Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Introduction to Dr. Bob's Home Part 1
- Speaker
- Gail L
- Date
- 2018-01-20
Transcript
Source: Gail L – Introduction to Dr. Bob's Home Part 1 – 2018-01-20.mp3 File: gail-l-introduction-to-dr-bobs-home-part-1-2018-01-20.mp3 Duration: 01:18:31
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Those of us that live here don't really believe that it's Florida anymore. Those of you that have come from the north think you're in the Sunshine State, and I have rumors that it's going to get better from here on in. My name is Cheryl Ryan, and I'm an alcoholic. I have the privilege of serving as your MC for today. Thank you all for coming and helping to keep our beloved Dr. Bob and Anne Smith alive. Can we open this workshop with a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
We have an incredible, incredible day planned for you. If you have not already had breakfast, please help yourself. It's going to remain open until 10 o'clock. If you've had breakfast and you're still hungry, you can go have seconds. It's no extra charge. Bathrooms are out that door in the breezeway. As soon as you walk out, you'll see men and women. And smoking is only permitted in the allowed area.
If you walk out this door and you make a left, and then you make a left at the next opening, there's a lovely little park area, and there are ashtrays there. Please feel free to smoke and congregate and enjoy some fellowship outside. Please silence cell phones and refrain from texting. Be courteous to our speakers and fellow attendees when moving throughout the room. We are privileged to have Vision Audio here to record this great day.
Please take a copy home with you. It's only $25 for the set today, and that will be for all our speakers. They have lots of other great gifts and mementos, so please wander by during our breaks. We also have limited edition lapel pins from Dr. Bob's house. They are on the donation table, and there's John with the sign. They're only $5, and all $5 goes straight to Dr. Bob's house. So it's a great way to take something home with you, gift to sponsees, and to help celebrate the house.
And then we have Wayne. There he is, and he's got raffle prizes. They are one for a dollar, six for five, and it's a your choice auction, which means you buy your tickets, you take half, and you put it in one of the little baskets that you want to win. And at the end of the day, we will draw perhaps your winning number. Also in the back, there's some great merchandise, AA stuff, some mementos to take home with you, back to your home groups, to sponsees, to sponsors. Please take it home and pass it on. There is no charge. And my opening remarks have taken less than I thought. You ready, young lady?
I think we're still playing. Yes. All right. It is my pleasure to introduce, almost—oh, I still hear it—my dear friend, Gail LaCroix. She is a trustee and archivist of Dr. Bob's house. Thank you. I love you so much. I need a microphone now. Morning, everybody. As you know, my name is Gail. I'm an alcoholic. And there's no sweeter sound than the sound of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. When you guys start filling up the room, I just listen.
I just listen to the joy of the unity and the family atmosphere that we have here together. It just fills me with joy. So I'm in a really good place right now, and I want to thank you all for coming. This is like, I think it's a win-win. I think that it helps Dr. Bob's house, but it also adds so much unity to the area here when we all come together and have breakfast and lunch together. It's real special. So I want to thank the committee for all their hard work.
They've been at this. This is the third one, right? Fourth. Fourth one. Well, you guys got it down. I mean, I can't— you got it down. And it was a joy last night when I walked in and saw all of you, and it was already set up. I thought you'd still be at it, but you were already done. And it's a lovely facility, and I want to thank both you. What a power couple you guys are. It's not just what you've done for the house.
It's what you— look at today. Look what you've done. Thank you so much.
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And I want to— yes.
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And if you like Bob and Ann, would you clap once? I think it's a great way to start, since this is an effort to try to support our efforts in Akron. Well, I think it's really nice that we may start out with a talk that'll tell you a little bit about the home, about the Smiths, and about what those of us— I call it boots on the ground. You're here and you're a part of it because you've come today. But those of us that are in Akron…
And there's not a lot of us, you know. I wish there was more. I think it's the best job in town. But we're boots on the ground doing it for you there, and this is the way you support us. So on behalf of the board, I want to thank you so much for being a part of us now. You're connected to us by your donation of being here today and by having this event every year. All right, so let's get started. I've put together some new slides for those of you.
Apparently my little slide thing doesn't want to work, so I'm going to slide in the other one. Can you do that for me, Jim? I had it out. I'm just going to flip it for now. I should have tested it, but I switched it. All right, so you're looking here at—it's the piece that was in here that I didn't think I put it back. Oh, I did. If you could put that in instead. Okay. It's on the table here somewhere. Oh, there it goes.
I think this one's working now. Okay, let me back that up. I think we got it. Just a little field trip back to Akron. This is an old postcard of how Akron might have looked when Dr. Bob and Bill were walking the streets, because, you know, Dr. Bob's office was in downtown Akron. You can see the streetcars, and Dr. Bob's going to come. He's a young intern at City Hospital, and that's what brings him to Akron. And this is his office.
So if you're in downtown Akron, there's another historical place for you to see. It was kind of like the headquarters of Alcoholics Anonymous in the early days. You know, mail either went to Bill, or if it was on this side, the mail would come in there. So for a long time, Dr. Bob's office was our headquarters. And as you know, he later became a proctologist. And that's probably why he's so good with us, don't you think?
Up here it says, Diseases of the rectum, you know. Now he is going to bring his lovely bride to Akron in 1960. Actually, the home was built in 1950, cost $4,000 originally, which they had trouble paying off, as you know. It wasn't until we got the Rockefeller money and we paid down $3,000 on that, because we almost lost that home. We almost lost that home because of a depression. When you think of our story, our story is going to take place in the darkest time in our country's history.
And we try to bring that out when we tell the history. You got to understand, there was times there was not enough food. There was times that— and both our co-founders felt that it brought people together. So that home was almost in foreclosure. The banks were foreclosing on homes back during that time. I love this picture of Ann Smith. That's the mother of AA you're looking at here. And I love that picture of her because it always reminds me to tell you, I think she's looking out the window waiting on Dr.
Bob. Now, Dr. Bob and Ann Smith courted for 17 years. So you might think Dr. Bob was a little slow, right? I don't know. So she's waiting on him there, I think. I'm not sure. And we recently framed their wedding invitation. If you visit the home on the bureau there, that is an original wedding invitation there, along with her wedding picture. They were married on January 25th of 1915. And I got it, girls, hold on to your seats, baby, because this is one handsome man. That's Dr.
Bob over here with his nurses, and the nurses loved him. And I got a couple pictures of him. There he is with the gals. They used to sniff his breath after he got sober to make sure he was not drinking. Look at him here. I know, wow, right? I know. I've swooned a couple times on these slides, yeah. Gregory Peck. How about there? That is a young Dr. Bob. You don't often see pictures of him young. You see him in his later years, before the alcoholism has progressed.
And there he is. Yeah. Now, recently somebody sent me a negative that we had made into this.
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I have no history on this picture. I have no idea. We checked the bedroom out over at the Smiths. It's not the Smith bedroom. There's some gal up here. I'm not sure about that, and he looks very relaxed. But it's just a recent picture you probably haven't seen, so I threw it in because I've given this talk a few times. I wanted some new stuff. I love this picture because you never see a young picture of Ann.
