Rev. Sam Shoemaker: One of God’s Non-Alcoholic Hands Forming Alcoholics Anonymous — Patrick O’D — October 6, 2026

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Source Patrick O'D - Rev. Sam Shoemaker - Recovery History Workshop - 2026-10-06.m4a File: patrick-od-rev-sam-shoemaker-recovery-history-workshop-2026-10-06.mp3 Duration: 01:04:35

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Unknown Way above my pay grade on this stuff. And now for a presentation on Sam Shoemaker. Okay, I don't want to stop this thing once I get it going, okay, folks? Okay, my name's Pat. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is the 4th of November, 1980, so I'll be coming up on 46 years within a month, I guess. I'm a member of the Boston Sunday Morning Group. I've been on this history thing since Zoom. I had to learn what Zoom was, but I—and this is one of the only Zoom meetings I do now because we're live.

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Unknown The presentation I'll do tonight is an expansion on my Sam Shoemaker. I found Sam very helpful right from the beginning. Like most AA influences, he was not an alcoholic, but he's one of our most notable guys. Although he downplayed his role, he was AA's best close-mouthed friend. In 1935, at age 42, when he met Bill, he had years of education, two decades in the spiritual life as a missionary, seminarian, priest, and pastor.

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Unknown He had rebuilt a church. He had founded Faith at Work, was a Oxford Group leader in America, had been a missionary in China, delivered thousands of Sunday sermons, had written 25 books, and was hosting a national radio program. He had the insight and the knowledge with the spiritual life for change, and he freely shared that with Bill, and he really guided him along the way. He was a good listener, had a right-size ego, and he shared many examples of faith, hope, and experience, and he provided a lot of the building blocks for Alcoholics Anonymous. It may come as a surprise to many people, but Alcoholics Anonymous was just an asterisk in Sam Shoemaker's life.

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Unknown He was really a big guy. But that's a small part. As he intended, he left very few fingerprints on AA, and he sought no credit. As we read our Big Book or attend these smaller AA meetings, we benefit from Sam's guidance every day. As Bill Wilson said on the death of Sam Shoemaker, actually at his house to his daughter, Don't let anyone ever tell you that I founded AA. If it wasn't for Sam Shoemaker, AA never would have been born.

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Moderator I believe that. He was a spoke in the wheel. Spoke is the thing that keeps one of the arms that comes out from the hub and keeps the rim going around, and you need a few of them, and Sam was one of them. Most wheels have four master spokes. He was one of them. From his start at the Northfield Bible Conferences as a student, through his time with the Emmanuel Movement at Faith at Work, at the Oxford Group, at Princeton in England, China, at the General Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, and the Episcopal Seminaries, his time with Frank Buchman, Harry Hadley, Tex Francisco, Eugene X.

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Unknown Men, Rufus Jones, Victor Kitchen, A. J. Russell, and Roland Hazard, and with his Akron friends Walter Tunks, Jim Newton, Harvey and Bud Firestone, Sam was really quite a guy. He was the most consistently present non-alcoholic thread in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous, and always ready to help. One of his books and one of his stories is, I'll stand by the door and wait for those who seek. And that's what he did, and that's what we're supposed to do ourselves. The Shoemakers came into the United States around 1680 from Germany. They were Mennonites, and then they switched over to become Quakers.

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Unknown They moved to Philadelphia. One of the points of pride in Sam was that one of his early shoemakers was among the first protesting slavery, writing why we were against the trafficking in men's bodies. He liked that. Five mayors of Philadelphia prior to 1771 were Shoemakers, and they were contemporaries of Ben Franklin. Great-grandfather Mayor Sam was outed as a Loyalist during the pre-revolutionary days, tried and banished to England, and his house and lands, actually the property of his second wife, were seized.

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Unknown And a little bit of trivia, as I said, they were contemporaries of Benjamin Franklin. If you think AA invented the daily inventory, take a look at what Ben

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Moderator Franklin wrote in the 1730s. This was his inventory on virtues rather than character defects, just a flip side of the same game. They moved to Baltimore and became grocers, freightmen, shippers, and lawyers and judges, and they switched teams. They became Episcopals. Sam's mother's family had come over from England to Massachusetts and then came down to Baltimore, and they were very big in the shipping business.

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Moderator They had clipper ships, a fleet of clipper ships that went around the world. So they were to the manor born. They were a very wealthy outfit. Sam's grandfather acquired a 600-acre estate near Baltimore called Burnside in 1860. And Burnside had orchards, chickens, cows, goats, everything you needed, even greenhouses for flowers. And they used to donate flowers to the area churches around Baltimore. It was a very close, well-educated, right-sized family, very successful, and they had generational wealth. They were active in churches and community service, and Sam gained some inspiration. His father was one of the founders of the University of Maryland.

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Unknown They had takes of village support, right from even the servants on the plantation. They had been with them for years. At 10 years old, Sam was gifted a typewriter to encourage his writing skills, and it wasn't a wasted effort, as he went on to write over three dozen books. The extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and staff all lived at Burnside. 600 acres is a pretty big piece of property.

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Moderator They don't own all of it now. It got sold off in pieces, but at one time it was big. As a youth, Sam visited Europe in opening a lifetime of travel exposure to cultures and religions and races of all kinds. At 12, he was sent north to the St. George's Episcopal School outside of Newport, Rhode Island, to expand his horizons. It was a pretty nice school at the time. They had 80 students and 20 faculty members.

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Unknown I have one of the guys I sponsor is actually a graduate of there. And he went ahead and told me, he went and he looked up Sam's picture. There were only five or six people in Sam's class when he was going to St. George's. Fellow students included Richmond Walker, who wrote the 24 Hour Book, Thomas Hazard, who was Roland Hazard's brother, and Prescott Bush, who went on to become a U.S. senator, father of a president and grandfather of a president.

