The Life of Bill Wilson
Sober for nearly six months, Bill Wilson needed to get back to work. He’d tried to help dozens of alcoholics since he had his own spiritual experience, but only Wilson himself had managed to stay sober. Now he needed to think of his wife Lois and his family’s own dire financial needs. An opportunity to make some money through a stock deal taking over the National Rubber Machinery Company seemed like the opportunity he needed to remake his fortunes. Together with several financial partners from his Wall Street days, he boarded the train and headed west to Akron, Ohio.
It’s hard to study the history of AA and not see the hand of God at work in the background. The deal soon fell apart and Wilson was left to pick up the pieces trying to salvage what he could. Broke and alone, he now stood in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel looking down the hall toward an open bar that seemed to be calling his name. Just two years before, on that very spot where temptation beckoned, the Mayflower Hotel had played host to another visitor. Frank Buchman and a team of Oxford Group members from around the world had brought their message of a life-changing fellowship to the citizens of Akron. The Group had sobered up Harvey Firestone’s son and the millionaire wanted them to come share their transforming spiritual principles with the community. The Mayflower served as their home base for ten days while they planted the seeds of their First Century Christian Fellowship among the people of Akron. The seeds took hold and the spirit they left behind was soon to change Wilson’s life forever.
Bill looked away from the bar and saw a church directory on the hotel wall. The name of the Reverend Walter Tunks seemed to stand out from all the others. Through a series of calls, he was given the name of Henrietta Sieberling as someone who might put him in touch with an alcoholic to work with. Henrietta, it turned out, had a doozey for him! Just a few weeks before his call, one of her not-very-successful group members Dr. Robert Smith had confessed that he was indeed “a secret drinker.” Right after that Henrietta received guidance during her Quiet Time that “Dr. Bob was not to take the first drink.” Now the call from this self-described “rum hound from New York” seemed heaven sent. Henrietta tried to arrange a meeting immediately but when she called Bob’s wife she learned that the physician had come home as potted as the plant he’d brought for his wife. The meeting was put off 24 hours until Mother’s Day.
"Fifteen minutes is all I’m giving this guy!" That was the reluctant commitment Bob made to his wife. The meeting took place at Henrietta’s as scheduled. Bill and Bob went into another room and they didn’t emerge for nearly three hours. Bill had learned that preaching to alcoholics did little good but sharing his experience, strength, and hope seemed to open them up to the possibility that the recovery that had eluded them for so long might just be available after all. Bob felt that hope for the first time in years. Wilson soon moved into Bob and Ann’s home on Ardmore Avenue. Each morning he joined the couple in their daily practice of Quiet Time, reading from scripture and listening for the directions God had for them each day.
Bob was to have one more bout with alcohol before he could find lasting recovery. Thinking himself sufficiently strong, he went off to attend a medical convention in Atlantic City with both Bill and Ann’s blessings. Bob started drinking on the way home. Filled with remorse, he claimed that he’d learned something from his relapse that had eluded him up till then. Bill and Ann wanted to believe him and they helped sober him up in preparation for the next day’s surgery, even giving him a beer that morning to steady his nerves. They waited and waited for his return that night but Dr. Bob didn’t show and the hour grew later and later. Reluctantly, Bill told Ann he needed to go back to New York and would take the train the following day. He’d done all he could do and while Bob had looked like so promising a candidate, it obviously hadn’t worked.
Moments later, the door opened and Bob Smith stood there beaming as he greeted his wife and his friend. He was late, he said, because he had been going all around Akron making the amends that he had always put off doing. Bob was a proud man and pride had kept him from getting sobriety he desperately wanted. On that day, June 10th, 1935 AA was born in Akron, Ohio.