Bill's. Old friend of Bill's. Old school age friend of Bill's. And he knew about Bill. Bill and Abby were close friends and they knew each other. And he said, I think I'll go down and see Bill, wonder where he is. Last I heard, he was drunk on Wall Street and out of business. And he wasn't unwelcome. He wasn't welcomed at any of the brokerage houses. So Abby calls on Bill Wilson in late November 1934. Now remember that Abby's at Calvary Mission and he's going to Calvary House. He knows about the six ideas of the Oxford Group. He knows what the solution is, a need for a spiritual experience. And he comes and tells Bill about that. And we can read about that in Bill's story, where he tells him about that. And Bill already knows the problem because he found it out from Dr. Silver. And so Bill is the first guy that we know who knows all three things that he has to know if he's going to recover from the disease of alcoholism.
He knows what the problem is. He knows about the solution, the need for a spiritual experience. And now because Abby tells him, he knows about a simple little program, which if he practices would allow him to tap into the solution or access the solution. Bill's the first guy that knows these three things. They come from these three different sources. The program, the six-step program comes from Buchman, Schumacher, et cetera, et cetera. The need for a spiritual experience comes from Rowland and Dr. Carl Jung. The problem of powerlessness comes from Silver, three different sources. Bill's the first one to know all three things that he's got to know.
1935, Dr. Bob's still in Akron with the Oxford Group and he's still drinking. He's still hanging around with Henrietta and Walter Tonks and Bud Firestone. But Dr. Bob, although he's a physician and he knows about this simple little six-step idea program, probably knows a little bit about the need for a spiritual experience. Pretty religious guy. Even though he's a physician, he doesn't have a clue what's wrong with him. So he's still drinking.
And Bill stays sober from the time that he has last admission to Towns Hospital, which was on December 11, 1934. And Bill stays sober. He's going around New York City yanking guys off of bar stools and sanding them up out of the gutter and he's trying to get them sober and he does that for three or four months and nobody stays sober. All of them drink
[00:35:06]
again. But Bill stays sober. And Bill knows three things. Knows about the problem. Knows about the solution. Knows about a simple program which if he practices will permit him to access the solution. And Bill goes to Akron, Ohio. Now Bill had gone to work for a brokerage firm called Beers and Company. And Beers and Company had found out about the problem and found out about a company in Akron called National Rubber Machinery Company that was going to go belly up post-Depression years. And so they had organized a proxy fight so that a group would take over National Rubber Machinery Company and Bill was going out there to orchestrate that. That was his assignment. And if he was successful in pulling off the proxy fight, then Bill was going to become president of the succeeding company. Successful company. And of course we know the story. Bill went to Akron. He knows three things.
He hasn't got a clue about anything else. Doesn't know who else is going on. Doesn't know about any of this other stuff at all. And he's in Akron and the proxy fight fails. And Bill's resentful, filled with fear, shame, guilt and remorse. Doesn't have money to pay his hotel bill. Is in debt. The business deal's fallen through. His integrity's shot. His dignity's shot. He's at a low spot. He's walking across the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel. And he hears music coming from the lounge and laughter. And he says, just maybe if I go in there, maybe I can enjoy some of that laughter and music. And he said, I'll feel better.