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Unknown So he was in some pretty good company there. He was encouraged by Reverend Diamond to go ahead and to go to the Northfield Bible conferences, which were held in Massachusetts at Northfield School. They had been started by an evangelist, Dwight Moody, to train young missionaries in Christianity around the world. The Northfield conferences are still being held across the United States even now. While he was there, he was exposed to Robert Elliott Speer, who was the guy that wrote the Four Absolutes, Johnny Mott, who basically led the YMCAs and most of the Christian organizations from the 1900s right through the '50s.

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Moderator He was supported, even though Rockefeller didn't like it, he was supported by Rockefeller pretty much from the time he got out of school until he passed away. I think that the fact that Johnny Mott always had something for Rockefeller to pay for, I think that's why John D. Rockefeller gave AA just $5,000 and said, Don't come back for more, because I think he was burnt out, even though his pocket wasn't.

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Moderator Just the practice of becoming a lifetime support. I don't think that John D. Rockefeller Jr. really liked that. The SVMs trained young lay missionaries, but they're actually, it was spiritual imperialism because they made religious, cultural, political, and business contracts in China, Japan, and India in a very, very influential time. They flooded that place with, they had, you know, thousands of missionaries, and they only got thousands of converts.

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Unknown It was almost a one-to-one ratio when they got finished. Sam, after he left St. George's, he went off to Princeton. His father had gone to Princeton, and he entered in 1912. He joined Campus Life, and he put his calling into action.

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Moderator He was a great student. He thrived in classes, dining clubs, magazines, and he loved musical theater. And he was awarded the Manners Prize for excellence in English composition. He left Princeton twice on volunteer lay missionary assignments, once to the U.S. Army on the Mexican border when Pershing was chasing after the Mexicans. Also down there at the same time was Thomas Hazard and Richard Peabody.

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Moderator They were both soldiers down there at the time. He came back to Princeton and then went over and was based in England, and he was a lay missionary to the British Flying Corps during World War I. He had a five-graft number, so he didn't have to go anyplace. He went ahead and he decided to leave Princeton, and he wanted to go to China, so he joined Sherwood Eddy's Princeton in China business program. He taught business and tried to seek Christian conversion.

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Moderator with YMCA support in Beijing. And while he was there, he really was unsuccessful at converting students. So he reached out to Frank Buchman, who was a brash evangelist who was in China and India at the time. And Frank talked to him and said that Sam's lack of humility was his problem. Pride and sin was standing in the way of him from converting Chinese youth to Christians. Told Sam to straighten himself out first, surrender to daily guidance, practice quiet times and meditation, and listen.

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Unknown And Sam didn't take it too well right in the beginning. Then he stepped back and he thought about what the guy said, started to do a little personal inventory, resurrendered himself to the mission, admitted his sins, sought guidance, and started to convert Chinese into Christianity. Buchman had pushed Sam into a spiritual reset. Sam became reborn, had a second birth, and became a life changer. Influenced by Drummond, Moody, Mott, Meyer, and Wright, Buchman was the founder of First Century Christianity, later came to be known as the Oxford Group.

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Unknown He didn't write much. You're not going to find too many books by Buchman. He encouraged people to write, and he always liked sound bites. So he was one of the original guys, and he coined a lot of these things like the four absolutes and the five C's: confession, confidence, conviction, conversion, and continuance. He liked those quick ones. I was always amazed that there is no real big library of Frank Buchman's writing.

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Moderator But I guess the smart person is the one that gets somebody else to do the hard work for you. His time came up in China, and so Sam returned to Princeton. Rather go on to the seminary, he ran the Philadelphia Society, which is a Christian student organization, on the Princeton campus for a couple of years. While he was there, he invited some of Frank Buchman's First Century Christian Fellowship evangelists to come to campus and witness. Then he stood back.

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Unknown They were quite brash and confrontational. They outed people as sinners and earned themselves persona non grata status on campus. Buchman claimed the hostile factions had baited them, but they were calling students perverts, sinners, and homosexualities, and they got kicked off the campus. But Sam continued as a fan of Buchman. He wanted a less confrontational style. He was named an Episcopal deacon, and he also started to attend the General Seminary in New York, graduating in 1923, ordained a priest.

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Moderator He got advanced placement, like Elwood Worcester from the Emmanuels, because he had so much missionary work and so much experience that the seminaries just went ahead and moved them ahead without having to do the full class load, because they got it in practical experience. Buchman had attracted the best and the brightest young Christians into his fellowship at the time, favored a lot of wealthy students, people who could pay their own way. And the Anglo elites liked him, and they liked his first-class travel, and they underwrote the house parties and gatherings and seminars.

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Unknown At the hotels and campuses. In 1924, after being ordained a priest, Sam recaught that life-changing missionary fever and, with permission, left Grace Episcopal in New York to join Bookman on a team traveling from Europe through the Near East and Middle East into India and China doing missionary work. While they were traveling through... Missionary work. While they were traveling through Egypt, he received a cable that asked him to

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Unknown return to become the rector of New York's Calvary Episcopal Church. Sam sought out Huckman's advice and God's guidance and prayed on it. He ignored Frank's advice to stay on the mission, reset his priorities, return to India, and join the Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City. Fronting on Gramercy Park at Park Avenue and East 21st, it was the Church of the New York Society before they moved uptown near Central Park and up the Hudson River into Westchester County.

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Unknown Members of the church were the Roosevelts, the Astors, and the Vanderbilts, the Belmonts, and the Whartons, and other notable New York families who used to come back on some Sundays, not all of them, and remain part of Calvary Church. Eleanor Roosevelt was baptized at Calvary with Uncle Teddy as her sponsor. In 1925, the vestry committee was seeking a turnaround rector because otherwise they'd probably end up being consolidated like they ended up many years later.