You know, she always looks, you know, she just didn't care much about her physical appearance. She was just kind of a down-to-earth kind of gal. But here she's looking kind of spiffy, and I love that picture of them younger. But check this one out with her. What's she got hanging out of her mouth there? She started smoking in her late 50s. And then, of course, this is Bill and Lois here and some of the New York guys.
There's Bob here. I love that picture, though. It's a great picture. You'll see some of these pictures on the walls in the home. Here are the two of them are with their dog, Roger. And I found out that Roger's buried somewhere in the yard somewhere, but please don't come and dig him up and put him on eBay, okay? Another picture of Dr. Bob. There's some pictures. We have a few to try and put the house back, which I'm going to give you the history of the home, to try to put it back for the period that it was, and not redecorate.
But really, you know, we've got the span of time, and so we just kind of blend that a little bit. We can't put the table back here. We have too much traffic. You'll see that chair later in another picture, but that's how the home looked back then. And here's a picture of the couple. And I love this picture because in the house next door, which I'm going to show you, there's a museum, and I have her cut up and kind of mounted on the fireplace there by herself.
And I was upstairs in the archives office, and I heard some two young girls downstairs going, I didn't know the Queen Mum was in AA. Look at his long legs, his ears. You can tell he was well endowed with the pair of ears. And he had long bony fingers. Pretty intimidating when he was pointing at you. Look how long his legs are, geez. There's a picture of him in the back of the home, on the back steps.
And Anne's garden can be seen at left. I'll tell you more about her garden and what we're doing. I know. I want you— they had one biological son, Smitty. How many of you knew Smitty? Well, there he is as a baby. There's no cuter baby. There's no cuter baby than Smitty. Let me ask you this: how many have been to Akron and have been to Dr. Bob's house? Okay. How many have been there in the last five years?
Not as many. Okay, because a lot of these slides are going to be what's happened recently. So, yeah, I just love that little picture of Smitty. And here's the Smith children. Now, Sue is not biological. Dr. Bob, you know, was an only child. And so he did not want his son to grow up like he grew up, right? So he's going to come home one day and bring home Susie, who was at the age of five, which put him at about the same age.
They were about seven months apart. And that really screwed up the teachers down there at Portage Path School. They couldn't figure that one out. They have a book that's now out of print that kind of tells you a little bit about their childhoods. It's called Children of the Healer. And Sue will marry the fourth man in. I know, Dr. Bob, I'm going to introduce you to the first guy she was dating in a minute, down the road here. But she had a boyfriend, and his name was Ray, but his father was kind of an alcoholic custodian.
And the Smiths weren't too happy about her seeing him, so she was always sneaking out of the house. And she would use the window shade in her bedroom to signal to this guy, who would stand on the corner, because the Smiths were pretty busy setting up Alcoholics Anonymous. And these kids are going to be teenagers at that time, so they were real happy about their parents starting Alcoholics Anonymous because it gave them a lot of time to screw around. And I just wanted to tell you, this is Sue's daughter, Bona, and this is her husband here, Ernie Galbreath.
Oh, we're being taped. Well, Ernie G. And this is young Ernie here, and this is Mama Galbreath. For those of you that know about the upper room, Mama Galbreath dropped those off at the homes in the early days. And so that's just a little family picture there, and this is her son Mickey. So that would be Sue's children. And here. And here they are about the time I met them, which I'll tell you a little
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bit how I got involved here shortly. And here's a picture of them sitting here in the living room. I was with them that day. And they said, Gail, take this picture. They posed for this one. They made me take this picture because, and now I'm glad I did because now I can tell you they did not get along as children. That whole idea Dr. Bob had to bring her home, they fought like cats and dogs. They got along great later. And here they are in the kitchen.
And this picture, if you read the—there's five Akron pamphlets, one of them because of Billy that we added to it, that paper that you found. But in the first one, the Akron manual, I believe, it talks about the AA church was the kitchen. So here you see them in the AA church sitting at the kitchen table. And here's a picture of them right before Ann dies. That is one month before she died. That picture was taken. Dr.
Bob is in ill health. Ann knows he's dying. And she's had cataract surgery, and she's probably blind. She went blind in one eye, and she refused surgery in the other eye. So she's towards the end of her life, and that's an important picture. That would be the last picture that would be taken of her. And that's how you can see, you can just see in that picture how Dr. Bob feels about losing Ann Smith.
You know, he's lost without her. They had a beautiful marriage. He would come home—this is in Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers—he would come home and he'd say, Ann, how is our love today? Isn't that beautiful? Again, another picture. Here you're going to see the carpeting. We have a piece at the house now of that. Now, originally this wasn't painted. It got painted later. You can see she collected teapots and kind of gives you one of the periods of the home.
And here's Dr. Bob. I think this is probably the Detroit picture, but you know he's going to give his last talk in Cleveland, and on November 16th of 1950, he will pass. And Bill's simple grave. You know, when Bill came back, we wanted to build a monument befitting—we had lost Ann, and we had a blueprint we gave him to look over. We're going to build a monument befitting a co-founder and his wife, because, you know, we're losing Bob. And he put that blueprint down on the floor and he looked up at Bill and he said, Let's just you and me get buried like regular folks.
So there's a pretty humble grave at the graveyard there. And if you go and visit, I just want to tell you, Sue is behind there and Ray, her second husband. So after Dr. Bob dies in 1952, Sue is executor of the home and she will sell it. And what happens from that time on, you're going to have motorcycle gangs going to be in there for a while. Oops, let's get back there. I'm about to enter, but wait a minute.
Up here, I thought these clicked a little bit. Then you have some drug dealers up here. It was rented. I mean, it was just, you know, it went through all kinds of things. In fact, I've had people on the tour bus, when you came to Akron, nothing was available to you at that time. I get sober in 1978. Nothing's happening. You could drive—if you—the buses for Founders' Day used to drive by it. And people would have fun. The hippies would be sitting on the porch, and they'd throw beer cans at the buses. It was a joke to them.
And so, I get sober May 13th of 1978. And by the way, I'm not 43 years old. It's funny, the program was 43 years old. I needed to say that. Somebody came up to me the last time, they said, Man, you really look young for being 43 years old. I just wanted to remember to tell you that the program was 43 years old when I came in, and I came into the very first group, the King School Group, and the love in that room, absolutely.
I didn't even know I was alcoholic. I just wanted to be a member. I wanted to be a part of what was going on in 1978 in Akron, Ohio, at Dr. Bob's home group. The vibration in that room, and the unity in that room, and the dedication they had, because you see, Akron, since Dr. Bob, I mean, Bill's going to organize it in New York. There's a lot of 12-stepping going on in Akron. It's a lot where the, a lot of the experience that went into the Big Book comes out of Akron. So it was still going on when I came in.
