Finally Bill explained that working with drunks in New York was probably the main factor that kept him sober all those months. Faced with the failure of his proxy battle, something he had pinned his hopes on for the future, the urge to drink returned with a vengeance. He felt if he could only find another alcoholic like himself to talk to, perhaps that would help him fight the obsession. That’s why he had called and was here now.
Dr. Bob later recalled realizing that Bill understood alcoholism from actual experience. “In other words, he talked my language,” said Dr. Bob. “He knew all the answers, and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading.”8
Suddenly, this helpless, almost hopeless inebriate began to see dimly through his fog. Dr. Bob, like Bill, had tried to stay sober through religion by attending Oxford Group meetings. But, also like Bill, he had failed. Now he was being offered a new solution, one his young friend from the East had already tried and so far found successful—turning to God while also working with other alcoholics. Perhaps it could work for him too. Perhaps talking with, being with, working with this newfound compatriot, he could stay sober too.
This recognition, this coming together of two desperate drunks seeking sobriety, was no mere coincidence. As they would both acknowledge, it was an event far beyond their comprehension. It was also the beginning of the worldwide Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They talked on for hours over two more pots of coffee. Dr. Bob began to open up. He spoke frankly, as unashamedly as Bill. When they finally parted at eleven fifteen that night, they knew something had radically changed in them both. Although they couldn’t explain what it was at that moment, a spark that was to light future fires had been struck.
Much to Lois’s dismay, Bill decided to extend his stay in Akron for two reasons. First, his pivotal meeting with Dr. Bob, another failed Oxford Group drunkard, had revived the dream he had back in New York of creating a movement separate and apart from the “Groupers” as he now called them—a movement that would be focused solely on saving alcoholics. Second, with renewed confidence in his ability to stay sober in difficult times and situations, he had phoned Howard Tompkins at Beers & Company and talked him into an additional modest advance so he could try a new angle to win control of National Rubber.
Since he and Dr. Bob found themselves meeting almost daily, Annie Smith invited her new ally to be their guest at their Ardmore Avenue home. Bill gratefully accepted.
Back in Brooklyn Heights, Lois knew nothing of what had taken place at the Mayflower Hotel or at Henrietta Seiberling’s gatehouse. All she knew from her husband’s last letter was that he was in trouble, and she wasn’t there to help him. On the one hand, she was angry he hadn’t called, and yet on the other, she was fearful of his present condition. She wanted to catch the next bus to Akron, yet she wanted to believe that her God was taking care of him. She found herself tired and short-tempered from worry and lack of sleep, both at work and with her family.
Her father, who was now eighty, was retired and living in New York City with his new wife. He dropped by for a visit one evening as he did on occasion. This time it was to pick up some belongings he had stored in the attic. Lois had already told him about her husband’s exciting exploits in Akron and their high hopes for the future. Dr. Burnham simply commented that he was pleased his son-in-law finally had a paying job somewhere, even if it was out West.
But this particular night he could tell by the familiar sadness in his daughter’s eyes that all wasn’t going very well. The good doctor had promised himself he wouldn’t interfere any longer in her and Bill’s life together. Besides, he wasn’t feeling well himself and hoped to avoid any additional stress in his now rather uncomplicated existence. So he simply let his oldest and dearest daughter know as always that he was nearby if ever she needed him.9
This gave Lois some comfort. But the letter she received from Bill the following day only added to her confusion and concern. After stating that he planned to remain in Akron for a while longer to continue the proxy fight, his letter went on, “I’m writing this from the office of one of my new friends, Dr. Smith. He had my trouble and is getting to be an ardent Grouper. I have been to his house for meals, and the rest of his family is as nice as he is. I have witnessed at a number of meetings and have been taken to a number of people.”10 Bill went on to say that Dr. Bob was a prominent surgeon in town, but was in danger of losing his medical practice. His wife, Anne, was grateful that Bill and her husband had gotten together.
As Bill went on to explain his close call at the Mayflower Hotel and how his meeting with Dr. Bob had kept him sober, saved his life, and lifted his spirits, Lois felt a twinge of jealousy surge through her. It quickly turned into a strong feeling of resentment. Just when her husband needed her most, she thought to herself, some stranger comes along and does for him what her love and sacrifice all these years couldn’t do. This drunken doctor, whoever he is, not only kept her husband from drinking, but lifted his spirits and renewed his resolve to fulfill his dreams, whatever they might be at this point.11
Lois put the letter aside as she rose from the living-room couch and walked to the small table where her Bible rested. She opened it and stared at the scrawled promises Bill had written on the page some time ago—promises she had prayed for years would come true. Now they had, only not in the way she had expected. Perhaps that’s why all of these mixed emotions were now swirling inside her.
What is happening to me? she whispered to herself. Why do I feel this way? This is not the kind of person I used to be, certainly not the kind of person I want to be. Why do I always seem so angry and afraid and now jealous and resentful of a man I have never met, a man I don’t even know? I should be glad he was there, as Ebby was, to help my husband and that Bill was there to help him. But I was also there to support Bill, to go to those Oxford Group meetings with him, to be with him whenever he wanted to talk, to question, to share my strength and hope.