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Unknown And the newly ordained but not unknown Reverend Sam Shoemaker had been highly recommended. That's why they sent him the cable, asked him to come back. Calvary was tired and in need of spiritual and physical revitalization. Sam took the challenge, and with his enthusiasm, he soon exceeded Calvary's expectations. He was first a man of God, then the Episcopal Church. He hit the ground running with drums, trumpets.

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Unknown He led vestmented priests and acolytes into the streets. He had no problem playing the showman. He knew God worked through people. He encouraged seekers and found the messengers best suited to suit their needs. He was an enthusiastic recruiter for Christ. He played well with others, was a schmoozer, and he began to work one-on-one throughout New York. He liked the bells and whistles, the chants and the ceremonies, and he worked with the patricians and the up-and-outers of his heritage, as well as the down-and-out street people.

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Moderator He continued his studies at Union Seminary under Harry Emerson Fosdick, Reinhold Niebuhr, Tillich, while forming bonds with other New York churches, including Adam Clayton Powell Sr., who had a 10,000-person Black church up in Harlem at the time. Sam placed advertising on subway trains and at trolleys, inviting them to come ahead and join them at Gramercy Park. He also decided to reopen the nearby Galilee Mission in Olive Tree House, which was a closed mission from the early part of the 20th century, and he opened it to go ahead and to reclaim Down and Outers as part of the community outreach.

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Unknown He recruited mission workers Hank Hadley and Ted Francisco, who were both sober 20 years and had experience in the recovery missions. Hadley's father or uncle had been the leader of the Water Street missions from the 1800s. Sam and Cavalry were the backers, while Hank and Tex ran the mission and the inn. Sam continued to stand by the door. Calvary Mission was never funded by nor run by the Oxford Group.

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Moderator The mission helped those with alcohol, drugs, social and mental issues who showed up, cleaned up, sobered up, and prayed, ate, and bunked at the inn while they were getting on their feet. As the Jacoby Clubs, which were around the Emmanuel Church up in Boston, all the men were welcome, but abstinence from alcohol was a basic requirement even if drinking was not your problem. So they brought in people getting out of prison, etc.

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Unknown That's the Jacoby Club model was the same one that they used at Calvary Mission. The guests worked at day labor, returning each evening for food, safety, spiritual nourishment, fellowship, and recovery. Sober alcoholics and other like-minded people worked together as special brothers and friendly visitors. That was the Emmanuel model. Then the Jacoby Club model, as had the Washingtonians, the Pacific Missions, and the Water Street Missions, and so many others.

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Unknown They all knew that sober alcoholics worked best with other alcoholics. And the Washingtonians, the Ribbon Societies, the Emmanuels, all of those people knew it. The McLean Hospital outside of Boston had a place called the Appleton House. It's still there. And Banks McKenzie wrote, They fully understand each other language,

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Unknown thoughts, feelings, sorrows, signs, grips, and passwords, just like AA. We speak in code, and therefore they yield to the influence of their reformed brethren much sooner than the theorists, the doctors, who speak in order that they may receive applause. So they were onto something, and that was before the turn of the century. They knew what was going on. The Emmanuel Church knew it, and Sam Shoemaker knew it. That's why he stood by the door to get you inside.

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Unknown And Calvary House was a thing that Sam went ahead and he convinced Calvary Church to sell some gifted properties that had been left to them to fund a new nine-story parish center. That opened in 1928, and he added meeting rooms and function spaces and libraries and offices, some social and living quarters for some staff and visitors. He recruited like-minded facilitators to put groups into motion, then stepped back to let the staff was not even Episcopal or even Christian.

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Unknown Realizing Religion is one of his books that's written in the 1920s, which is very eye-opening. Calvary House allowed all faiths to join with like-minded people to share experience, strength, and hope. The byword was community outreach. He worked with any interested churches in New York, including the large and small, Uptown and Black, such as Powell's for the community good. Calvary fostered a vibrant community.

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Moderator There was a Quaker meeting house nearby on Gramercy Park, and he got into that, and he rekindled his Quaker roots, and they welcomed Sam in. There's an aspect of the Quaker religion, they call it the Wider Friends Fellowship, which is for people who are really part of some other church, but they're welcome to participate in the Society of Friends. He formed lifelong relationships, beneficial relationships, with Rufus Jones, Thomas Kelly, and Eugene Exman, who was also an attendee there.

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Moderator He endorsed many of the Quaker principles in his own life: direct personal connection with God, no need for mediums, priests. The community will nurture the life of the spirit. Friends gathered in community is critical. Discernment: find the sense of the meeting, and serving a common welfare. That's group conscience. Testimony: living out faith and witnessing in community is of utmost importance. These are all Quaker principles that he adopted.

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Moderator The Society of Friends regularly reevaluate themselves in their small groups and goal, and we know them as an AA group conscience. Sam held a reverence for these small meetings. The greatest help in continuance, next to vital quiet times, he said, was sharing fellowship. The group must be made up of like-minded people seeking relief from a common problem or sin. It wasn't put everybody into the same boat.

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Unknown You went to small groups with similar problems. He didn't try to go ahead and to cross over. And like he said, it may begin with you and just one other person. Sam encouraged small groups right from the beginning. With Cavalry Church and the additional Cavalry House, he had the facilities and the support for small group meetings, and he stood by the door. His belief that everyone has a problem, is a problem, or has to live with a problem. And so everybody has something.

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Moderator Whatever—he looked at sin as whatever keeps you from a living, loving relations with other people. And from a vital and open relationship with God. That's what God is. That's a sin. And he didn't worry about the etymology of it. We don't call alcoholism a sin. He called it a sin. Drunkenness is a sin. Drinking is not a sin. So, but I mean, he didn't waste time parsing words on that stuff. He encouraged the small cells to form, and they would interview people before you went into one of these small groups.