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By the way, that is not Woodstock. I'd like to tell you that it was. And as you can see, I've got a half a gallon of wine here. This is my qualifying picture. I got a cigarette. This is me. Deck of cards here, cigarette here, half a gallon of wine here. There's a Harley over here somewhere. And yes, my zipper's down. Okay. Now, I fell in love with AA at King School Group Number One. I mean, I just purely, I can't explain it, I just fell in love.
With what, the love, the love in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I loved it so much. And then I got a hold of this book. There was no history books at that time, maybe AA Comes of Age, but we didn't have Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, we didn't have Pass It On, we didn't have all that. I got a hold of this book here, and I went, Oh my God, this thing started in my hometown. I hated my hometown. It was the reason why I drank.
It's gray there right now. It's cold. You know, I had a lot of resentment about that. And now I'm in love with AA, and now I'm in love with the history of AA, and it started in my town. So I wanted to buy the house, but I didn't know how to do that. And I wanted to preserve it. My mother was a collector, and she had sold all our family history. And God, I didn't want that to happen in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And so for some reason, my setup as a kid, seeing all our history sold to make money, I didn't want to see that happen to AA. So I began to care about it. And I was on the board at our office, and I was asked to host Lois Wilson at Founders' Day. And so Lois came, and I didn't know how to be a hostess, really, and they just said, Well, just seat her and her companions. So one of her companions was Nell Wing, which was—this is Nell in the back seat here, and Lois there in the front—and it was taken the same year that they came, so it's a very accurate picture of that time. And Nell was a real bubbly gal, and I was seating her, and there happened to be an empty seat next to her, and we talked, and I said, Nell, if there's anything I can do for you, just ask.
And she said, Yes, Gail, there is. I'd like you to start an archives. So that began, Where am I going to put an archives? Akron just thought we should be answering the phone. That was the only thing that was important. And I then, we ended up, I ended up, I shouldn't put this one next, I don't think. It's a little bit about Nell. She was a secretary to Bill Wilson. She was our first archivist. She was like a Wilson.
If you go to Stepping Stones, there's a bedroom for her. She was like a daughter to Bill and Lois. And so, I mean, when I met her, it was like my eyeballs popped out of my head and went back in like a cartoon character. You know, I'm sitting here, just tell me all about how she helped Bill write the Twelve and Twelve, and, oh well, it was just awesome. So, anybody know who this guy is? He's your guy. He's your guy, and I hope you keep doing history on this guy.
This is Wesley Parish. There's a lot to know about this guy, we're finding out, aren't we? This guy did so many good things for our fellowship. And one of the things he did is he came to speak in Akron at Founders Day, and he stirred them up about getting the house. And he became a part of the movement to try and secure the property. So I'm at an old-timer's funeral, and an old-timer comes up to me and said, Would you like to get involved in the purchase of the home?
And I say, Well, yeah, I've been thinking about it for years. In fact, I was going to buy it way back, and I called the realtor up, and you know who the name of the guy was that owned the home at the time? O. D. That's Kay. She's the gal that asked me, and I had to take a hundred dollars and swear on the Bible to secrecy. This was a secret movement. Now, you know that we're as sick as our secrets, so I was pretty sick with it. But I went to a meeting.
This is the first board. But I went to a meeting, and I was chosen to negotiate the purchase on the home. Because I had gone, I'd read the book, I'd driven by the home, and I found the owner, and I said, Here's my card. If you as much as remove a doorbell or a light from this house, would you call me? I'll come pick it up. And so I had that contact with him, and that's why one night I had an appointment with him to make a cold call on the guy that owned the home.
He wasn't up for sale. He was a student at the university. And I prayed before I went, but I had my— I went to dinner with my mother, and I said, Mom, I'm on a secret mission of international importance, but I can't tell you what it is. And of course my mother, her little alcoholic daughter, she just rolled her eyes, like, There
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she goes again. And I'm happy to say I pledged my hundred dollars to secrecy, and that's how the home looked, and I brought back that contract. I think it was a miracle. I mean, you don't make a cold call and actually get the guy to go with it, and he did, and I think it's 38,000 on there. And I held it, and I know, you've got to appreciate that, that God must have wanted us to have that home, that that deal worked.
I did get in trouble because I had to go another 500. There's a retraining wall in the front, and I'll never forget being in trouble for going the extra 500, but I thought in my mind, Who's going to care two years from now, right? I'm here to tell you there were 12 steps leading up to the door. We didn't put them in. A lot of people think, Oh, the foundation just put it in to be cute. No, there was 12 steps.
And we had to wear these big badges that say, Ask me about Dr. Bob's house, because you're not allowed— a lot of people don't know the house is not Alcoholics Anonymous. See, because after we get the house, I take off and go to New York to study under Nell Wing. Now I've got the house, I'm going to put the archives in the house. Teach me how to do it. I want to be an AA archivist. And Nell says, Well, if you want to be an AA archivist, you can't put it in the house. I spend the next three days trying to talk Nell Wing out of our traditions, because I didn't want to hear that.
That was going to be a much harder road. The house would have the support, the money, and everything would work great for me. But I had to make a decision as to did I want to work under structure or did I want to be a part of the foundation? And I was pretty new in my sobriety, so I eventually chose to try to put it under structure, which took me 10 years. There's Nell. And here I am with Nell. You can see this work has aged me a little bit.
Today you'll find the work that I did for 15 years at our office. You come for the house, there's plenty to see in Akron, but make sure you stop in at the intergroup office. I'm currently on the board of Dr. Bob's home for the last couple years, but you'll know it by the stained glass window. It took us a year to do that. There's sobriety coins around it. Men and women who normally would not mix came in, and we asked them to donate their coins, and we framed it.
There's a thousand pieces of glass in there. If you had come in, you could have cut a piece of glass and been part of it, the year we did it. Anyway, the house went on, and they got a rock. And here we opened it up for the 50th. There you see Sue and her husband Ray, who I'll tell you about. And John Seiberling, when we became—this is Henrietta's son. I don't know if you knew that or not, but he became a congressman.
And a wonderful man. If you ask him to talk about Alcoholics Anonymous, he'd break down crying about the early days. That's how much he loved what he witnessed. And he helped us get on the National Register of Historic Places. And that plaque is to the left of the door when you come to the home. And here is the grand opening. It was so timing that we got the house and we rolled it over then. We took it from—I held it for six months, then they got enough money to make a down payment, and they rolled it over into a foundation.
So again, it is not Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a private foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. And here we have Sue and the governor at the time. And it was quite an event. Little ribbon cutting there. And this is our first newsletter: The house is now ours. A dream has become a reality. The home of Dr. Bob and Anne is yours now. You have worked hard to make it so. I've heard that God will do the impossible if we do the possible.
Come home to Dr. Bob's house and visit often. What's a home without its family? We began trying to restore the home. Remember, it's been rented. It's been—you know what a rented home would be like at this point in time. Now, if you look at stepping stones, stepping stones had a foundation already in place, getting royalties from the book. Even ten years after Lois dies—Lois almost dies in the bed she was born in, in the house—everything's in place. We had a different beginning.
