Unforgettable Bill W.

by Bob P.

He has been called the greatest social architect of the 20 th century He called himself Bill W. As a securities analyst he made fortunes for himself and his clients. But he lost everything when he became a hopeless drunk. Then, through the gift of a higher power, he found a road to recovery and helped create a unique fellowship that has brought hope and new life to millions around the world. I am part of that fellowship, and I was given the amazing grace to know this extraordinary man.

Twenty-five years ago, doctors told me I Three years later when I volunteered to was going to die – soon – if I didn’t stop drinking. help A.A. with public relations, I met Bill W. He But I couldn’t face reality without copious was a legend, and I was nervous as I entered quantities of vodka, followed by beer chasers. his Manhattan office. As a young man, I had come to New Bill was slouched in a chair, his feet up York City from Kansas, carved out a career in on a battered oak desk that was scarred with public relations, married, had three children, and dozens of burn marks from cigarette stubs. established a home in a fashionable Connecticut When he stood he was about six feet, two suburb. inches – slender and loose-limbed. He had a On the outside I looked prosperous, but long face and sparkling blue eyes. He acted as if inside I was tormented by feelings of meeting me was the nicest thing that had inadequacy. When I was 40, an enormous happened to him in years. “I’m Bill,” he said, swelling was diagnosed as advanced cirrhosis of stretching out his hand. “I’m a drunk.” the liver. I had been getting purplish bruises all I started mumbling how I owed him my over my body and suffered nose- bleeds – all life, and Bill, embarrassed, looked at the floor typical of this kind of liver damage. Once, on a and said, “Just pass it on.” business trip, I couldn’t stop vomiting blood and In time, I became a voluntary trustee of lost half of all I had. My life was saved with A.A. and came into regular contact with Bill W. transfusions. But I couldn’t stop drinking, even At conferences and board meetings, I often after I had another hemorrhage. watched him seek out newcomers off in a Finally, my physician gave up on me corner. He knew the loneliness, the shyness and and sent me to Dr. Harry M. Tiebout, one of the the insecurity of the alcoholic. “I’m Bill,” he’d few psychiatrists then practicing who were greet them, just as he had me. “I’m a drunk.” I sympathetic toward Alcoholics Anonymous and never heard him use the word “alcoholic” when who recognized alcoholism as a disease, not a referring to himself. character flaw. Tiebout suggested I go to A.A., Bill acted and seemed like an ordinary but I was too far gone to quit drinking at that man. But he was an extraordinary ordinary man. point, and so was committed to High Watch It didn’t take me long to realize that everybody Farm in Kent, Conn. There I took the first of who knew him had wonderful stories to tell about A.A.’s 12 steps: I admitted I was powerless over Bill and his wife, Lois, who co- founded Al-Anon alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable. for the families of alcoholics. But nobody had a On July 4, 1961, I joined the fellowship of A.A. better story to tell than Bill himself. and started a sober life. He called it the “bedtime story.” I heard it first in 1966 at the office Christmas party, but he had been telling it for years. We had