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Unknown They wanted to make sure you were like-minded. You must know what your problem is and surrender it to God. Only then, might Sam bring you into a cell of like-minded people. He realized that most people didn't surrender at once, and most of them had repeat interviews and discussions. Undecideds were urged to seek more self-examination, and he didn't look for the white light experiences. He believed it was unfair to drop one who was unsure into the midst of those

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Unknown committed to a new path. Common welfare always came first, and that's like just taking somebody who doesn't know if they have a problem with alcohol and drop them into the middle. They would hold you aside, and that's what I usually do with people, is talk to them until they decide if they're really interested or if they think they have a problem. We're not there to convince them they have a problem.

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Unknown The first step you take before you came in. Not saying, I've got trouble. I got trouble. I got a cough going on here. He also knew that all will not be saved, and that some people were constitutionally incapable. He had mutual respect. For confidential sharing of your experience, strength, and hope, and it grew along with the small groups of like-minded people. Once a group gelled, Sam wasn't there.

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Unknown He was out the door into the hallway, just like Worcester and Baylor were. He felt that the cell should be made up only of like-minded people. But he said mistakes are made, and he wrote this. He says, I made a fatal mistake forming our first groups by throwing an invitation out to everybody. About 30 came, and I did all the talking because none of them had a vital spiritual experience. After three months, I locked it. I closed it down, started all over again.

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Unknown And that's how he felt. I sort of go along with him on a lot of that stuff. You want the sharing to be up to date. You must meet the people first one-on-one, and if they're committed, if they've decided that they want to do something about their drinking or whatever it is, they should be brought into your small group only if they've decided that. Some may be invited in before if they're like sort of on the edge, before they're completely won, providing you're sure that they won't run away with the meeting and there are enough one-people, committed people, to maintain a level of reality.

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Moderator One-people ensure real testimonies and follow any unreal talk from a newcomer with strong guided witness. I guess we'd call that cross-talking. Sit down, shut up, I guess. Small group meetings can be kept fresh and vital by the testimony of new people and the experience of those who have been won over before. In my meeting today, the guy we had doing the first step out of the 12 and 12 was celebrating his 28th birthday and his six month of sobriety.

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Unknown He felt that there was no place in our meetings for the dreary repetition of stale spiritual history. And while you may occasionally draw a shouter or a quoter of texts, we've heard them, haven't we? Or lovely thoughts, slogans, too many slogans, they will usually find the pace a little rapid for them and they won't come back. If they persist in spoiling your meeting, you must have to tell them to stay away.

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Moderator We only had one occasion to do that in three and a half years of Thursday night meetings. Once I had a hollow man down for silliness while he was speaking. In such a group, the masks are off. In time, it may be inevitable that a meeting should be open to all, so people will find out what's going on, just like a regular open meeting to the community. Through honest testimony, which often touches on the concrete details of life, others may see their own difficulties mirrored and find not only that they are not alone, but there is a solution in real experience.

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Unknown Calvary's Faith at Work Businessmen's Group preceded the Oxford Group. Men from the New York business community were going to the Calvary Sunday services, but the sermons were not long enough to meet their daily spiritual needs. In 1926, Sam invited a number of these seekers from the business community and like-minded men to meet on Thursday nights as the Faith at Work Businessmen's Group. Soon he added a women's and family groups.

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Unknown Faith at Work derivatives still continue today as Luminous and are based in Vermont. By 1928, Sam had invited the Oxford Group to hold open witness meetings at Calvary House. Once exposed, those seeking more of a first-century Christian fellowship way of life were invited to smaller Oxford Group meetings on Wednesday night, and soon the Oxford Group was based at Cavalry. Some Faith at Work men also attended the Oxford Group meetings, and the lines often blurred as they shared common goals.

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Unknown With the Oxford Group meetings on Wednesday nights and Faith at Work. With the Oxford Group meetings on Wednesday nights and Faith at Work on Thursday nights, some membership may have been interchangeable.

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Unknown I don't see anything wrong with that. We're not talking Alcoholics Anonymous, and we're talking about spiritual quests. Kenneth and Hannaford Twitchell, Victor Kitchen, Jim Newton, A. J. Russell, Philip Marshall Brown, Shep Cornell, Seabrook Graves, and later Charlie Klepp, Roland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher, Bill Wilson, and even Richmond Walker might be found at either Cavalry House group. I believe that AA recollections of the 1930s are a little bit vague, and Faith at Work meetings may have been often confused with Oxford Group meetings.

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Unknown There was a variety of affinity groups at Cavalry House, but it was a 24/7, 365-day operation. Sam helped form many groups addressing a variety of issues. Groups with similar problems and sins were not restricted to the Cavalry Church members. Sam was ecumenical, as detailed in his book, Pilgrim of the Second Birth. Think of problems today with family, marriage, money, gambling, stealing, sex, sexual orientation, drug use, addiction, infidelity, eating disorders, confusion, agoraphobia, and depression. And think of early AA, Al-Anon, NA, GA, DA, OA, SLAA, etc., etc.

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Unknown Some of the Cavalry Tribe wanted to do more than just get together on Sundays or on some nights, and so one of the leaders, one of their people. A black baggage handler called Ralston Young at Grand Central Station got permission to grab a car during the day, and there was a rail car on Track 13, and he became known as the Bishop of Grand Central Station. And people used to just stop by for small discussion meetings and prayer and meditation.

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Unknown It was a safe place in the middle of all of that craziness going on in the station. In the early 30s, Calvary hit full stride. He was asked to stay on as rector. He offered to leave if they didn't like what was going on. He courted and married Helen Smith. He expanded his Oxford Group role, and he was recognized as the Oxford Group leader in North America. He was a magnificent communicator. He carried his message daily, face to face on the streets, in schools, from pulpits, on the radio on Sunday afternoons, in print.