He said, I'll have me a soft drink in there. But before he crosses the threshold of the lounge, he remembers that if he goes in there, he'll probably drink. Because the last time he went in to hear music and laughter, he drank. But he also remembered that if he could find somebody to work with, maybe he could stay away from that drink. So he goes back across the lobby of the hotel and he sees this church directory. And he looks down the list of names and he doesn't choose the first one or the second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth. He chooses the seventh name because it kind of rings a bell out of New England where Bill was raised. Tunks. So he called Walter Tunks. Mr. Wilson says, if you don't think, folks, from what I tell you in a few minutes, that God had his hand in this thing from the beginning and he put this thing together so you and I may have a chance. Ask yourself one day what happens if Bill walks into the lounge. What happens to you and me if Bill decides to walk into the lounge? But instead he called Walter Tunks. And Tunks said, I haven't got time to help you. I'm busy. It's Saturday. I've got service tomorrow. I'm preparing for my sermon. But this little lady, Henrietta Seiberling, had been working with this physician who's a seriously alcoholic, unsuccessfully. Maybe if you called her, she could put you on and maybe two of you could help this guy, this doctor. So he calls Henrietta. And Henrietta schedules a visit in the gatehouse of the Seiberling Estate on the afternoon of Mother's Day 1935, May 12th. And Dr. Bob concedes that he will go there for 15 minutes. And he went there at 5 o'clock. And Bill engages Dr. Bob in a conversation and they stay together until 11 o'clock that night. And now two people know the three things that they have to know if they're going to come to grips with the disease of alcoholism. They know about the problem. They know about the solution. And they know about a simple program of action, six ideas, which if practiced will permit them to tap in or access the solution of a spiritual experience. Now Dr. Carl Jung calls that synchronicity. The coming, if you go back with me on these three timelines, you'll see that none of the people and none of the
[00:40:06]
events were interrelated. None of the people knew each other. None of the events were interrelated at all until May 12th, 1935, when they all come together. Dr. Carl Jung calls that synchronicity. The coming together of several unrelated, different events involving different people into one significant event for the betterment of mankind. And so two people meet in the gatehouse of the Cyberlink Estate on May 12th, 1935. And you and I are given a chance to live. You and I are given a chance to live because now two people know the three things that they have to know. And they came together from this totally unrelated series of spiritual events. And I love the way Mel puts that together because if, I'm going to tell you folks, if you can remember even part of them, think about them and pull one of the events out of any one of the timelines. Pull one of the people out of any one of the timelines and let me tell you what happens. Nothing. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So these are, you know, some of that stuff that I gave you is kind of trivia. The background of some of these people and where they came from is kind of trivia nonsense and stuff like that.
But what isn't trivial is the fact that God surely had a hand in putting this thing together with these unrelated people and unrelated events to the one event where two guys came together and knew all three things that they needed to know if they were going to recover from the disease of alcoholism. That's how AA started. That's when it started. And that's where it came from. If you look in the 12 and 12, it talks about an act of providence.
And providence in the dictionary is defined as the manifestation of divine care and direction. And I hope that you will agree with me. I don't care if you don't. That what happened in this historical series of events, unrelated and vomiting on people who don't know each other, was an act of providence. That it did have divine care and direction. And that's the best example of the spiritual roots of the history of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've ever been privileged to come across and to use to my own satisfaction. We're not here because we're lucky. We're not here by chance. We're not here by coincidence. We're here because God ordained this thing just as sure as we're sitting here this afternoon.
Now after May 12, Henrietta arranged for Bill to stay around for a little while in Akron. And she put him up and got a place for him to stay at a local country club for a couple of weeks. And then he moved in with Dr. Bob and his wife Ann and stayed there three months. Bill was hard to move. He was a typical alcoholic. When you find a place to stay, they found a place to lay his head, he was hard to move. Now we know that Dr. Bob drank again when we know that if we read in the book and look at the history that that wasn't the day of Dr. Bob's last drink, the 12th of May, even though they met that day. That Dr. Bob had already made reservations for an American Medical Association convention in Atlantic City. He'd already paid his money. He felt he ought to go there. It was good for his credentials, his continuing education they call it now, things of that nature. And so he got on the train and he went to Atlantic City. And we know that he got drunk when he got on the train, stayed drunk all the way down there, didn't go to any of the meetings.
Came back on the 9th of June drunk, been drunk for several days. You know what kind of condition he was in. And so he was met by his nurse slash secretary, Ann, Bill, and Ann, his wife. His wife. And so they tried to sober him up next morning, June 10th. He had surgery planned.
[00:45:00]
Dr. Bob was going to perform surgery in the forenoon the next day, June 10th. Now, Dr. Bob was a proctologist. Now, I'm glad that he wasn't performing that surgery on me, aren't you? But they say that to calm him down and get him so he could do that, they gave him two beers and a goofball, and probably goofball was something, Phenobarb, Jan will back me up, one of the nurses here, probably a couple of beers and a Phenobarb or something like that. And he went along and he performed the surgery. And I guess it was successful as far as that goes. We've never heard of any permanent disability in that area, in the Akron area since then. But he performed the surgery and he didn't show up for the rest of the day. And the nurse and Ann and Bill thought, sure enough, he'd gone and got drunk.