We had to go from scratch. We have no furniture. We've got a house that's in bad repair. There was red shag carpeting on the floor. I mean, it was totally—this is where we start in Akron. No money. Except for the kindness of people who cared about what we were doing, there were people that were contributing at that time. Wesley was running that end of the deal. He was sending out stuff. So I just want to show you a few pictures of some of the years of what happened in the early days with the home as we began to prepare it.
Early days with the home as we began to prepare it and get it ready for visitors. And every year we had these men I love.
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These are the old-timers. We had a gratitude Sunday, and the old-timers would fill the house up and talk. More restoration. In 1994, we buy the house next door. Why? We've got the gift shop in Dr. Bob's house. Bob and Ann. What we try to do today, I try to bring it up every chance I get, what would Bob and Ann want us to do? It's not about us. It's about keeping their legacy. So we want to put them back in the house.
So we wanted to have the gift store and other artifacts and museum pieces next door, and we have a boardroom, and I'll show you a few. We just renovated there. Here I am with Sue. They're doing a movie. Some of you might have seen A House of Miracles. No, that's not it. That'll come up in a minute. There's Ray. Ray's from down here. All of you know Ray. There's the House of Miracles. This is Dick. He's signing.
They're signing the contract to do the movie there. And here they're doing a movie. We have a movie we show at the house that was done years ago. And some of you recognize the house like this. I'm going to show you a new slide of the house. Then, not too long ago, we did a $100,000 renovation. Both homes are 100 years old. If we're going to keep them, with the amount of traffic they get, the ceilings are sagging, the beams are going.
There's electricity needed, a lot of work, which I'm going to show you. So the following content may be disturbing to members of our society, and members are encouraged to say the Serenity Prayer before viewing. Here's why. Look, there's your basement. That's, oh, by the way, that's our chairman. That's Harmon. There's the kitchen as it was when we started. And I got to head up that project. And I worked with these two guys and tried to research wallpaper going back to that period of time and what would have been appropriate there.
So they would uncover linoleum was ugly, but I said, if that's what they had, we're going with that. We took the ceiling out. We had to do all that. It was quite a project. We had to add these beams to support the flooring. And you can tell it's a good thing we did the wiring. We really didn't want the house burning down. That's the linoleum. If we ever tried to do that again, it's hard to even get the craftsmen that can do that kind of work. And what I want to tell you is, as we talk about this, what we're doing as a board, we've got future generations coming up.
And this hardworking board that I'm a part of, we're not just thinking of today. We're thinking down the road to try to get this thing in such good shape that we can pass it on like we do and make their job a little easier. So we really did quite a renovation, as you can see, and I'm going to show you in a minute. By 2012, the secretary of the— we get quite a standing because we are now a historical landmark along with stepping stones.
We've upped our game. It's really helped for us to stop thinking so alcoholically and start thinking. But we belong now to our state and our country and the world, not just to alcoholics. And we're getting people coming. We're not just getting alcoholics now. We're part of the nation. The Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Ken Salazar, recognized the home as a place that possesses exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States.
This is the greatest spiritual and social movement of the last century. This designated Dr. Bob's home as a National Historic Landmark on October 17, 2012. There's your brass on that to the left of the door. Yeah. Yeah. And there we are cutting. It was Mother's Day weekend when we had the dedication. And there's our chairman cutting the ribbon. Do you know it snowed out there? It was May and it snowed. God, it was freezing up there.
And of course, it's a symbol of hospitality now to all those who visit. And here's Sue, who died in 2002 at the age of 83 with the coffee pot and her husband. Unfortunately, the coffee pot is at Brown University. Sue, towards the end of her life, ended up in a transaction that put a lot of stuff at Brown, which I'll tell you about what we're going to do. I love this picture. You want to see what it was like the day Dr.
Bob and Bill met? There you are. There's the picture. It comes out of our Grapevine. But that's how the home looked at that time. So you can see, as a curator, it's hard to put it back. Which picture are you going to use? How are you going to do it? There's another picture of the couple. We want it to look like Dr. Bob and Ann just stepped out and went to a meeting.
[00:35:00]
When you walk in the door, I want you to… We have the radio playing the old music. If people put out Kleenex boxes, I even hide them. It's got to be… I want it to be like the day they lived in it. So, a few more pictures. So, kind of hung a few things like that there. And then there'll be pictures around the house, and you'll see a deck of cards on the dining room table because Dr. Bob said, If you can't have fun in sobriety, you're not doing it right.
And he loved cards and cars, and you'll see evidence of that. So this is how the living room began to look after we did it. There's the old Victrola that they used to sit around and would listen to the opera and political conventions. And there'll be a little rope across there. All of this behind here is now original. There's that chair. Bob sat in the chair. He had insomnia, so we don't have as many books as we'd like, but there would have been books stacked up all over the house.
He couldn't sleep at night, so he read. We rewired this lamp. That has come home, and he wasn't very handy, so I'm a little impressed that he did that. There's Ann's Bible. In the morning when they'd have their quiet time, their prayer and quiet time, Ann would lead the prayer meetings. Bill would be in the kitchen probably with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth making coffee. And that door would be open.
You know, alcoholic homes are closed, but when we get sober, that door opens, doesn't it? And the Smith home door opened, and there was always coffee on, and people were in and out of that house for these prayer sessions and fellowship, and much like many of you probably have today. And you can see we've put some teapots back. All the books behind here are original. When Sue made the transaction to Brown, there's 300 up there of his books that most people don't even know about, which will really surprise you if you see what he was reading. But the piece of the carpeting's here on the floor for you to see.
And this is not a really great picture, but I wanted to tell you that in that case here that you're looking at are two important magazines. One of them is the Liberty Magazine that came out in '39, but another one is the Saturday Evening Post that came out in '41. And it happens, the 41 copy happens to be the Smith copy of that magazine without the front cover. To the left is the Liberty, and they were shunned in the neighborhood.
They were thrown out of their church. Now they're running a halfway house for alcoholics in the '30s. You can imagine how popular they were. So when the Liberty magazine comes out in 1939, they looked at each other and they could not wait to get up to the drugstore, and they said, Hey, we're finally getting a little respectable. And I think that when we tell that story in the living room, we really want you to know today you can come to events like this.
But back then, there was still a lot of stigma on us, and they had to carry that stigma for a long time as they created a society of sober men and women that we have today in Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of stigma back then in the neighborhood. There's his chair. This is a recent picture of what the house would look like at Christmas if you visited. And there's an original mirror now up there that you see that we just got back that was once there. We found out in a picture.
We had it in the dining room, and then the stepdaughter came in and she said, Oh no, I think the bottom of that picture. So we put that back, and here you see the carpeting with books. And now we're in the dining room where a lot happens in the dining room. This is, you're looking at the table where the Big Book was, Three Fifths of the Stories came out of Akron. They were written around that table.
And we now have the original table with the typewriter Sue was going to business school. She typed up the stories, and she marries the fourth man in, so we put his story in there for you. And of course you see, again, this has a lot to do with what took place around here, the reluctant writers. There's your first book. To the right is that samovar. Well, I can tell you about that later. Okay. This is an important corner in that room.
