Historical Figures in A.A.
Rowland Hazard, Yes, it is spelled that way, requested help for his alcoholism from Dr. Carl Jung in 1926. (pp 26 & 27).
Dr. Carl Jung informed Rowland that his only hope was a vital spiritual experience. (p. 27)
Reverend Frank Buchman was founder of the Oxford Group where Rowland began to seek spiritual help in 1928.
Courtney Baylor was a member of the Emmanuel Movement who helped Rowland regain sobriety in 1934.
Ebby Thacher, Yes, it is spelled that way, was in hot water for disturbing the peace (shooting pigeons in an elegant neighborhood in Manchester, Vermont) and was facing a sentence of confinement.
Cebra Graves was an Oxford Group member who went to court to save Ebby from being locked up–Cebra’s father was the Magistrate, and it worked!
Reverend Sam Shoemaker was minister of an Episcopal Church in lower Manhattan. His church originated the Calvary Mission where Ebby became a resident in this mission late 1934. Reverend Shoemaker was head of the Oxford Group of eastern United States.
Bill Wilson’s alcoholic recovery attempts were brought to Ebby’s attention while residing in this mission. Consequently, he carried his new-found sobriety message to Bill in Brooklyn Hts., NY. in late 1934. (pp 8-9) Bill had his last drink and immediately began attendance with the Oxford Group
Reverend Walter Tunks was head of the Oxford Group in Akron, Ohio. During a business trip Bill Wilson phoned him in a desperate attempt to find another alcoholic to work with to stay sober himself. He was given a list of Oxford Group members who could perhaps be of help. As the result, Bill came in telephone contact with Henrietta Seiberling.
Henrietta Sieberling was a leading member of the Oxford group in Akron where that group was–just at that time!–praying that Dr. Bob Smith would find sobriety (May 1935). Henrietta introduced Bill to Dr. Bob on May 12th.
Dr. Bob Smith talked with Bill and finally found continual sobriety the following June. They agreed that to maintain sobriety, then needed to carry their message to another alcoholic.
Bill Dotson was the first to find continual sobriety as the result of their efforts during middle or late June 1935. So June, 1935, was the first month where three continually sober alcoholics began our fellowship. Thank you, God,!
Cleveland A.A. Breaks Away From the Akron Oxford Group
May 6,1939: Clarence S. of Cleveland told Dr. Bob, his sponsor, he would not be back to Oxford Group meetings in Akron and would start an “AA” meeting in Cleveland.
—-PRELUDE TO FIRST MEETING CALLED AN AA MEETING——
<<Smith had no idea what a dynamo Clarence Snyder would become. Snyder was a born salesman, and he proved it by quickly making himself the top man at one of the largest Ford and Mercury dealerships in Ohio.
No less impressive was his ability to sell drunks on sobriety. His first convert was a man he discovered in an abandoned house in a Polish section of Cleveland that was occupied by more than a dozen drunks. The man, Bill H., was lying paralyzed on the floor, but he told Snyder he wanted to get sober. A couple of drunks helped him get to Snyder’s car, and he was driven to Akron City Hospital, where he recovered his health.
Clarence Snyder
Snyder and his wife, Dorothy, drove down to Akron every Wednesday to attend the Oxford Group meetings at T. Henry Williams’s home. The car quickly filled with drunks he had recruited in Cleveland. Soon, thirteen people were cramming into two cars. They called themselves the “Cleveland Contingent,” and they differed in important ways from the Akron alcoholics. There was a woman alcoholic among them—Sylvia K., who would become a founder of the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Chicago. The Clevelanders also included the first Catholic members of the alcoholic squadron. A majority of them were Irish Americans.
Women alcoholics made the rest of the drunks nervous. The sad story of Lil, the first woman that Wilson and Smith had tried to help, convinced many that mixing the sexes was a threat to their sobriety.
But it was the Catholic alcoholics who posed an immediate problem. While the Oxford Group claimed to be an ecumenical movement, its members were overwhelmingly Protestant. Their meetings featured readings from the King James Version of the Bible, which was used only in Protestant churches. There were also periods of “sharing” during which members were encouraged to admit their sins, which in Catholic churches occurred only in the confessional.
These aspects of the Oxford Group were enough to convince some priests in Cleveland that their alcoholic parishioners were participating in Protestant rituals that threatened their immortal souls. Snyder attempted to intercede with the priests, arguing that membership in the Oxford Group was helping their people stay sober and actually making them better Catholics. “The Church didn’t buy this line, not one bit,” Snyder said.
When Snyder took the problem to Smith, Dr. Bob saw only two alternatives. “Remain with the Oxford Group and probably risk excommunication, or, very simply leave the Church,” he said. If the Catholics wanted to stay sober, they had to be prepared to abandon their religion.[iv]….
The 1939 publication of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More than 100 Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism had immediate consequences for the Cleveland alcoholics in the Akron group. Snyder believed it offered a solution to his problem. He approached Smith again:
“What do you have in mind?” Smith asked.
“To start a group without all this rigmarole that’s offensive to other people. We have a book now, the Steps, the absolutes. Anyone can live by that program. We can start our own meetings.”
“We can’t abandon these people*,” Doc replied. “We owe our lives to them.”
“So what? Clarence replied. I owe my life to them, too. But what about all these others?”
“We can’t do anything about them,” Doc said.
“Oh, yes, we can. . . . You’ll see.”
Snyder had recently helped hospitalize a Cleveland patent attorney named Abby G. While Abby was still in the hospital, Snyder told Abby’s wife that he was looking for a place to hold a meeting in Cleveland, and she had offered her own large home.
Cleveland Ohio in May of 1939
In early May, Snyder announced at the Akron meeting that the Clevelanders were leaving the Oxford Group and would begin their own meeting the following week. “Our policy will be mainly this,” Snyder wrote a few weeks later. “Not too much stress on spiritual business at meetings.”[v]
[iv] Mitchell K., The Story of Clarence H. Snyder, 34.
[v] Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, 163, 167.>>
By Chris Finan, author of “Drunks: An American History” (Newer editions are “Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery”
*(The Oxford Group people, specifically T.Henry and Clarace Williams)
STAY TUNED FOR HOW THIS PLAYS OUT LATER THIS MONTH!
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Images: Clarence Snyder and the referenced books