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Unknown He refined his preaching and teaching skills, both ministerially and as a missionary. His books now exceeded 30 titles, reflecting his growing insight. But his books, they grow on each other. They build on each other, like the steps grow one, two, three. His books are the same way. It's not like they're separate books. They're all derivatives. You can follow the thread. It's remarkable to see how it is.

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Moderator And sometimes he'll go off on a tangent. Another book was The Children of the Second Birth, which were examples of men and women reborn through surrender, conversion, and a change of attitude, and the sharing of spiritual journey. Biographies of Sam were written. The Breeze of the Spirit by a Calvary assistant minister, Reverend Irving Harris, reveals the nitty-gritty mechanics of Calvary's growth, Sam's ministry, and his ability to multitask with the best. I Stand by the Door, written in 1967 by Helen Schumacher, is her in-house view of Sam from student missionary to national treasurer while remaining right-sized.

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Unknown During 40 years of ministry, Sam never lost his mission to introduce man or woman to God. He carried the message daily. There are some of the books, just a snippet of them. They're readily available, a lot of reprints out there. Got there. He met Helen Schumacher when she was 16, when she was living at Princeton. Her father was assistant to the president. Ten years later, she was an Oxford Group staffer in London, and Sam sought her out to help the women at Cavalry House.

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Unknown She originally declined, but then reconsidered, came back to the United States and joined Sam at Cavalry. They were married the next year. They were engaged at an Oxford Group house party at Briarcliff Manor and married in April. The Schumachers were Oxford Group players from the early American fellowship, part of the first century

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Unknown Christianity. The red dot in the back there is Frank Buchman. The yellow is Sam Schumacher. Same thing on this one here. Buchman's in the middle. Schumacher's up on the railing. There's him again, part of his traveling group. There he is up in Stockbridge, Mass., which was a 1936 assembly, international assembly. There are about 10 to 15,000. Members of the Oxford Group went through Stockford on a long week.

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Unknown Sam's Keller was always full as he pushed his mission to help others. While serving on church and community and national committees, his one-on-one interviews never ceased, and they were held almost daily. He kept very detailed schedules and quotes on three-by-five cards for later use. He mentored Cavalry Mission, rectored the church, performed outreach, traveled worldwide, and taught at seminaries, and all the while married and raising a family.

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Unknown His mission was to help, and all men and women who sought him to find Christ wherever they were. In New York, he helped start Alcoholics Anonymous. In New York City, he had mixed with spiritual and religious leaders, including Harry Emerson Fosdick, Norman Vincent Peale, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rufus Jones, E. Stanley Jones, Adam Clayton Powell, Jack Xman, and Fulton J. Sheen. They were all Fuller seekers. So these people were not independent operators.

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Unknown They all worked together. They had lunch together. They stopped off and saw each other. They weren't a bunch of lone rangers on their own missions. They worked together. He provided a way of remaining anonymous while guiding some AA coincidences. I call him the head coach who put together the starting team, which was to become Alcoholics Anonymous. Jim Newton was his first assistant coach. As an early Oxford grouper, his neighbors were Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, who introduced him to... Firestone, who recruited him to work in Akron, Ohio.

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Unknown Once he was in Akron, he joined Walter Tunks Episcopal Church so he could get involved locally in its Christian community. On a visit to New York, Jim confessed to Frank Buchman he was adrift spiritually. Frank sent him to see Sam at Calvary so Shoemaker could help him. Jim met Sam and the Faith at Work Oxford Group members who became his away team. Groupers such as Philip Marshall Brown, the Twitchells, A.

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Moderator J. Russell, Victor Kitchen, Sam and others became his fellow travelers. In 1930, Harvey Firestone's son Bud was leading an alcohol-driven life, and Harvey turned to young Jim for help. Jim tried to change Bud's life. He even went on a 30-day dry-out farm in New York, even though Jim wasn't a drinker, but that didn't work. He went along with him. Desperate, Jim invited Bud to visit the 1931 Episcopal convention while arranging for Bud to meet and spend time with Sam.

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Moderator On the Episcopal train, they used to use these charter trains that leave New York, they'd go to jump off John Pond, and they knew they were all there. Jim put Bud in with his fellow Princeton guy. You know, Bud was a Princeton guy. Sam was on campus while he was there running the Philadelphia Society. Over the trips, Sam spent alone time with Bud. Eventually, Bud surrendered to Christ, gave up his drinking, and became sober in an Oxford Grouper, which thrilled his father. Appreciating how Sam, Jim, and the Oxford Group had saved Bud, grateful Harvey underwrote the week-long Oxford Group visit to Akron in 1933.

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Unknown Buchman himself led the large Oxford Group. With all the publicity and citywide outreach he liked, the Oxford Group established a beachhead, setting the table for Alcoholics Anonymous. Following the 1933 visit, Henrietta Sieberling, Anne Smith, and Dr. Bob joined with the Williamses for weekly Oxford Group meetings. There's a picture of Reverend Tunks on the left meeting with Dr. Bookman Tunks, who was not an Oxford Group guy, but he ran the Episcopal Church and he helped them. I mean, and he was a friend of Sam's.

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Unknown They were both, they were contemporaries and they knew each other. Bud Firestone was not the first that Sam helped with an alcohol problem. Between Hank, Tex, and Sam, they'd already helped hundreds of drunks find sobriety, and Jim introduced Bud to Sam and sobriety was just one more. Sam brought Roland Gibson Hazard into the Oxford Group, setting the stage for the beginning of

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Unknown Alcoholics Anonymous in 1934. Roland was a Yale-educated member of a prominent New England family, wealthy, worldly, and in deep trouble with alcohol. He had tried many geo cures along with sanitariums, religion, doctors, psychiatrists from 20 to 34. He believed that one day he would learn to control and enjoy his drinking, and to learn how to drink in safety. He was extremely unsuccessful. Family and friends who had had their own trouble knew total abstinence for alcohol was Roland's only hope. Many had tried to help him before as he reeled through the roaring twenties.

