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V. The alcoholic in the Oxford Group

In 1934-35, Dr. Bob’s wife and children were existing on the bare necessities and living in a shambles of broken promises, given in all sincerity.

Anne did what she could to hold the family together and prayed that her husband would somehow find an answer to his problem. “How my wife kept her faith and courage during all those years, I’ll never know,” Bob said. “If she had not, I know I would have been dead a long time ago.

“For some reason, we alcoholics seem to have the gift of picking out the world’s finest women,” he said. “Why they should be subjected to the tortures we inflict upon them, I cannot explain.”

In early 1933, about the time of the beer experiment, Dr. Bob and Anne had come into contact with the Oxford Group. It was a spiritual movement that sought to recapture the power of first-century Christianity in the modern world. Its founder, Frank Buchman, had brought followers into his First Century Christian Fellowship two decades earlier. His Oxford Group Movement, started in 1921, was based upon the same principles. (In 1939, he changed the name to Moral Rearmament.)

Members of the Oxford Group sought to achieve spiritual regeneration by making a surrender to God through rigorous self-examination, confessing their character defects to another human being, making restitution for harm done to others, and giving without thought of reward—or, as they put it: “No pay for soul surgery.” They did, however, accept contributions.

Emphasis was placed on prayer and on seeking guidance from God in all matters. The movement also relied on study of the Scriptures and developed some of its own literature as well.

At the core of the program were the “four absolutes”: absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity, and absolute love.

(In 1948, Dr. Bob recalled the absolutes as “the only yardsticks” Alcoholics Anonymous had in the early days, before the Twelve Steps. He said he still felt they held good and could be extremely helpful when he wanted to do the right thing and the answer was not obvious. “Almost always, if I measure my decision carefully by the yardsticks of absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity, and absolute love, and it checks up pretty well with those four, then my answer can’t be very far out of the way,” he said. The absolutes are still published and widely quoted at A.A. meetings in the Akron-Cleveland area.)

In addition to the four absolutes, the Oxford Groupers had the “five C’s” and the “five procedures.” The C’s were confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance, while the procedures were: Give in to God; listen to God’s direction; check guidance; restitution; and sharing—for witness and for confession. There were slogans as well: “Study men, not books”; “Win your argument, lose your man”; “Give news, not views.” In addition, a member recalled how Groupers would go around smiling enthusiastically and asking each other, “Are you maximum?”

Undisputed leader (as well as founder) of the Oxford Group Movement, Frank Buchman was a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, who did not drink or smoke. Buchman looked askance at A.A. in later years, and was never quite comfortable with its members.

Oxford Groupers sought to “change” community leaders, with the idea that their example would motivate others. Thus, there was a great deal of publicity and fanfare when new converts achieved spiritual rebirth. Dr. Buchman himself was often interviewed and widely quoted.

A rubber-company president, grateful because the Oxford Group had sobered up his son, brought some 60 Oxford Group leaders and “team members” to Akron for a ten-day “house party,” as their gatherings were called. They held meetings throughout the day, and it all culminated in a dinner for 400 prominent citizens of the community.

This had a substantial impact in local church circles and attracted many new members, who subsequently set up weekly meetings in various neighborhoods (much as A.A. members do today).

Oxford Group influence later waned in Akron for various reasons, including the fact that the rubber-company heir got drunk again. But by this time, the team had moved on to St. Louis to sober up a beer baron’s son, a situation that undoubtedly posed ticklish publicity problems for the groupers.

It was Anne who persuaded Dr. Bob to go to Oxford Group meetings in the first place, but he later found himself attracted to members of the group “because of their seeming poise, health, and happiness.

“These people spoke with great freedom from embarrassment, which I could never do,” he said. “They seemed very much at ease.” Above all, Dr. Bob was impressed because “they seemed to be happy. I was self-conscious and ill at ease most of the time, my health was at the breaking point, and I was thoroughly miserable.”

Dr. Bob realized that these newfound friends “had something I did not have.” He thought he might profit from an association with them. If he did not, it wouldn’t do him any harm.

Probably because of his earlier church experiences, his enthusiasm cooled somewhat when he found that their program had a spiritual aspect. However, it was reassuring to know that they did not meet in a church, but at the Mayflower Hotel and in private homes.

Dr. Bob and Anne were regular attenders at the West Hill group, which met on Thursday nights. He and a few others might have been alcoholics, but he would not admit this in the beginning, when “I at no time sensed that it might be an answer to my liquor problem.”

For the next two and a half years, Bob attended Oxford Group meetings regularly and gave much time and study to its philosophy. It might be said, in fact, that he then embarked on a spiritual search destined to last for the rest of his life.

“I read everything I could find, and talked to everyone who I thought knew anything about it,” Dr. Bob said. He read the Scriptures, studied the lives of the saints, and did what he could to soak up the spiritual and religious philosophies of the ages. Still, he got drunk.

Another of the regular attenders at the West Hill meeting was Henrietta Seiberling, daughter-in-law of Frank A. Seiberling, founder and first president of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. A graduate of Vassar College, Henrietta was at the time a young housewife with three teenage children, who were also members of the Oxford Group.

As she recalled it (in 1978, the year before her death), a friend named Delphine Weber asked her one night in March or April 1935, “What are we going to do about Bob Smith?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Henrietta asked.