That's where Ann Smith would sit. Because after the quiet time, you had a partner, and you would call that partner up, or she would call people up. She would nurture people, and she would call them up and ask how that quiet time went. And we have a good ashtray there, because I'm sure she was smoking quite a few cigarettes. And that's an original lamp and an original table with a 1935 phone book in it. There's our kitchen.
You can get a cup of coffee there. You can have a drink at Dr. Bob's house. Cup of coffee. And there's a kitchen table, and that's not the original coffee pot, though, I'm sorry to say. Maybe someday, huh?
[00:40:00]
Maybe they'll give it to us. See those potatoes there? Those potatoes are there because there were times they had people in the house, or they would have a, let's say they had a potluck. Everybody would just bring a different potato dish. They did not have enough money during this time to do anything more than make potatoes. There was a lot of times the food was very, very scarce. So somebody sent me those, and if they're in the room, thank you very much. Somebody knew I was looking for some really authentic potatoes, and one day they came, and I don't even know who the person was. Okay.
All right. This is Smithy's bedroom. Now, when the kids would come home and they'd smell the paraldehyde, because that's what they detoxed them with, that and sauerkraut and tomatoes, stewed tomatoes or whatever. You know, Smithy would tell you that the alcoholics were kind of a hearty bunch to be able to do all that, but— This would also be the place that Bob and Bill would stay up late at night if they didn't have a wet drunk.
Now, if there was a wet drunk in the house and the kids smelt that paraldehyde, Smitty would go to the attic and Sue would lose her bedroom and go to the couch. So we owe those kids. I mean, they sacrificed a lot as well for the good of the whole. So there's your beverages there on the table, the sour kraut and the paraldehyde and stuff. There it is. You know, and back in Smitty's room is again the scene where when Bob says, I'm going to go through with it.
So if you get a chance to visit again, that's where that happens. That's probably where they put Archie Tobridge when Archie Tobridge came to town. You see, the cure was in Akron. They're flying in because, you know, you got Sister Ignatia there, you got the hospital, but all the homes were opening up there and they were bringing people in, and the movie hasn't been done on that. And they were nurturing people back to health.
And one day after Ann Smith's quiet time, she was so good at her quiet time and listening that she said, they were ready to go out of town. She says, Bob, we can't go. Somebody's coming. Sure enough, Archie T. from Detroit came in, and they took him in. And after a certain amount of time, he was restless because he felt bad about there wasn't a lot of food and the house was almost in foreclosure, and he was going to either leave or do something. And Ann picked up on that and she said, Archie, as long as we have a home, our home is your home.
He stayed with the Smiths for 10 months, and he went back to Detroit and started AA in Detroit. And where are we going to be for the next international? We're going to be in Detroit. And now you know how AA got to Detroit. So we tell that story there. This is Dr. Bob's bedroom. And as you can see there, we have the original linoleum and a lot of the original furniture pieces. However, this piece here, that's really the footboard.
But you see, Ernie, Sue's first husband, burnt the headboard up with the cigarettes. So when we got it, we had to put the footboard up at the headboard. I knew you'd love that story. Very believable story. The cane you see here in the back, when Bill and Lois take off and they go to Europe to take AA over there and to meet with the early members over there, they were given gifts. And I know from the – do we have some people from Ireland in the house? We do, don't we?
I know we do. Okay. That is a black hickory walking stick. It's not a shillelagh. It's a walking stick, I believe, right? I mean, that's what – if it's a shillelagh, tell me, but I think it's – but anyway, it was your gift to us, along with some Irish linen that Bill brought back from Dr. Bob. And so we actually have that. And the dress was not Anne's, but I put it there so we could tell you a story about Anne Smith. You see, Anne Smith was probably one of the most humble people you'll ever read about.
And I'll give you an example. I'll give you one example of that. Dorothy Snyder, Clarence's wife, they did a lot of fellowshipping back then. They had a lot of things to keep people sober, events. And there was a dance coming up for New Year's, and Dorothy said, Hey, you got – now remember, it's the Depression. The closets are real small. They didn't have much. And somebody had given Anne two new dresses.
And Dorothy said to Anne, Which one will you be wearing? She said, Oh, I couldn't possibly wear one of my new dresses. Some of the wives there may not have any new clothes to wear, so I'll just wear one of my old dresses. Yeah, that's answer and one story. Yeah, that's sweet. Thank you. Yeah, that's, that wouldn't be me. Some of her old hats and things like that we have around some of Bob's crazy ties.
That, we have around some of Bob's crazy ties. We recently got a donation of an old wire. George Hood. Have you heard of George Hood, Billy? George Hood came to town with a wire recorder.
[00:45:06]
You're looking at the wire, but here's the recorder. And he took it up to Dr. Bob's bedroom. And in Dr. Bob's bedroom was, towards the end, I think it was about '47. Dr. Bob's in ill health. He's had a surgery. Anne's had her cataract surgery. And he takes it in to record them, which is beautiful because when you come to the home now, because of this beautiful gift, there's a drawer that comes out from there, and there's these buttons that you push.
And you can push a button and hear the voice of Anne Smith, the only recording we have of the mother of AA. You'll hear her speak from the bedroom now. If you push the next button, Smitty speaks, but we have one where Dr. Bob speaks. And he's hilarious. He's talking about how when you have surgery on yourself, it's a whole lot different than doing it on somebody else. And he now has a lot of sympathy.
Then Bill gives a state of the union thing to Bob about the condition of the console. He calls it a console. He's working, and he's had about how he's going to bring us all together. And he gets mic fright, and he screws up his words. It's hard to believe. Bill Wilson had a hard time talking into there. It's precious. And you press a button and you can hear all of this going on because when George Hood leaves, he goes to New York and records Bill.
But there's one thing I put in. Just Steve asked me to do it. I had it out and I thought, and we have sound in, right? We've got sound. Do we have sound yet? We have sound. Bill is going to play the violin for Bob and Ann, and it's a new way of carrying the message of love. You will, I think, if it plays, you'll get to hear him. I'm not going to play all of them, but I want you to hear this. Hello, Ann and Bob. Isn't this a great gadget that we have to talk through?
It was mighty good to hear from George how much better you both are. You have no idea how about terrifically concerned so many of us have been. Now that the worst is over, we can all breathe better. I've just been having a long talk with George about the state of AA affairs out through the country, and he has sharpened up to me, as he doubtless did to you, the tremendous necessity of getting some sort of council organized which can relate the foundation to the AA groups.
I also went over the internal situation here with George, and on the whole, he is inclined to think that the changes suggested in the reorganization plan are really necessary for us here in New York before we actually start the formation of a council. We'd awfully much like to know if you won't come down to Bedford Hills sooner than the fall, but I suppose there are small use in begging you. You know, I still feel very awkward and hard put to find words to talk into this microphone.
As you see, I have a good deal of mic fright. Even now I am beginning to get more and more confused. In fact, my face is getting quite red, for you know I am not one who usually lacks words. Lois and I hope you both will surely get well and strong, and that very, very fast. We think of you so very, very much, dear people, and look forward to the moment when we can see her, see you. I've still got the mic fright.