47:48

Unknown Remember, he was financially bulletproof. He had been treated by Carl Jung in 1926 and then again in 1931, by Dr. Cowles, who was the guy that tried to relieve the pressure on the spine, and by Dr. Baines, who was a Jungian out in California, and had been counseled by Emmanuel's Courtney Baylor in Boston and Vermont from 1931 to 34, who was still a drunk. In 1934, a frustrated bailer, Courtney Baylor, urged Roland to seek out Sam Shoemaker.

48:24

Moderator Sam knew the Hazards. He had gone to St. George's with Roland's brother, and he also knew the family because they had been part of the church for years. Roland had been encouraged to talk with Sam before by his younger daughter, Caroline, who had joined the Calvary Church about 1928. Sam was on sabbatical on an Oxford tour when he returned in April of 1934. Roland came down at that time and sought Sam's help again.

49:03

Unknown Sam already knew him. He believed Christ could relieve the sin if Roland would completely surrender and go on, become, you know, commit to live onward as a changed sober man. And Sam spent days, if not weeks. I want to say, people think that these are one-and-done meetings with Sam. These things took days of interviews. He'd meet with you in the morning, then maybe later on in the afternoon, let you think about it, maybe not see you until the next day.

49:43

Unknown They were not quick studies, and that includes with Bill Wilson. I doubt if it was a quick one-and-done. Roland eventually surrendered and committed to living a sober life with the help of Sam, Calvary, and the Oxford Group in April-May of 1934. Some of the people that Roland met was Shep Cornell, Seabrook Graves, and Philip Marshall Brown. Cornell wasn't an alcoholic. Philip Marshall Brown wasn't an alcoholic.

50:17

Unknown Seabrook Graves definitely was an alcoholic. Once Sam had convinced Roland that it would be a good thing for him to be part of the Oxford Group, he went ahead and played on his ego. In invited him on a trip that brought him to Cincinnati and Toronto and Winnipeg, and he was with some of the finer ones, you know, John Root from Harvard, Victor Kitchen, Roland Hazard was partly, Eleanor Ford, who ended up being Jim Newton's wife.

50:56

Unknown And they had a private house party at Lady Nanton's, Kilmore Abbey. The open meetings were held in town. You weren't invited to all of the closed ones, but the members would come and talk at your local churches on maybe Saturday morning and Sunday evening. And Sam and Roland traveled together, and I'm sure that Roland really liked it. And I doubt if he talked much about his drinking problems. I think he just probably wanted to be reborn.

51:37

Unknown The story unfolds when following an Oxford Group meeting tour in autumn of '84, Roland was with his friends Shep Cornell, Graves, and Brown at his Vermont home when they learned of Ebby Thatcher's pending court appearance before Judge Graves, Seabury's father. Seabury and Ebby had been party boys together in Vermont. They decided to take Ebby on as a project. Judge Graves released Ebby to their custody, probably if they promised to get him out of Vermont jurisdiction as soon as possible.

52:18

Unknown They brought him back to New York in Cavalry Mission, where he began to straighten out with the help of his newfound Oxford Group friends. Roland and Sam went off on another Elite Oxford Group tour from November to mid-December 1934 to Toronto, Minneapolis, and— 1934 to Toronto, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati. Maybe two months sober, bunking at the mission, Ebby was encouraged to help someone else get

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Moderator sober. Bill Wilson was living in Brooklyn. Ebby arranged to visit him. Both had major alcohol problems and bad luck, but both had reached bottom, but neither of them really knew it at the time. A damp, and I say Ebby was only two months sober. You know what you were like when you were two months sober. Ebby visited Wilson's home in late November. They hadn't seen each other in some time. Bill was drinking, surprised when Ebby told him he had found religion and was sober, as Oxford Group friends were helping him.

53:35

Unknown Bill was happy for Ebby, told him to keep it up, but Bill kept on drinking. In earlier hospitalizations, Silkworth had told Bill he couldn't drink in safety. Bill had stayed sober for a few months and then busted out again, November 11th, 1934, on Staten Island. Days later, after Ebby's visit, Bill drank cross town to visit Ebby in Cavalry. Ebby kept the drunk disruptive Bill from being thrown out.

54:10

Moderator He stayed for a service, claimed he was saved, but he didn't stop drinking. About December 11th, Bill was back at Towns Hospital for the fourth time. Ebby visited the shaky Bill, who asked him again how he had stopped drinking. Bill listened, and the concept of asking God for help took place. After another detox and his white light experience at Towns Hospital, he left Towns Hospital to seek out Ebby and his sober friends at Cavalry.

54:48

Unknown They reconnected between God, Calvary Mission, the Oxford Group, Sam Shoemaker, Ebby, Bill Wilson began his sober journey. Without Roland, the Ebby and Sam, the Ebby events would never have happened. AA legend began when Calvary-based Oxford Groupers told a newly sober Ebby that to keep his own drink, his own sobriety, he should help another drunk. Ebby planted the seed of a solution in Bill's mind in November, and again during his later follow-up visit with Shep C.

55:26

Unknown to Bill at Towns in December. Ebby invited the dry Bill to Calvary, and Bill eventually met Sam, the Businessmen's Group, and the Oxford Group teams by January 1935. The Wilsons began attending Calvary Sunday services and open Oxford Group meetings on Sunday nights, and were exposed to Oxford activities of surrender, conversion, confession, prayer, meditation, and service as the groupers took them in.