We know that he didn't. We know that one of the things that Dr. Bob wouldn't come to grips with in the Oxford group six ideas was that idea of restitution. And Dr. Bob knew that if he made restitution in the medical community, that he'd have to disclose his alcoholism to the rest of the medical community. They knew it anyway. But he didn't want to make restitution. And when he finally showed up late that night, and they thought he'd show up drunk, he told them what he'd been doing. He'd been out making restitution.
And he never drank again. And that's what we consider the birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous, the day Dr. Bob took his last drink, June 10, 1935. When he finally came to grips with what you and I know of the eighth and ninth step of the program, and made restitution. So it goes on. And Bill and Dr. Bob are looking for guys to help in Akron, and they find this guy Bill Dodson, who's an Akron attorney. On the 26th of June, they bump into him. A nurse from the hospital called, said that she had a corker.
An old term they used then, a real alcoholic. Dodson was a real alcoholic, seriously. This was his eighth hospitalization that year, and it's the 26th of June. He's already been hospitalized eight times for alcoholism. So he's not a borderline case, not marginal, not a little bit, seriously alcoholic. But Dr. Bob and Bill call on Bill Dodson, and they tell him about their own experience, and about the problem.
And they tell him about the solution, and they tell him about a simple program. Now three people know about the three things that they've got to know to stay sober. Know about the problem, know about the solution, and know about the program. Two days later, Dodson calls his wife, tells her to bring his clothes. He leaves Akron City Hospital, never drinks again. He becomes AA number three. And so AA begins to survive. Bill returned to New York after three months, and there's little groups meeting in Akron, and he goes to Oxford group meetings at Calvary House, and they kind of got a little segregated squad of people.
In fact, the Oxford group called them the alcoholic squad, because the alcoholics would kind of hold their Oxford group meetings off by themselves. And some of the people liked this. There was a couple, T. Henry and Clarice Williams in Akron, who let them meet in their home, because they liked the enthusiasm of the alcoholic to apply the principles of the Oxford group. They liked the sense of urgency that the alcoholic demonstrated, as opposed to the other people in Oxford groups who weren't necessarily alcoholic.
You know, ingrown toenails, Henrietta, divorce, financial troubles, aftermath, fallout of the Great Depression, and things of that nature. So these little groups began to spring up around of recovering alcoholics and the alcoholic squad of the Oxford group. In November 1937, Bill went back to Akron. Now, it would be nice to think that Bill went back there because what he and Dr. Bob had kind of started to put together in 1935 was beginning to work,
[00:50:01]
and Bill went back there to kind of cultivate that. But Bill's a real alcoholic. Guess what? He went back there to try to breathe some life into this failed proxy fight that he'd been there two and a half years earlier on. Bill's a real alcoholic. He thought he could breathe some life into that. But while he was there, he got up with Dr. Bob, and they got counting heads. And they thought they could count between Akron and New York City, and a little group started up in Cleveland, not too far from Akron, that there were 30 to 40 people who were staying sober longer than they've ever known anybody to stay sober before.
You know, ten days, two weeks, stuff like that. And so they thought that maybe there was something that they ought to do to make sure that this idea carried on, that they could cultivate this and sell it. So they called a meeting. The first group conscience meeting, I guess. I don't know how they managed that. There were 18 people who attended that. I don't like them today. My group's going to have one next Tuesday.
I hope I'm sick. Maybe I'll be sick Tuesday. I won't be able to go. Anyway, 18 people attended, and so they decided a lot of things at that meeting. Remember Bill and Dr. Bob and the kind of people they are. They said that of the 35 or 40 people that were staying sober, they were going to select the most influential people in that group. And they were going to suggest to them that they take a one-year sabbatical from whatever they were doing.
A lot of them were unemployed, so that was a sabbatical for more employment. And that they were going to visit Chicago and Philadelphia and Washington and Baltimore and drum up some big money so that they could do three things. One is that they could put together a group of missionaries that they could send out throughout the world, and they could fund, pay, and spread the news. And Bill was going to head that group up.