This is your announcer cutting in. We're now going to have a violin solo by Bill the virtuoso. So long, dear people. We'll be seeing you
[00:50:09]
soon. Oh, I got mic fright. I think it's a nice window into the love that— Both Bob and Ann had for Bill and Lois, and vice versa. So it carries a powerful message, along with just the—it was like his heart through that music was going to them. He knows they're in bad shape. He knows. He knows that he's going to lose him and her. Sue's bedroom. That's a picture of Sue there, and it was used for detox as well. And I'm going to introduce you to the first guy that they detoxed. A lot of you probably thought Bill D.
was number three. You know, we all know about him, but very few people know about Eddie. And since this picture just came in, we just got a box of some of his things, which I'm surprised didn't get sold on the market, and somehow through divine effort, we got it, and had this old bit picture in there. And anyway, they were guinea pigs back then. Now, when they're bringing people into the home, they don't know how to do this.
They know they have something, but they don't know how to approach an alcoholic. In fact, if you look through the '40s, all over the country, if you look at our history, we don't figure it out until maybe around the, you know, when we get the traditions and stuff, we start to unify. But so this is their first guinea pig, and he gave them—he said this guy could have kept an army sober. He was so wild.
A lot of stories take place in the house where he slides—he runs away from them. Of course, back then, we chased them. He slides down the drainpipe, and he's going to—he calls up, he goes up to Lake Erie. He's going to throw himself into Lake Erie. He calls up Bill and Bob. They're living in the house at this time, '35, this first guy, and— They had, and this is before Bill D., which is July, so this is the very first guy.
And they run out up to Lake Erie to fetch him because he wanted him to come up and witness the event, but they brought him home. I even found out recently that on one of the visits to Bill D., they took him. So he was part of actually some of the 12-step work on Bill D. And he brought his wife and his kids. They brought his wife and two kids in and put them in the bedroom, that little bedroom. That's what it says.
And the Oxford Group had told the wife that she should disclose her indiscretions. That's how the Oxford Group did it. So she must have given him some information he didn't like, because he roughed her up pretty good. And she came down to the breakfast table that morning, and according to Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers and the nephew who I've talked to, that's where we get when to do so wouldn't injure others.
That was one of our very first lessons in that. Now, at some point, Ann's feeding him a tuna fish sandwich, and he goes crazy, and he grabs a butcher knife and chases her upstairs. And she's down on her knees saying the Lord's Prayer. You don't think the women, Lois and Ann, didn't make some sacrifices for us? And Bill comes in in the nick of time and gets that knife. So they had to let Eddie go. And what they learned from that, what we learn from our stuff today, don't we?
And isn't Bill a master of pulling out lessons? We don't wet nurse a drunk. So they let him go. But I feel like Paul Harvey because I'm going to tell you the rest of the story. You know how Paul Harvey said, Here's the rest of the story? This guy shows up at Dr. Bob's funeral, Smitty's next to Bill. He does one of these. He says to Bill, Isn't that Eddie over there? Sure enough, Eddie came out, showed up with about a year of sobriety.
But I want to tell you, he died with 17 years in Youngstown, Ohio. He was a great AA member. He actually worked for the National Council on Alcoholism at that time. Isn't that a great story? See, you never know when you're planting seeds, right? But he could have been number one. And that's a story we like to tell in the house, along with Archie. There's things that happened in that house that are part of how we got there. This is the bathroom.
It's got some great stories there. See this little door that's open here? That's the clothes chute. And out on the porch off of here is a glove with a bottle of alcohol in it, or a bottle, a prohibition kind of bottle, because Bob
[00:55:02]
would put his stuff—he would sneak it in on Ann. He'd throw it up on the porch, then he'd bring it in, and there's a ledge up here, and he'd put it up here. Well, this is a clothes chute. Then he could drop it down into the clothes chute, and when he's down in the basement, he could hide it down there. And he knew about the toilet, huh? Yeah. So that's the medicine cabinet. Oh, come on, come on. Okay, I'm going to take you up into the attic.
You're looking here at Dr. Bob's birth crib, the crib that Ann Smith would put Smitty in, the crib that Smitty would put his grandchildren in, and the crib that I know—I love that. Yeah, I know. And we're so blessed because there's no way this stuff doesn't come home but by grace, because, you know, it just happens. This is the christening gown, Dr. Bob's christening gown. And I want to tell you, where does the money go for the stuff that you do? It takes money to preserve things, and so we've had that specially treated. It's now in plexiglass.
But I just want you to know that was $1,500 to make sure that that— stays preserved. Otherwise, you know, things die if you don't take good care of them. You're looking at Dr. Bob as a baby, and his picture will be to the left up there. He kind of looks to me like he needs a drink. I don't know. Doesn't he? Come on. That is not a hat. That is not. All right, compare that picture, okay, so compare that picture to Ann and Smitty. Look at that.
Look at that compared to Bob, huh? Yeah. There's Smitty. This is Dr. Bob's mom, Susie, and this is Walter, his father. Sadly, Susie, Ann Smith said that Susie, she believed, was the reason Dr. Bob drank. Of course, we know better, but Susie used to put Dr. Bob to bed at five o'clock at night. He would sneak out every night and never got caught. I think that set up his cat and mouse game with Ann. And unfortunately, and Walter would go fetch Bob all the time and bring him back. You know, if you've read Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, this is his only son. He was bailing him out and enabling all the time, saving Dr.
Bob. Sadly, Walter never lived to see Bob get sober, but Mommy did. And this is a sampler of his mother's, which is pretty cool on its own. It's pretty cool. We're lucky and very fortunate. You can't tell a story if you don't have a few props. So having the Father's Bible is really nice. It'll be on display there when you come in. And we try to make that attic a little bit to tell the story of Vermont.
Both our co-founders came from Vermont. And I think that's why they got along so well, really. I think they both did. And I just put this slide in, and the reason I did is I was telling a story to some of my friends here last night about, remember the letter I told you that I found in a bunch of Valentine's Day papers? Well, since I said that, I wanted to add this slide. This is the stepsister here.
This is just recently something that I actually found when I stayed with Mona, and I found it amongst some Valentine's Day wrapping paper. And I couldn't believe that I was fortunate enough that it ended up in my hands, because what it is is a letter written by a little 10-year-old boy, Dr. Bob, to this adoptive aunt, who might have just been a friend of his mother's that kind of became like the stepsister kind of thing.
It's probably the longest thing Dr. Bob ever wrote, you're looking at. And it's so sweet, but I'll show you the contents of it. It's hard to read. So, Dear Miss Northrop, I have been meaning to write to you every day, but have been putting it off till now. I thank you very much for sending me the pictures and book. I have enjoyed the book very much and hope you will read it when you come up here again. I went over to Mr.