55:57

Unknown Bill's surrender, turning his life over to Christ, was not a witnessed event, but a letter implies that it did take place. Sam wrote a newly sober Bill in January of '35 thanking him for helping a Professor Bierhut to try sobriety. They had met Thursday nights through the Faith at Work Businessmen's Group and the Wednesday Oxford Group. Bill was sober barely a month. Sam skillfully played to Bill's ego, as he had done with Roland, encouraging him to help others. Akron's Jim—here's a recap of the contacts.

56:44

Unknown Akron's Jim Newton met Sam at Calvary through Bookman. In '31, Jim introduced Sam to Bud Firestone on the train to Denver. Sam converted Bud, who stopped drinking and began a sober life. Firestone sponsored the full-on Oxford Mission. Henrietta Sebeling, Ann Smith, and T. Henry Williams joined the Oxford Group and began holding weekly meetings. In May 1935, five months sober, a jittery Bill in Akron on business, he called Tunks, and on June 1935, Dr.

57:20

Unknown Bob had his last drink. AA begins with two men sober looking for another drunk to get sober. The question: Do you think Bill told his mentor Sam about his upcoming trip to Akron? Do you think Sam would be concerned with a shaky Bill traveling with only six months of sobriety, not even that? Wouldn't Sam have given Bill contact information for Tunks, Jim Newton, and Bud F., who was sober? Might Sam call ahead to his Akron friends, giving them a heads up?

58:01

Unknown And wasn't it through Tunks that Bill contacted Henrietta? The sequence leading to Alcoholics Anonymous: Elwood Worcester to Emmanuel, Courtney Baylor, Courtney Baylor to Shoemaker, Baylor and Shoemaker to Roland Hazard, Roland Hazard to Ebby Thatcher, to Bill Wilson, to Dr. Bob. A spoke in the wheel. Sam knew of alcoholism and the paths to achieving and maintaining sobriety.

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Moderator He was well versed with William James. He was a scholar, remember, and if you were a good seminarian at the time and a Princeton graduate, you would have read thoroughly a variety of religious experience and then probably translated it to other people. He knew Washingtonian history because that was part of American history at the time. He knew the Emmanuel people because he used to go to the Episcopal seminary, which was nearby, and he started going there when he was still at St.

59:10

Unknown George's. Bookman taught him about the second birth, which might be reached with daily surrender, fellowship, prayer, and meditation. Hadley and Francisco had the hands-on experience of helping hundreds of men get and stay sober in the missions that they worked in. And he knew that one sober alcoholic sharing his experience, strength, and hope in staying sober with another works best. Alone we can, together we can.

59:43

Unknown Sam Shoemaker said, Our ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others came straight from Sam. He gave us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about our illness. He passed to us the spiritual keys, which have since been liberty. Oxford Groups had grown in North America through the thirties, became influential with religions, government, and economies, and they were seeking alliances outside their original scope.

60:19

Unknown From 1938 to 1941, with anguish and deliberation, Sam came to believe the Oxford Group, now renamed Moral Re-Armament, had drifted too far from soul saving and became too political. They acted more important than their host at Calvary Church, so Sam had to ask Calvary vestry to direct the Oxford Group to clear out. Sam's faith at work was still based at Cabotry, resumed its strength, witnessing and working faith in the workplace. It's still a viable community up in Vermont today.

60:59

Unknown We're influenced by Sam Shoemaker any day we read the Big Book. In Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1937 pioneers of AA gathered in Akron to figure out how they could move the program forward. Thoughts included hospitals, missionaries, funding, and perhaps writing a book. Responsibility of writing the book fell to Bill. It was now realized we had enough background window dressing material at this point would have to tell how our program for recovery really worked.

61:36

Unknown The backbone of the book would have to be fit in in here. The problem had secretly worried the life out of me. I had never written anything before, and neither had any other member of our group. Oops, sorry. Didn't Bill need some help writing the Big Book? It doesn't make sense. Bill was an undergreed man lacking writing experience or literacy talents, let alone a familiarity with medicine, psychology, or philosophy. Sam was a Princeton graduate with awards for writing, an ordained minister with a history of helping others, a scholar familiar with James, with psychology, philosophy, and recovery movements of the early twenties, and a pair of friends recovering alcoholics, Hadley and Francisco.

62:33

Moderator By 1937, he had already written thousands of sermons, given hundreds of radio talks, published three dozen books, and was a sought-after speaker on church life. Biography's detailed his discipline in maintaining notes, thoughts, and schedules, and goals, and he pivoted as priorities changed, and he focused on introducing man to God. Sober less than three years when he undertook the book project, Bill regularly met Sam in his Cavalry library with the door locked and the phone turned off.

63:11

Unknown During this period, the Big Book was being written, and well afterwards. Sam didn't have to search the Bible; he knew it cold. He could rephrase the message in the language clearly understandable today in seminary languages. It's called homiletics. He repackaged the Bible and spiritual lessons and made them available for common good. It's conceivable, as Bill drafted the first 180 pages, he regularly discussed

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Unknown concepts, structure, and text, and with the only learned and sympathetic man he knew had already written and published two dozen spiritual books. Is it possible Sam suggested words, phrases, rephrased draft, and prayers drawn from total immersion in writing? Wouldn't Sam freely share his experience, thoughts, and guidance with Bill during the writing of the Big Book, as he had done with so many others over the years?

64:18

Unknown Bill and Sam remained remarkably quiet on this, never mentioning any consultation, but that doesn't mean he didn't meet regularly with his close-mouthed friend. Reverend Harrison and his wife Julia lived and worked at Cavalry House and wrote in their memoir that Bill and Sam meeting regularly in Sam's book-lined seventh-floor study with the door closed and the telephone shut off. Sam's notebooks and diaries from April 36 to April 1939 reportedly have been lost or misplaced. From 1935 to 39, AA's program took place. Newly sober alcoholics were comparing notes and bags of stories and baskets of practices.