As she touched Bill’s handwriting in her Bible, the most fearful thought of all now struck her. Bill was hundreds of miles away, yet he was sober, happy, and filled with self-confidence. This she could tell from his letter. And he did it without her help. What if he doesn’t need me anymore? she suddenly thought. If that’s so, then what is my life all about? What is the meaning of it all? She closed the Bible and stared at it, afraid of what the answer might be. She began to weep.12
Bill knew his drunkenness over the years had seriously eroded his wife’s faith in him. There were days, weeks, even months when they almost seemed like strangers to each other. At the same time, he was aware that she wanted him back in New York, especially after he informed her the proxy battle was all but lost. He was determined now to restore her faith in him even though he understood it would take time. He believed the deep love they still had for each other—tested by the years—would win out in the end. He felt certain of that, provided he didn’t drink again. That was foremost in his mind.
When Bill received the cash from Tompkins, he immediately hired a shrewd local attorney to investigate the possibility of fraud in the stockholders’ vote involving National Rubber’s management group. But as much as he wanted financial success, he was now even more eager to pursue his talks with Dr. Bob and his dream of building a fellowship of drunks. He thought Dr. Bob was equally enthusiastic about the idea until along came another serious setback, another near disaster. Dr. Bob had been sober about ten days when he casually mentioned he planned to attend the annual American Medical Association convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, four days hence. He had never missed one of these important gatherings, he said, and now it was even more essential to reestablish his reputation in the community. Bill saw the worried look on Annie’s face but found it hard to argue the importance of the trip.
The Akron physician was drunk before he reached Atlantic City. He stayed drunk throughout the convention. Several of his colleagues put him back
aboard the train for Akron drunk. Bill felt he had failed his good friend when he received a phone call from the Akron station master to pick up Dr. Bob at the depot at four o’clock the morning of June 9. Back at Ardmore Avenue, Bill put him under a cold shower, fed him black coffee throughout the day, and continued to talk to him late into the evening. Dr. Bob went to bed that night humbled by the experience and promising his dedicated friend he would never let him down again.
When he awoke the next morning with a terrible hangover, Bill gave his friend a bottle of beer to calm his shakes. That was June 10, 1935, and that was Robert Holbrook Smith’s last drink. That is also the day the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous celebrates as “Founders Day” because both Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson never had another drink for the rest of their lives.
But now they both realized they must take what they discovered to others in order to strengthen their own sobriety. They found their third candidate strapped to a bed in City Hospital, where Dr. Bob had once been on the staff. The man’s name was Bill Dotson, a disbarred attorney who had blackened the eye of a young nurse who was caring for him. Depressed and remorseful, the lawyer listened intently while these two drunks told their stories. He totally identified with them and became the third sober member of this embryonic cluster of alcoholics who now had a much clearer view of their future together.
Bill had been imploring Lois to come to Akron for a visit. She had taken time off from work when he was drinking, he told her on the phone. Why couldn’t she take some time off to spend with him sober?
“But all I did was nag at him to come home,” she later recalled. “I kept saying we lived in Brooklyn, not Akron, Ohio. He said he wanted to show me he could succeed at something. He felt he had always failed at whatever he had undertaken when he was drinking. I thought he was talking only about the proxy fight. But he wasn’t. I could tell there was something else happening so I became more patient with him each time he called. Besides, I hated myself for being a nag.”13
Finally Annie Smith wrote Lois a warm personal letter. She told her what Bill’s efforts meant to her and her family, how they had changed their lives. She said she would be honored if Lois could see her way clear to come for a visit so she could thank her in person. A short while later, Lois boarded a bus for Akron for a week’s vacation. It was early July and she was still fighting her own mixed emotions.14
Bill met her at the bus depot. He kissed and hugged her warmly. She was pleased to see the light in his eyes and the happiness on his face, but wished she had been responsible for making it happen, instead of someone else. If only those mixed emotions could have let her see the truth—that her husband’s sobriety at that very moment was in reality the culmination of all she had given him in their life together. If only he had said something then and there to let her know. But the assault of alcoholism on her own psyche, the fact that spouses and families grow equally sick from the disease, blinded her then to the role she had played and all she had done just to keep him alive, to keep him sane. One day she would be able to see through the pale and understand.