Harrington's and played with Rover the dog. They have a bull calf, and he said he would sell it to me for a dollar. Mama says if there's anything we need, it's a bull. I went fishing Wednesday and caught about 10 fish and a lizard. I have got the lizard in a pan of water, and I expect to put him in alcohol. Pa got me a new bridle and saddle blanket, and I ride every day. I enjoy it very much. Come up here as soon as you can, with much love, Robert Smith. I hope when I go back next year, I go back to Akron.
I'm in Florida with you all. It's a geographic. It's a geographic cure. It's not working this month. This is Yankee cold, baby. This is Yankee cold. But I will be, I do go back and I do framing,
[01:00:01]
and I'll be putting this on display there. Why I think this is so important is Dr. Bob is a man's man. He's an outdoor kind of guy, and he plays that out through his whole life, all through Dartmouth, all through college. He's great at pool. He's great at horseshoes. He's a fisherman. He's all of that, and you can see where the roots of that go back from that very letter, the kind of childhood he had.
This is where Smitty would go when he smelled the pralidoxite. This is the maid's quarters, but they could afford a maid even during the Depression, but they didn't have her live in the house, so this became kind of a makeshift bedroom for Smitty. And we have a lot of artifacts up there for Smitty, and I believe it was Ann Smith's sewing room. She sewed for all the families, always taking care of people with her sewing.
And in the basement, which we now have, because we've taken the gift shop out, we've redone that. And I'm sorry that's a little blurry. I'll try to get you a better picture, but that's a great photo op. You can stand next to Bob in that Cadillac there, and you can see we have the fishing poles and some things there. There's a picture on the wall of Dr. Bob in Smitty's car from Yellowstone. They're on a trip, and I got to tell you this. So it doesn't have a top. I think it's a Model A.
And Smitty looks over at Dr. Bob and he says, What are we going to do if it rains? Dr. Bob says, We're going to get wet. Okay, we're in Florida. This is Daytona. This is Bob and Smitty racing on the beach. Both of them are car guys, all the way car guys. There's Dr. Bob in his 1946 Buick Roadmaster. And the neighbors all said that the older he got, the faster he drove those cars. He would rev it up, and then he'd come sliding into the curb at 855 Ardmore and slam on those brakes. So, he's kind of a hot dog when it comes to cars. There's Smitty with his car, and we have a can there and a hose because he used to siphon gas out of Smith's cars.
We tried to make it look like a garage again. And we have a picture of him playing horseshoes and fishing. We have an original golf club, but I tell you, it's on the wall. It's his. It's left-handed. Dr. Bob was right-handed. So we asked Sue, why is it left-handed? She said, We were so broke, he couldn't afford his own golf clubs, so somebody gave him those clubs, and he learned to golf left-handed.
The washroom there. That's the old fruit cellar. And we have a little Burkhart beer there. Dr. Bob's last drink was a Burkhart. Sue told me that, so we're going with it. This is the old coal bin, and there's a couple of Burkharts, and he used to hide a lot of bottles in there. You know, even if a child comes in with the parents or something, since the house is 100 years old, you see the—remember when we were chained to the wall? You see the old typewriter, and now we're using word processors.
It's a museum in its own right at this point. Coal cellars and stuff like that. People come in and go, they all revert back to their grandmother, you know? The old ringer washer. We have—859 is the other—I mean, yeah, 859 is the other house. In the medicine cabinet here, you'll find his 1939 dictionary and his hourglass and some of the medical things from his office. There's the dictionary and the hourglass and other pictures.
There's some of the pictures of the stories that were in the Big Book. You'll see at that house with the stories. You can read the stories right there. That's what it looks like at Founders Day. At Founders Day, it goes all the way around the block. Better to come when we're not so busy if you want to really have a nice visit. I asked the board—we had a board meeting Thursday—I said, I'm going to do this fundraiser, and I said, How many people do we have in a year?
I thought you might be interested. You're supporting the house. We have over—we probably have about seven, eight thousand during the year, but we have just that many at Founders Day. In one day, Akron really does serve the history of Alcoholics Anonymous for Founders Day, so it's quite an experience. I happened to snap this picture because there was a march for recovery, and I was pulling into the house, and they were all standing there, and the guy here was giving a talk, and it was just moving. It was a neighborhood kind of walk for recovery from addiction, and they were standing outside the house with that guy.
He's now a volunteer on the front steps there. All right, so we had another renovation on the outside, and you can see we spent a lot of money on this because we're doing things historically correct, and we got it all the way down to the original paint sample. And this is how the house looked when the Smiths first moved in. Isn't it beautiful? So if you haven't seen it in the recent couple years, this is
[01:05:04]
what you'll see when you visit. I want you to know that all the windows have UV protection so we can put out those artifacts for you to see. We've invested in that. We have a great garden. Now you're looking at Ann Smith's garden. We're taking pretty good care of the yard and the things now. We just did another renovation in the house next door. This is the first time we've shown a picture of the gift store.
It's also museum through here. It's not quite all set up yet, but there's a lot of artifacts, Oxford Group things, and more to learn here as well. In the upper room here is the archives and our board room. And now to tell you about 120-2 Everett. There is a house directly behind Dr. Bob's house. You almost run into it when you go out the back door. That's how it's sitting right in what a backyard would be.
And this house came up for sale. What should we do? We need more space. We're sending you into a dank, bad basement to even see the film. We've been talking about tearing down the garage and doing a welcoming center like Stepping Stones did, and then this house comes up for sale. So we had a strategic planning meeting and everything, and everybody was concerned that it could become a crack house. It also secures that corner for the future, and you only get a shot at this, you know.
So we bought the house. And now we're kind of excited. I was a little nervous about it, but we're kind of excited now because now we're dreaming about what we're going to do with that house. And what the plans are now is, it's darling. Let me show it to you. You can see. See, look how close. Look what we're dealing with here. And it really kind of locks up that corner. It's got a solarium. It's a beautiful living room and a kitchen, two fireplaces, and upstairs rooms.
So we're going to be moving the archives. I'm real cramped. There's a little tiny room I'm in. We're going to move the archives and open it up. We're going to have a research room. We're going to get those books back from Brown. If I have to buy them one at a time, maybe we won't have Dr. Bob's, but it will be a research room for people. Those books are going to be harder and harder to get in the future.
If I'm going to do it, we got to do it now because they get rarer and rarer and rarer. So we're going to begin. Brown may have a lot of things, but we will duplicate it and put it into this home. You will hopefully be able to go in and be able to see a film there, and we'll get you out of these dark steps. And it's not good for anybody to be going down the steps where we have the film now. So I want to introduce you to the board, to the people who I love, who I get to be with, who I have the privilege of serving you in Akron with. It's my buddy Harmon Beely, and he's a great guy.
You'll see him at Founders Day if you come. This is Paul G. Some of you might know Paul G. He gets around a little bit. He does IT and a lot of stuff. That's Dolly. Dolly's in charge of that gift store, and by God, she's like a pit bull on that gift store. You can visit us online because the gift store does help support the house. We have the coolest thing now. We just did it, I've got to tell you. I had a key at the other archives that was the original Mayflower key, and it's a picture of the Mayflower, and it's the key that, like, they would have had at the opening that Bill would have had in his hand when he was there, and we duplicated it.