65:08

Unknown Most important, they were sharing success on how they stayed sober. Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic shares experience, strength, and hope with another. Early AAs were neither scholars nor big readers. They were AA players sharing their personal experience. I think that Sam was the invisible man who left no fingerprints. What do you think? Sam had a wide-ranging posse. Sam's mission was to help men find Christ by any means necessary. One seminarian wrote how Sam stalked the aisles of the Episcopal Theology Center in Cambridge, encouraging them to seek out the young evangelist Billy Graham in Boston.

65:58

Unknown Sam considered Graham was an ally for Christ. Both were relentless evangelists. Neither man sought credit for bringing men to God. That was their job. Graham and Shoemaker met men face to face where they were. He also met Father Ed Dowling. Now Bill had two spiritual advisors. Did they ever compare notes outside of AA conventions? These two non-alcoholic clergymen provided checks and balances. But as Sam once related, tongue in cheek, one didn't talk with Bill.

66:36

Unknown You listened. Not all of Sam's life went as he liked. He was considered then passed over for many high-profile church positions, including rector of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He was probably too liberal for Anglican hierarchy. In 1951, Sam and their daughter left New York City after 26 years to become rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. Sam sought a new challenge and opened a new door.

67:10

Moderator Starting with local contacts, but with 30 years' experience, Helen and Sam Shoemaker set out to make prayer an everyday presence in their new community. They created the Pittsburgh Experience with small groups of men and women, labor and management, discussing common living and working problems and shared their experience. God can be as important in Pittsburgh as is the steel industry, said Sam. In 1955, Time magazine wrote how Sam led Bible studies at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club and at the Golf Club crowd and discussed religion.

67:50

Unknown The Pittsburgh Experience soon took on a life of its own. In 1961, Sam and Helen retired to Burnside. He had been on the firing line for 50 years. He passed away in October after being visited by friends. He was buried at nearby St. Thomas Episcopal Church. Friends mourned and tributes flew in from all over the world. Memorial services were held across North America. The Episcopal Church set aside January 31st as the feast day of Reverend Sam Shoemaker. Norman Vincent Peale, no man has ever excelled Sam Shoemaker in the sheer spiritual depth and persuasive power.

68:36

Moderator He was perhaps the most gifted genius in intimate personal evangelism of our time. Billy Graham wrote, Words cannot express adequately personal loss I felt. Express adequately, personal loss I felt at the homegoing of beloved Sam. What a blessing it's been to talk and to pray with this giant among men. I doubt any man in our generation has greater impact for God in the Christian life

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Unknown than did Sam Shoemaker. When a great and good man sets, the sky of the world is luminous long after he is out of sight. Such a man cannot die out of this world. When he goes, he leaves behind much of himself. In Bill Wilson's comments, Don't let anyone ever tell you that I founded AA. If it wasn't for Sam Shoemaker, AA would never have been born. That's the ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment, character restitution for harm done, working with others, came straight from Sam. He gave us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about our illness. He passed on the spiritual keys by which so many of us have been liberated.

70:08

Unknown Sam was the most influential non-alcoholic directly involved in the creation and development of Alcoholics Anonymous, the program literature, and the fellowship. His beliefs, words, and guidance are forever embedded in the fabric of AA. Already a noted author, prayer crafter, and phrase maker, Sam gave freely to AA. His studies on religion, history, beliefs, practices gave him a unique spiritual toolkit, and his perspective was helpful in the formation and organization of AA.

70:43

Unknown He knew Johnny Mott, Speer, Eddie, Buchman, Worcester, Macoom, Baylor, Peabody, Chambers, Newton, Hazen, and Walker years before he met Bill Wilson. Sam questioned, listened, and cataloged their experiences, thoughts, and belief. As Bill's close-mouthed friend, we'll never know the extent of Sam's influence, but I find his thoughts, words, phrases, and prayer craft throughout AA today, and I believe that his wisdom sent Bill wisdom.

71:17

Moderator He sent Bill a tour guide and a helper in Sam Shoemaker. That's the end. Thank you so much, Patrick. Great job, and I love your storytelling and connecting all the different people in the history of AA. And now we do have some time for questions. If anyone has a question for Patrick, please raise your hands, and I will call on you to unmute and ask your questions. How do I undo this next, you know?

71:54

Moderator Okay, I— Oh, Stop Share. Is it Stop Share? Yep. I can never find the thing. There it is. There, okay. All right. Well, our first question here is Maureen. You can unmute. Thanks, Tim. So, Patrick, I'm a little confused at the timeline with Roland Hazard. Did he— was he part of the— did he join the Oxford Group after he was in the Emmanuel Movement? Yeah, it was afterwards. Yeah. So he went, like, from the— was that— He had a long— nobody— he had a long, windy road.

72:38

Unknown Yeah, yeah. Okay, a lot of stories, and it's going to be hard to find the truth. Okay. Yeah. And then you said the book that Helen Schumaker wrote was I Stand by the Door? That was one of her books, yeah. One of her books, yeah. Do you recommend that one? Oh, it's excellent. It's excellent. It gives you some insight. People would have lunch with the Roosevelts. Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, John Fitzgerald Kennedy asked Helen Schumaker to deliver the National Prayer Breakfast one year.

73:23

Unknown I mean, these people, they moved. Yeah. Way above the levels that most of our people do. Yeah, that was fantastic, Patrick. Thank you so much. Thank you, Maureen. Any other questions tonight? I thought I'd get somebody pissed. Wow. All right. Well, I will allow everyone to unmute and thank Patrick, and I'll open it up and thank you everyone for being here, and join us again next week for another great presentation.

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

Rev. Sam Shoemaker: One of God’s Non-Alcoholic Hands Forming Alcoholics Anonymous — Patrick O’D — October 6, 2026

Rev. Sam Shoemaker: One of God’s Non-Alcoholic Hands Forming Alcoholics Anonymous — Patrick O’D — October 6, 2026

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