With the Smiths, however, it was a different story. The trepidation and resentment Lois had carried with her on the bus all but vanished as Annie and Bob greeted her on the front porch of their modest home.15
“I loved Annie and Bob from the moment I saw them,” Lois remembered. “They were so warm, so gracious, so good. Bob was a tall, lanky Vermonter like Bill and, like him, yearned to be of use to others. In other respects they were very different.”16
Lois said that “Bob and Bill were very busy at the time [I arrived]. They had just gotten Bill D. into the program. So Anne and I spent a lot of time together. Anne was the person I related to as the wife of an alcoholic, even though we didn’t talk too much about our problems.”17
Lois later talked about how she was disappointed not to be spending time with Bill, but she enjoyed her time with Annie. She noted that Annie was as good a listener as she was a talker. The only sad thing was, she was a heavy smoker like Bill.18
Bob Smith, Jr., was sixteen at the time of Lois’s visit. “I remember seeing Lois the day she arrived,” he said. “It was a weekend and she was as cute as Christmas, she was. She had this wonderful warm personality that made you feel right at home with her. Maybe that’s why she and my mother hit it right off. But I think I grumbled the whole week she was there because I had to give up my room for her and Bill and sleep in the attic. Bill had been sleeping on a Murphy bed in the den.”19 Annie, who was more than ten years older than Lois, filled her new friend in on all that had happened—Bill’s call to Reverend Tunks, the gathering at Henrietta Seiberling’s home, even her husband’s relapse and how Bill patiently got him sober again. She said it almost seemed like a miracle after so many years of hardship and degradation. Perhaps that’s why she still carried this sense of doom, something she couldn’t quite overcome. And when Annie remarked that she still walked on eggshells when Bob was around and kept all her toes and fingers crossed, Lois smiled and nodded in agreement. She fully understood and began to share her own experiences.
Though affable and outgoing, Lois had always been a private person when it came to her feelings and especially with regard to her husband’s drinking and all the shame and humiliation involved. But here she talked openly and freely about these things to a woman she had only just met, yet a woman she felt she had known forever since they had so much in common. In that one short week, Lois Wilson and Annie Smith developed a strong, close bond that would grow and last for more than a decade, right up to Annie’s passing. It would help each of them through difficult times and produce the kind of self-discovery that would also help others who followed in their footsteps. But for now, their warm and loving friendship was enough.
Annie knew Lois wanted her husband to return to New York as soon as his proxy battle was over, which seemed only a matter of weeks at the most. At the same time, she admitted she was being selfish for wanting him to stay in Akron. She feared what could happen once he left. Lois remembered Annie telling her, “Having Bill here has been a godsend. Bob’s practice has picked up. The bills are getting paid. There’s peace in the house once again. I have a semblance of hope back in my life and I owe all that to your husband . . . and to God answering my prayers.”20
While Lois was happy and a bit proud that her husband had done so much for this wonderful family, Annie’s words actually prompted another twinge of jealousy, followed by that now familiar feeling of resentment. Here was a woman who, like herself, had put up with a terrible alcoholic, but now she was beginning to get some good things back in her life again—the kinds of things Lois herself yearned for. If Bill could help strangers in Akron find them again, why couldn’t he bring them back into our own lives? she thought. Annie would have understood, but Lois kept these feelings to herself, at least for now.21
By the time Lois returned to Brooklyn, she had a very strong sense that her husband’s main priority was working with alcoholics. She had seen him applying very little effort to the proxy battle even though it was currently putting bread on the table and its outcome was important to their future, or so she thought. She still had no idea where his work with drunks would lead even though she knew how important that was for all of them—her and Bill, Dr. Bob and Annie. But Dr. Bob had his practice. He had a growing income now. How did Bill plan to earn a living? What about the dream he came here with—to build a financial empire? He had no answers whenever she asked. He would only say it depended upon the outcome of the proxy fight . . . “and other things.”
Lois rode the bus back to New York still filled with anxiety about the future and carrying all the mixed emotions she had brought with her to Akron.22 Bill and Dr. Bob continued to go almost daily to City Hospital to talk with drunks. Afterward, they worked to formulate a program that would keep their new candidates sober, a program based essentially on the Oxford Group principles in which they both still believed. Soon
they added a fourth sober member to their clan, and then a fifth. Bill was beginning to think that few men of forty could find a vocation more fascinating, more challenging, more absorbing of their energies than trying to sober up complicated, denying, angry, self-pitying, hopeless alcoholics. Just where it would all lead to he had no idea. But it was what he felt compelled to do—absolutely.
By the middle of August, the shrewd lawyer he hired had actually convinced a federal judge that National Rubber’s management group had solicited fraudulent proxies in an attempt to gain control of the company. The judge ordered a revote. It was very close. Bill’s group lost by a mere 2 percent.
The battle was over. Bill’s business venture in Akron had failed. All he had to show for his four months there was the work he had done with Dr. Bob and the small group of now-sober alcoholics following in their footsteps. So on August 25, 1935, he caught the train back to New York leaving behind his dreams of building a financial empire—but having his dream of creating a fellowship of sober alcoholics ahead of him.
Lois met her husband at Pennsylvania Station. She was grateful he was still sober but worried about what their life together would be like from this moment on.
11
Nightmare on Clinton Street
IT WAS THE WEEK BEFORE THANKSGIVING, 1935. CLARK BURNHAM had been in Vermont for some months selling his beloved cottage and the surrounding property on Emerald Lake, a sad and painful event for him and his entire family, who had so many happy memories of growing up there. But retired now and with little income, he and his wife needed the funds to support themselves. Upon getting word that his son-in-law was back from Akron and filling the Clinton Street house with a swarm of his drinking buddies, the good doctor decided to pay his daughter a visit upon his return to the city. Yes, he had promised himself he wouldn’t interfere in their lives, but these ghastly rumors had to be looked into.1
The Lois Wilson Story Page 23