And it has space on it where you can actually engrave your sobriety date if you want to take it to an engraver, and it's been a really great little thing that we're doing right now. You're looking at Ryan. Ryan does building and maintenance, and he's in charge of all the renovation things that we're doing at 859, and we have different phases, and we're about finished with 859, so we were really ready to go into this next phase, which we'll be developing.
Anybody know this guy? Kent's a great member, and he does a lot of fundraising. He's done some things for us on the road. He's on our board, real smart guy. That's Dennis. He's our secretary, and nobody takes better minutes than Dennis. And here I am with your boys. This is from the Florida— I know you recognize this if you've been to the Florida State Convention or any archives. My boys here. That's Bob. Bob does IT, although we're probably looking for a little expertise on that to help Bob out, because our face goes out to the world.
Yes, people come and visit the house, but I just said at the last board meeting, how are we going to reach all the foreign countries? How are we going to reach Ireland? How are we going to reach places, because AA is now all over? Let's go to our web page. But we really need help with that because it's a big, you know, we don't have the expertise to do it the way we'd like. And I'd like to put more historical documents on it and do a little more with
[01:10:04]
that if we could get that going a little bit. So hopefully we're going to be working on that. Allie just came on board. She's our treasurer. This is Sandy. She's our only paid employee. The board is doing the work for you. We're not paying to have it done. We don't have an executive director. We are boots on the ground. We are doing the work. But we do have her there for just a few hours, maybe 12 hours a week, to coordinate shipping and to do some things like that.
But we've kept our budget very, very low, and I'm real proud of that because we're a hardworking board. We're not a board that just hires somebody to do the work. We're behind the wheel. And this is Cindy. She's done Ann Smith's gardening. She's our gardener. Wayne doesn't have a picture, and John Stowell—John Stowell's here in Florida somewhere right now. But that's Shane. He's our bookkeeper, and by God, he one time I turned in a receipt with a coconut bar on it. And he called me on that.
I said, Oh, I mean, I'm giving all the time, and he calls me on a one-dollar coconut bar he caught on a receipt that I didn't catch. So he's good. Okay, he's good. You know, alcoholics love to take things personally, don't we? Love to be insulted. This is our auditor, and he's the sharpest guy we can find for 501(c)(3). You know, in New York they have Class A and Class B trustees. You do not want an alcoholic board, I promise you.
All alcoholic boards, I've been on them, you don't want them. These guys that we have helping us have this expertise and kind of balance some of our thinking and things we don't know about. That's Kevin Crum. This is Mark Gillis. He's the architect that we consulted with. He's right down the street from us at the Gatehouse. His office is upstairs from the Gate Lodge. We pulled in the best architect in town, who's been doing all the work at the Cyberling Foundation called Stan Hewitt.
He's part of our team as well. We're doing it right. It's costing us a little more, but we're doing it right for the future. We have grant writers. Thank God, it's been very, very helpful, especially to the archives. I'm hoping that I can get some grants to try to get these books that I want to pull in that are going to really surprise you when you see what he was really reading. Okay, it wasn't all what we think.
But I want it to be the full picture. My job isn't to interpret it as much as it is to present it, so I want to make sure we get that. And we have a newsletter, the House Call magazine. Beautiful display over here. I hope you'll visit it. Those are for you to take as part of today. And the newsletter's there. That goes out twice a year. Or you can visit us online. You can sign up for it. And you can find out if you want to donate.
We have endowments now. You can, you know, to help. The endowment fund is really important. I know I'll be leaving a certain portion of my will to the home, and you can choose what you want yours to go to if you wanted to participate in that. All right, so what are we doing today? We have non-managing trustees here with Cheryl and Steve Ryan. So what is a non-managing trustee? It's just somebody that's out, maybe not in Akron, out from Akron, that will put on an event like this that will help us to do what we're doing in Akron.
And again, this is the fourth one. But see, this is a win-win. You can't tell me you have breakfast and lunch and a full day of AA and somehow it still manages to help Dr. Bob's home. And it's because of the guy in the kitchen that gave up his day to cook. And it's because of the committee that came in here last night and have met throughout the year. It's their time that's really producing the money that we take back to Akron, because this is a full day and certainly worth anything that you paid to be here. So I believe it's their hard work.
So we have a fundraiser in New York. Those guys have been doing it for a long time, and we really appreciate them. We have now one in— Scott in Philadelphia does a dinner, and they're selling out, and he's looking for a bigger place because people, if you give them a darn chance to help, they want to help. We just had to provide. We just had to build the room, and they came. I believe that's true wherever people can be a part of what we're doing, and I hope you do feel a part of it. Seattle has started some really fabulous ones.
Again, you're here. Don did one in Fort Lauderdale. England does a dinner. Boxer Frank does a dinner in England. We're getting one from Australia. He's coming to Founders Day this year. He'll be doing a dinner in Australia. You see, that connects us in unity. It connects us in unity. Cleveland has, and our area is starting to do some, and Las Vegas has something that goes to us as well. Sandy Beach. And Bob used to do a weekend, and that was really
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helpful to us. And they dedicated their weekend to helping us, and I miss that. I certainly miss Sandy, but that was a big help as well. So I don't call them fundraisers. I call them fun-raisers. You having fun today? I hope so, because this is a wonderful, wonderful fellowship event. And I'm just going to tell you that in my mind, I consider you stockholders because you're here today. And that's why I want to open this up.
If there's any questions as stockholders, if you have any questions about what we're doing, if I can answer them, I will. And I hope you continue to, you know, visit us online or come to Akron and actually, you know, travel through that home and experience the story for yourself. People come from all over the world, and I wish—I think it's the best job in town. Earlier today, I was talking about it.
I'll give you one day to tell you what it's like when people come. I'm talking to a volunteer in the home, and a gentleman walked into the living room, and of course this is how they enter the living room if they've never been there before, especially if they're from far away. They've waited a lifetime. The guy was 30 years sober, and I heard him say out loud to himself, I've waited 30 years for this experience.
He was from India. Thirty years in India is a big deal. I couldn't help it. I always drop whatever I'm doing, and I'm with whoever comes. I'm theirs as soon as they come. Where do you want to go? I take them all over. I can't help myself. It's an addiction. I don't know. And then another gentleman came in, and I was upstairs, and I was ready to push the button for Ann Smith. And I said, She's going—she's blind in one eye.
She's going blind in the other eye, and she won't have the surgery. She's just about blind. And he burst into tears. And he says, I'm going blind too, and I wanted to see this before I can't see anymore. If I could give you all the stories of the people of our family, nationally and internationally, and how this home touches them by just walking through that door, walking up those 12 steps, I want you to know that that's what today is about.
It's about helping us to carry the heritage of Bob and Ann Smith today and for future generations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ah, thank you. Thank you. A standing ovation for a commercial. That's pretty good. Any questions? You got a question? Yes. The first time I went to see Dr. Bob's house, it was shortly after the house had been acquired, a couple years. Hello? Okay. I never have a problem with people hearing me because I have a big mouth, but I…