Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous (eBook)

Introduction

There is a quip that has made the rounds of A.A. rooms in recent years. It goes like this: Akron is like Bethlehem. Something good happened there a long time ago; and nothing much has happened there since.

Is Akron, Ohio, just to be noted as the heart of the U.S. rubber tire industry, but merely the insignificant and remote birthplace of the fellowship known as Alcoholics Anonymous? Or, perhaps as with the tire industry, did something of great importance begin, develop, and grow there that produced a product of worldwide and continuing importance? We can't say this book will answer that question, but we hope it will provide the material for further thought.

On June 10, 1992, A.A. was said to be 57 years old. Its General Service Office estimated the total membership at 2,120,130 and stated further that "there is no way to count members who no longer have a home group. "Thus, at any given point in time today, there are in excess of two million people moving in and out of the doors of the A.A. Fellowship. This from a humble beginning of about 100 men and women at the time its official text-the Big Book-was published in 1939. Our book is about A.A. 's birthplace and the part it played in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Where and When Did Alcoholics Anonymous Begin?

If one asks where and when A.A. began, there is an answer that is generally accepted in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous today. Alcoholics Anonymous was "founded" at 855 Ardmore Avenue in Akron, Ohio, on June 10, 1935. June 10th was the day

A.A. 's co-founder, Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, had his last drink and began successfully and in earnest helping other alcoholics to recover, working in tandem with A.A. 's other co-founder, William Griffith Wilson, whom Dr. Bob had met three weeks before on Mother's Day, May 11, 1935. The founding event took place at the Ardmore Avenue home of Dr. Bob and Anne Smith, with whom Bill Wilson was then staying.

A number of A.A. 's "Conference Approved" books specify the Akron date and place as that of the founding. But over time, there have been divergent views on this matter as evidenced by the following statement in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers:

Although arguments have been made and will be made for other significant occasions in A.A. history, it is generally agreed that Alcoholics Anonymous began there, in Akron, on that date: June 10, 1935.

The "arguments" in favor of other founding dates and places have come from those who chose to emphasize the date that Bill Wilson's longtime friend and "sponsor," Ebby Thacher, carried to Bill at his home at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn, New York, the message of Ebby's recovery from alcoholism in the Oxford Group. That date was in late November of 1934. Then there was the date at Towns Hospital, 293 Central Park West, in New York City, sometime after December 11, 1934, and before December 18, 1934, when Bill had his religious experience called by Bill his "hot flash"-after which Bill never drank again. In June of 1985, Lois Wilson wrote to a Brooklyn A.A. newsletter and said, "As far as I am concerned, A.A. began in 1934 in my father's old house on Brooklyn Heights where Bill and I were living. When Bill came home to 182 Clinton St. from Towns' Hospital in New York after his spiritual awakening, he began immediately bringing drunks to the house." Some wistfully point to the day when Akron Oxford Group members got on their knees with Dr. Bob at the T. Henry and Clarace Williams home at 676 Palisades Drive, in Akron, to pray for Dr. Bob's recovery. And that date was shortly before the Mother's Day, 1935, meeting of Dr. Bob and Bill. Then there is the focus on the date when alcoholics began using the name "Alcoholics Anonymous" for their fellowship. This view would hold that A.A. began shortly after Dr. Bob's sponsee, Clarence S., declared at the T. Henry Williams home on May 10, 1939, that meetings would be held in Cleveland for alcoholics. Clarence S. said "This would be a meeting of 'Alcoholics Anonymous. ," Both Clarence and an A.A. account said Clarence borrowed the meeting name from the just-published Big Book-Alcoholics Anonymous. And this did prompt Clarence to call himself the "founder" of Alcoholics Anonymous in its present form But that is certainly not the view expressed in A.A. 's "Conference Approved" literature. Officially, the genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous was in Akron, Ohio, at Dr. Bob's home at 855 Ardmore Avenue, on June 10, 1935.