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gathered for fruit punch, cookies and carol – until someone gave him a Bronx cocktail, a mix singing. Then, as people sat on desks and of gin, sweet and dry vermouth, and orange chairs, there was an expectant silence. Bill W. juice. had been standing by the punch bowl. Now, with “That barrier,” he said, sighing, “that had a slithering, corkscrew motion, he settled on the always stood between me and other people floor and started to talk. came down. I felt I belonged that I was part of life. What magic there was in those drinks! I East Dorset, Vt., boasted fewer than 500 could talk and be clever.” inhabitants when Bill W. was born there on Unlike some alcoholics who go through a November 26, 1895. He grew up in a home torn slow process of increasing dependency, Bill by arguments, which often led to Papa’s going became a blackout drinker from the start. He away for a few days. Bill felt that sense of some was one of those persons in whom alcohol disaster lurking around the corner which many powerfully alters mind and emotion. The first children of broken homes experience. It drink sets up a craving for a second and the tormented him as he got older. When he was drinker has absolutely no control if he takes the ten, his parents divorced and went their first. separate ways – something almost unheard of in Bill was careful to restrain his drinking 1906. Bill was left with his maternal when he was with Lois and her family. He and grandparents. Lois were married before he was shipped to To make up for his loneliness and France as a second lieutenant in the Coast feelings of inadequacy, Bill became an over Artillery. There, he discovered fine burgundy and compensator. At age 12, he began to show cognac. By the time the war was over in 1918, drive, ambition, competitiveness. When his he had proved to himself again that he was a grandfather read a book about Australia and told “number one” man, a leader of men, a hero. Bill that only a native of that country could make When Bill returned to the States, he a boomerang, Bill spent six months whittling until and Lois lived with her parents. By day he he carved one that worked. Later, he saw that worked as a fraud investigator for an insurance boomerang as a curse – because it proved to his firm. At night he attended Brooklyn Law School. ego that he had the tenacity and will to be Soon he was fascinated by the stock market and “number one” at anything – music, sports, became a successful analyst, speculator, and science. For example he fixed a broken fiddle wheeler-dealer, with clients at several brokerage and practiced until he played first violin in the houses on Wall Street. school orchestra. He was not a jock by nature, But Bill’s drinking was taking over. He but he drove himself and became captain of the was too drunk to pass his final exam at Brooklyn baseball team. Law. Any disappointment – or success-now In nearby Manchester, a popular summer became an excuse for getting drunk. And when resort, Bill got to know Ebby Thatcher, from Bill drank, he often became abusive and violent. Albany. The Two young men became lifelong He got into fight with waiters, cabdrivers, friends. In 1913, two years after meeting Ebby, bartenders, strangers. In the morning, after Bill met and fell in love with another summer moods of guilt and remorse‘ he would swear to visitor, a slim, dark-haired girl from a well-to-do Lois that he would never drink again. By Brooklyn, N.Y., family. Lois’s love for Bill was as evening, he was drunk. burning and constant as his for her, a love that For a long time, Bill and Lois were able was to survive the vicissitudes of all his years of to delude themselves. They lived in a luxurious alcoholism. But alcoholism was still far down the apartment, joined country clubs. As late as road. 1928, Bill was making thousands of dollars and Bill W. did not take a single drink of drinking much of it away. Some mornings Lois alcohol until he was a 22- year-old army officer found him dead drunk, asleep, outside the stationed near New Bedford, Mass., during apartment house. World War I. The shy young man from Vermont The stock-market crash in October 1929 felt clumsy and out of place at social gatherings wrecked whatever Bill’s drinking had not. Deeply

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in debt, he and Lois again moved in with her “What’s gotten into you, Ebby?” Bill parents. Lois got a job at Macy’s. Bill now lived asked. to drink, because he had to drink to live. “Like Ebby grinned and replied, “I’ve got other alcoholics,” Bill told us, “I hid liquor like a religion.” squirrel stores nuts – in the attic, underneath So Ebby had become a starry-eyed flooring, in the flush box of toilets. When Lois crackpot. ” I figured he’d start preaching at me,” was out working, I’d replenish my secret supply. Bill recalled. “he didn’t. He just told me how his I was now drinking for oblivion – two, even three drinking had gotten out of hand, how he’d been bottles of gin a day.” in trouble with the law, and how a couple of By 1932, Bill had begun to fear for his friends had given him a place to live.” One of sanity, “Once, in a drunken fit,” he said, “I threw them, Roland Hazard, a hopeless drunk, had a sewing machine at Lois – my dear Lois. been in and out of sanitariums for years. He Another time I got mad at her and stormed finally went to Carl Jung, the Swiss through the house kicking out door panels, Psychoanalyst. Was there no hope? Rowland smashing walls with my fists. I remember a night asked. when I was in such hell that I was afraid the “Yes, ” Jung had said. In rare instances demons inside me would propel me through the alcoholics had powerful spiritual experiences, window. I dragged my mattress downstairs so “emotional displacements and rearrangements,” I couldn’t suddenly leap out.” which suddenly turned them around. Jung had tried for such a change in Rowland and failed. By midsummer of 1934, Bill entered New But one day Rowland attended a York City’s Charles B. Towns Hospital, which meeting of an organization called the Oxford specialized in the treatment of alcoholism. Most Group – where people gathered to talk about people regarded alcoholics as persons who their shortcomings and to follow certain lacked willpower, character and moral discipline. precepts. There Rowland experienced a But Bill’s doctor at Towns, William Duncan profound change of emotions and found a direct Silkworth, was one of the few medical men to contact with God. He stopped drinking. conclude that alcoholism is a sickness. He told When Rowland told his story to Ebby in Lois that not many alcoholics as far down the Vermont, the first link in the chain of what would slope as Bill was ever recovered. He was become Alcoholics Anonymous was forged. And already showing signs of brain damage. Bill now Ebby was carrying the message to Bill. would have to be confined for the rest of his life. “Ebby told me he had to admit he was But Bill looked so robust after the licked,” Bill said. “He had to openly admit his treatment that he went home. This time he sins, make restitution to people he had harmed, stayed sober for several months. However the and give love without a price tag. He had to pray morning following Armistice Day, Lois found him to whatever God he believed in – and if he didn’t in a stupor, hanging on the fence outside the believe in a God, to act as if he did. Ebby told house. They looked at each other and Bill saw me he hadn’t had a drink for six months. the last gleam of hope dying in her eyes. He “A couple of weeks later, after another knew he was doomed. Well, so be it, he thought. bender, I went back to Towns Hospital and He resigned himself. As long as I have my gin. checked myself in. Ebby came to see me. Get Not long afterward, Ebby Thatcher, Bill’s honest with yourself, he said. Talk it out with old friend and fellow drinker, phoned. What a somebody else. But I didn’t want any part of this strange coincidence! (We in A.A. say that a God foolishness. Pray to whatever God you coincidence is a miracle in which God chooses think is out there, Ebby said. That’s all there was to remain anonymous.) Bill invited him over. to it.” How good it would be to share a few with his During one more sleepless night, Bill fell former drinking buddy. to the “very bottom,” and “my stubborn pride Soon the doorbell rang. There stood was wiped out.” He called out, ” if there is a Ebby – clear of eye and clean of breath. God, let him show himself! I am ready to do anything!”