Second thing they were going to do once they got this money together was to build a chain of hospitals, treat alcoholics. And Dr. Bob was going to head that up. And the third thing that they thought they better do is maybe they ought to put together, have some literature, have something that recorded what had been successful in the beginning for them. Because already, as it was passed on from one person to another, it had begun to be garbled from what they had practiced early on, from that simple program that the three of them knew about in the beginning, the problem, the solution, and a simple program of action.
So they ought to record that, ought to write a book. Now, so Bill went back to New York, he knew they needed money, and he went around and started to tell people about what had been happening and his own recovery and others, and much to his chagrin, they weren't impressed. They weren't impressed at all. Bill got depressed, and one morning he remembered his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, who had married Bill's sister, and he knew that Dr. Strong knew somebody at the Rockefeller Foundation, and so he asked him if he might help, and Strong set up an appointment with one of the people from the Rockefeller Foundation, and they met there in very short order, and Bill told his story to a guy by the name of Richardson, Willard Richardson, who was one of Rockefeller's associates.
And they refused to give him any money, but they told him they'd host a luncheon and they'd have some of them share their story at the luncheon. So Rockefeller hosted a luncheon, they had Bill and Dr. Bob and two or three other guys share their story. And that's how the word of Alcoholics Anonymous got out. Now, Bill wanted $50,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. Now, what they did very wisely is that John D. Rockefeller said, I think money will spoil this.
He said, I see some real promise here with what these people have shared with it.
[00:55:02]
He said, I hope the word gets out, but I think money will spoil it. But he did give them $10,000, and he put it in a trust fund at Riverside Bank and had some people there to administer it. They paid off Dr. Bob's mortgage, and Bill and Dr. Bob got something like $20 a week stipend to continue to try to carry this message on. And fortunately, because of what happened, the missionaries and the hospital ideas went by the wayside.
And the only idea that they came up with in late November 1937 was the idea of recording what had been successful in a book. And so Bill started to write the book. They had a little bit of an office. There was a guy by the name of Hank Parkhurst who became an early friend of Bill's and his secretary, Ruth Haack. And they set up a little office in Hank's office, and Bill began to write the book. And you've got to understand the tough process that he had because they decided it was going to be their book.
It wasn't going to be Bill's book. So Bill started to write, and he put together Dr. Silkworth's letters and their commentary on Dr. Silkworth's letters. And Ruth Haack would type what Bill was thinking as he'd dictate over his shoulder, and they'd type three or four legal-sized pages, and they'd send it to Akron, and the people would edit it and change this and change that. And Bill would spread it around the group in New York City, and they'd edit it and scratch it out and add stuff.
Come back, Bill would change it, Ruth Haack would change it until they finally ended up with something that everybody agreed on. And so this was a tough, tough job. But Bill committed himself to do that and put the book together. And he had trouble finding a publisher who would even consider it, even after he showed them the first two or three chapters of the book. And they started to sell some stock in a little company they put together.
They printed off some stock certificates, $25 each, had zero value. It looked good, they looked good. The stock certificates looked good, so people buying a few of them finally got $3,000 together. But Bill kept writing, and everybody kept editing. And he finished The Doctor's Opinion, and he finished his own story. And he finished the chapter, There is a Solution, or they did, and more about alcoholism and we agnostics.
And they covered in those, The Doctor's Opinion and the first four chapters, the two things that they, two of the three things that they had to know, and that was the problem, Doctor's Opinion, example in Bill's story, the solution, and There is a Solution, more about alcoholism and we agnostics. And now they had to move on into a transition period into the program, which if they practiced would permit them to tap into or access the solution.
Bill was very frightened about this. And Bill didn't know whether he was capable of doing it or not. But we know the story as we find out how it works. The first part that we read in our meetings often was put together. Bill knew how important this was to bridge between the solution and the program, to access the solution. He wasn't sure how to do it. So he says this night he went up to his room and he said he felt anything but spiritual and he took a tablet and a pencil with him.