The Unique Status of Akron

Our work is not much concerned with where and when A.A. was founded in Akron, but how. For we will be dealing, not with the time and place of A.A. 's founding, but rather with its foundations and the unique Akron role.

Certainly one accepted foundation involved the sequence of events that began with Dr. Carl G. Jung in Switzerland in 1931 (when Jung told Rowland Hazard that it might be possible for him to recover from alcoholism by aligning himself with a religious organization and achieving a religious or conversion experience). These events concluded in New York, in November, 1934, when Bill's "sponsor" and friend, Ebby Thacher, surrendered his life to God at the Calvary Episcopal Church Rescue Mission in New York. Ebby had been rescued from institutionalization for alcoholism through the help of Oxford Group members Rowland Hazard, F. Shepard Cornell, and Cebra Graves. And it was at that time that Ebby carried to Bill the message of Ebby'sown recovery, stating to Bill that God had done for him (Ebby) what he could not do for himself. However that historical focus was primarily on the solution and program of action A.A. obtained from religion-that recovery from alcoholism could be achieved through a conversion experience arising out of the application of Oxford Group principles and practices.

Another foundation involved Bill's own deliverance from alcoholism after he had heard the recovery message from Ebby Thacher. At that time, Bill applied Oxford Group principles and had his own religious experience at Towns Hospital, in New York, in late December of 1934. Perhaps that historical focus would be on the problem-defmed in tenns of the medical facts about the deadly and seemingly hopeless disease of alcoholism-that Bill had learned from Dr. William D. Silkworth at Towns Hospital. These devastating facts had turned Bill to his Maker and had given him occasion to surrender to God, as Ebby had, and experience Ebby's religious solution.

But the technique of successfully sharing a recovery message with another alcoholic was not yet in place. Bill's first six months of Oxford Group evangelism after he left Towns Hospital failed utterly. Though "burning with confidence and enthusiasm" and though he relentlessly "pursued alcoholic’s morning, noon, and night," he failed to help one single alcoholic achieve recovery. And this, he was informed by Dr. William D. Silkworth, was because he was "preaching to the drunks" instead of hitting them ftrst with the deadliness of their disease.

We believe the record is clear that what we shall call the four parts of A.A. 's practical and successful program of action-(I) the admission of defeat and lack of power at the hands of alcohol, (2) the necessity for finding God to achieve power, (3) the undertaking of a spiritual program for wiping the slate clean of spiritual blocks to God, and (4) the attainment of a conversion experience and then carrying the recovery message with love and service to others-received their crucial and effective trial in Akron.

Akron was the laboratory where the recovery message was developed through experience and was, with substantial success, shared with other alcoholics who did recover. Only after the successes that occurred primarily in Akron was co-founder Bill Wilson able to say with conviction that A.A.'s "flying blind period" was over and its basics were in place. As Bill put it, "God had shown alcoholics how it [the message] might be passed from hand to hand. "Medicine had revealed the problem. And there is no doubt about the Towns Hospital, New York, genesis of that aspect. Religion had revealed the solution-primarily through events focused at Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr.'s Calvary Episcopal Church, Calvary House, and Calvary Rescue Mission in New York. And practical experience-developed and brought to full fruit in Akron-had proved that the solution could be applied to the problem and that, through the Oxford Group's practical program of action, suffering alcoholics could be relieved by God of their seemingly hopeless alcoholism when one alcoholic conveyed the message of hope to another. In other words, it was in Akron that the message-carrying-the service aspect-was developed and turned into an effective program of action. This meant more than the fact that Bill and Dr. Bob had learned in Akron how to carry the message. It meant they had studied the Bible and other spiritual resources there and then articulated the message and program of action that they began suggesting for recovery.

What This Book Will Cover

We will explore the Akron beginnings from: (1) the day Oxford Group member Jim Newton came to Akron, Ohio, and made a decision to help his alcoholic friend, Russell Firestone, to (2) the day in December of 1939...