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Suddenly, the hospital room “Lit up with manuscript entitled “Alcoholics Anonymous.” a great white light.” A strange ecstasy flooded And that’s how our fellowship got it’s name. That through him. “A wind not of air but of spirit was year the book sold few copies. But the fellowship blowing,” was how he described it. “I felt at now began to grow slowly. peace… and I thought, No matter how wrong The first national publicity A.A. received things seem to be, things are all right with God came from an article in the magazine Liberty, and his world. ” which brought 800 letters and several hundred Bill was discharged on December 18, orders for Bill W’s book. 1934. He never took another drink of alcohol. The article led to a piece in The Saturday But he was always at pains to reassure us that Evening Post, published in March 1941 and most alcoholics did not have sudden blinding entitled “Alcoholics Anonymous.” It created a experiences like his. Most of us found a God, a sensation, and groups sprang up from Maine to higher power of our own, very slowly. California – many just based on some desperate person’s reading the book and trying to put its In the beginning months of his own principles into practice. Now translated into 13 sobriety, Bill pulled drunks out of bars and took languages, the book sold over 700,000 copies in them to Oxford Group meetings. He preached at 1985, more than five million in all. And that them. Nobody stayed sober. He tried helping group Bill started in Brooklyn in 1935 has now patients at Towns Hospital. He failed. Dr. grown to approximately 35,000 groups in the Silkworth told Bill to talk with drunks, not at United States, and 70,000 worldwide. them, and to stress the hopelessness of the disease. That was the story that Bill W. told to us Bill was getting a foothold in Wall Street each year at A.A. headquarters. On January 24, again, but on a business trip to Akron, Ohio, he 1971, at the age of 75, Bill died of emphysema. felt a strong urge to drink. In his hotel lobby, he Two days later, the New York Times published looked at the directory of churches, selected one his obituary and put it on page one – and the at random, and made a call. Was there any world learned his full name: William Griffith hopeless drunk he could talk to, he asked the Wilson. minister. That led to a surgeon, Dr. Robert Smith – Dr. Bob, as he is known to us – a desperate Epilogue. Last July, I stood on a podium alcoholic who had tried to stop drinking and at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and looked out couldn’t. on about 50,000 faces from 54 of our 114 The two men talked for hours. Bill didn’t member countries, including four members from preach or exhort. He quietly told his story, and Poland, our first representatives from an Iron the urge to drink passed. And, after one final Curtain country. “My name is Bob P. ” I said. “I’m binge, something happened to Dr. Bob. On June an alcoholic. Welcome to the fiftieth anniversary 10, 1935, he took his last drink. Alcoholics of Alcoholics Anonymous.” A roar came up from Anonymous – although it did not have a name – all sides, an exuberant cheering sound that went began that day. on and on. As I listened to that roar, and to the Before long, Bill was holding meetings at speakers that followed, I realized that each of us his home and eventually at a place on West was paying tribute to the most unforgettable 23rd Street. In 1938 he wrote a 164-page character in our changed lives: Bill W.

Source: Reader’s Digest, April 1986.

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