And he laid them down and he prayed that God would give him the inspiration and the information to put that together, this important part of the book to bridge between the solution, spiritual experience, and the program, which if practiced would permit him to tap in and access the solution. Bill probably took a little nap. When he woke up he picked up the tablet and the pencil and he began writing and he said it felt like the pencil had a mind of its own.
And because of that Bill was sure that God had written what he put down. And Bill wrote down through the ABCs that we read and how it works and he wrote that all in very short time. Now he didn't know how many steps he came up with, because he didn't number them when
[01:00:00]
he was writing them. He didn't number them until he already finished with it, down through the ABC. And he went back and he numbered them. And he came up with twelve, and he felt that had some credibility, because he equated that with the twelve apostles or the twelve disciples, and he thought that the number twelve had some significance, and he was comfortable with that. Now if you look at how the twelve came together, they came together like this.
Remember the Oxford group's first idea was surrender. And so Bill put, that found its way into the twelve steps in step three, made a decision. The second idea of the Oxford group was examine your sins. Now Bill knew that most alcoholics wouldn't want to examine their sins, wouldn't mind examining other people's sins, but not their own. So he changed that language to, God did, through Bill, to made a searching and fearless, truthful moral inventory.
And the third idea of the Oxford group was sharing and confessing, which found its way into the fifth step. Now God in his wisdom, working through Bill that night, knew that with Bill's experience that it would be very, very difficult for the alcoholic to go all the way from sharing and confessing at the fifth chapter to making amends, without doing something with what I'd come up with on the inventory.
And so, spiritually and instinctively, Bill added new steps. Step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. Step seven, humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. Because Bill knew, God inspired him, that you and I needed to do something with the information that we'd put in writing and that we'd shared with somebody else, do something to be rid of those, before we jumped into making amends.
Now the Oxford idea about making restitution, which Dr. Bob practiced the rest of that day after the surgery, found its way into two steps, to made a list and to make direct amends. Step eight and nine. There was nothing in the Oxford group's ideas about step ten. But Bill knew, God inspired Bill, knew that you and I would need some sort of a step to help us during the day when we're out there walking around in the mainstream of life.
That we'd need some sort of a daily reminder and a daily activity step, and I'm sure glad he put that in there. I'm sure glad he put continue to take personal inventory in there, when they're wrong, promptly admitted. I'm sure glad of that, because it's important for me, and if I sponsor you, it'll be important for you. And then the continuance idea about continuing spiritual growth of the Oxford group found its way into the eleventh step, sought through prayer and meditation, and the idea that those who've been changed must change others found its way into a part, so step twelve.
And so we see that steps three through twelve are put together from the six ideas of the Oxford group, plus three new steps, six, seven, and ten, which God inspired Bill to put in there based on Bill's experience, because he's a real alcoholic and he knows what we'll need. And on top of that, he put two new steps. The idea of powerlessness, step one, which came from Silkworth, and the idea of need for power, step two, which came from Dr. Carl Jung.
And we ended up with twelve. Now Bill was serious about the ABCs because in the original manuscript, he added this next sentence. He said, if you're not convinced on these three vital issues, that you're powerless, the need for a power, and God will give you the power. If you're not convinced, you need to re-read the book to this point until you are convinced, or throw it away. So we know how tough Bill felt that was.
So he sent them, and a guy by the name of Horace or Howard came by after he'd been to an Oxford group meeting, and Bill was excited about what he'd written, he showed it to Howard and this new guy, and they read it over and they were mad. They didn't like it, what Bill had written. And see, they'd just come from a meeting where they had six ideas.
[01:05:02]
Now they got twelve. You wouldn't like it either if you went back to your home group tomorrow and you had twenty-four. Bill sent the manuscript out and people edited it and they complained about what he'd written, and so they convinced him to make some changes, which Bill finally conceded. He said, you need to change you to we, must to ought, and directions to suggestions. And so Bill conceded and he made those revisions from the original manuscript, but he got some concessions out of the group.
He said, I'll make these changes, but you're going to have to let me write the rest of the book myself. And so they conceded, he made the changes that they suggested in his final appearance as you and I know it today and how it works. And Bill got the concession out of them to write the rest of the book himself, and he did and he wrote the rest of chapter five and chapter six into action, seven working with others, to the wives, family afterwards, to employers, and a vision for you.
And he ended up with the first hundred and sixty-four pages of the big book. It was published in April of 1939. It didn't have a, didn't get a lot of good publicity right off the bat, printed five thousand copies, didn't sell like hotcakes, reviewed in October 1939 for the Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA. They said, the seriousness of the psychiatric and social problem represented by addiction to alcohol is generally underestimated by those not immediately familiar with the tragedies and the families of victims or the resistance addicts offer to any effective treatment.
So many psychiatrists regard addiction to alcohol as having a more pessimistic prognosis than schizophrenia. For many years the public was beguiled into believing that short courses of enforced abstinence in institutes and rest homes would do the trick, but now a lot of other forms are used. As in closing out the book, contains instructions as to how to intrigue the alcoholic addict into an acceptance of a divine guidance in place of alcohol in terms strongly reminiscent of Dale Carnegie and the adherence of the Bookman-Oxford movement.
She said, the one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of the addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest. Didn't get good press. But then some people began to fall in behind it, and Fulton also wrote an article in Liberty Magazine about the book and about the program, and Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was a senior minister at Riverside Church, did the same thing.
Then the Jack Alexander story came out in the Saturday Evening Post and the book began to sell, and inquiry began to come in, groups began to flourish. And we know today that the first edition, which was first printing, which was printed in April 1939, brought on a second printing in 1955, a third printing in 1976, and the fourth in printing that we now use, most of you do, in November 2001. But the book had no scientific merit or interest by the time the third edition, by the time they wrote the fourth edition, 21 million copies were in circulation.
Not too bad. Not too bad. Nothing in the book has been changed in the first 164 pages in any of the four editions. And that's pretty remarkable for alcoholics to agree to leave 164 pages unchanged. I'll say this about, very quickly, about the program, about the big book. I believe, and maybe you do too, as a result of what I initially shared with you, that God put this thing together, historically, put it together so that you and I would have a chance to live and not die, or be locked up, or go mad.
[01:10:00]
And then he kind of put together a book to record what had worked for the first 30 or 40 people, so that it wouldn't be garbled and lost in translation, and so it would be available for you and I to use today. And it is, and I'm grateful for that. I hear, I get emails and stuff from guys that, there's some folks out there that need to get a job or something. I get some reports on how bad off AA is, how treatment centers have watered it down and infiltrated AA meetings and watered the program down, nobody can get sober in it, nothing good's going on.
And I shake my head at that kind of stuff. I don't get into debate with these people, because I'm not that authoritative, but I can tell you this, they don't go to the same groups I go to, folks. They go to different groups than I go to. I've been to meetings this week, I cut back, I don't go to six meetings a week. It's a rare occasion when I don't go to one of the groups that I attend that I don't see, just before the 8 o'clock meeting starts, I don't see a fella come down the hall with his big book, and a new guy come down the hall with his big book, and they've been in a room in the church that wasn't being used, and they're going over that.
It's a rare occasion that I don't see that. Rare occasion that I'm in a meeting where we don't talk about something that's in the book and in the program, about recovery from the disease of alcoholism. Several years ago, Life Magazine put out a special edition called The 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, and I was leafing through that, and all the presidents were in there, and Billy Graham, and Helen Keller, and the great physicians, and all those things.
As I was leafing through it on page 66, I saw a picture of Bill. It says, For Disease of the Body, Treatment of the Soul. And it had a short article in there about Bill, and what an impact he'd had on society, because he was a co-founder of this program, and he was partly involved in putting together what we talked about today. Not too much later, Time Magazine came out with a similar periodical with the 100 icons of the 20th century on page 200, a picture of Bill.
Bill W., the healer. Aldous Huxley, who was a great author, literary guy, said he was the greatest social architect of the century. In part, along with the assistance of God, he put together a program which is available for me and for you, and he helped put together a book that I can use on a daily basis, and I see a lot of other people use them, and I hope they'll all be here for my children, and my children's children, and my children's children's children.
And with what little help I can give a little bit, and what help you can give, we can pull that off. Thank you for your attention today. Thank you very much.