“He’s a terrible drinker,” Delphine replied, noting that he was having problems at the hospital and was practically bankrupt because of his drinking.

“I immediately felt guided that we should have a meeting for Bob Smith, before Bill [Wilson] ever came to Akron,” said Henrietta. She went to fellow Oxford Groupers T. Henry and Clarace Williams and asked whether it would be possible to use their home as a meeting place. They readily agreed.

T. Henry, who was a quite well-to-do inventor responsible for a new process in tire-making, was said to look more like a drunk than most alcoholics, because of his ruddy complexion. He was kidded about this a great deal but took it good-naturedly.

Though T. Henry and Clarace undoubtedly had their own spiritual problems, they were regarded as a saintly couple who freely gave of themselves out of a kind of sustained natural goodness that surfaces for only brief moments in most of us.

Unlike others who shared their memories of the Smiths, Henrietta came close to criticizing Anne, stating that she never shared deeply at meetings and was “very sensitive.” Henrietta told of an incident in which Anne was speaking about a situation and using the third person. “I said, ‘Anne, would you put that in the first person singular?’ She burst into tears. First-person sharing was costly to her pride. But she knew me well enough to know my motive, and she trusted it. You know, we must hold them to the highest.

“Bob was very restrained in his conversation,” said Henrietta. “He was absolutely honest and never gossiped. I hardly know what to say his shortcomings might have been except for drink. He had a strong character—like the Rock of Gibraltar.” In his A.A. days, she said, “He never spoke as a ‘founder.’ He always said, ‘I just work here.’ ”

Having found a place to meet, Henrietta then gathered some Oxford Group members to attend. “I decided that the people who shared in the Oxford Group had never shared very costly things to make Bob lose his pride [through their example] and share what I thought would cost him a great deal,” she said.

“I warned Anne that I was going to have this meeting. I didn’t tell her it was for Bob, but I said, ‘Come prepared to mean business. There is going to be no pussyfooting around.’

“We all shared very deeply our shortcomings and what we had victory over. Then there was a silence, and I waited and thought, ‘Will Bob say anything?’

“Sure enough, in that deep, serious tone of his, he said, ‘Well, you good people have all shared things that I am sure were very costly to you, and I am going to tell you something which may cost me my profession. I am a secret drinker, and I can’t stop.’

“We said, ‘Do you want us to pray for you?’

“Then someone said, ‘Should we get on our knees?’

“And he said, ‘Yes,’ so we did.” (This was the beginning of the Wednesday-night meeting at the home of the Williamses, who, according to Dr. Bob, “allowed us to bang up the plaster and the doorjambs, carting chairs up- and downstairs.” Meetings continued at T. Henry’s until 1954, long after the alcoholics had “spun off.”)

“The next morning,” Henrietta continued, “I, who knew nothing about alcoholism (I thought a person should drink like a gentleman and that’s all), was saying a prayer for Bob.

“I said, ‘God, I don’t know anything about drinking, but I told Bob that I was sure that if he lived this way of life, he could quit drinking. Now I need Your help, God.’ Something said to me—I call it ‘guidance’; it was like a voice in my head— ‘Bob must not touch one drop of alcohol.’

“I knew that wasn’t my thought. So I called Bob and told him I had guidance for him. ‘This is very important,’ I said. He came over at ten in the morning, and I told him that my guidance was that he mustn’t touch one drop of alcohol. He was very disappointed, because he thought guidance would mean seeing somebody or going someplace.

“Then he said, ‘Henrietta, I don’t understand it. Nobody understands it.’ He said, ‘Some doctor has written a book about it, but he doesn’t understand it. I don’t like the stuff. I don’t want to drink.’

“I said, ‘Well, Bob, that is what I have been guided about.’ And that was the beginning of our meetings, long before Bill ever came.”

Later, in 1948, Dr. Bob described what might have been the same conversation with Mrs. Seiberling: “I would go to my good friend Henri and say, ‘Henri, do you think I want to stop drinking liquor?’ She, being a very charitable soul, would say, ‘Yes, Bob, I’m sure you want to stop.’ I would say, ‘Well, I can’t conceive of any living human who really wanted to do something as badly as I think I do, who could be such a total failure. Henri, I think I’m just one of those want-to-want-to guys.’ And she’d say, ‘No, Bob, I think you want to. You just haven’t found a way to work it yet.’ ”

T. Henry Williams thought that Bob’s drinking slowed down a good bit after he came to the Oxford Group—from every night to once every two or three weeks—but that he didn’t quite find an answer until he met Bill.

This impression of an “improved pattern” was probably created by Bob’s desire and ability to hide his drinking, even after he admitted that he had a problem. For, as he said later, “They told me I should go to their meetings regularly, and I did, every week. They said that I should affiliate myself with some church, and we did that. They also said I should cultivate the habit of prayer, and I did that—at least, to a considerable extent for me. But I got tight every night. . . . I couldn’t understand what was wrong.”

Sue remembered sitting on the steps at a few Oxford Group meetings and recalled that her mother seemed to talk more freely about her father’s problem at this time, although no answer had yet been provided.

She also recalled that there had not been much in the way of religious observance in their own home up to that time. “I know we went to Sunday school every Sunday, but they didn’t. Dad made a pledge that he wouldn’t go to church and almost kept it until they started to go to J. C. Wright’s church once in a while, through Oxford Group connections.”

This was the situation on May 11, 1935, the Saturday when Henrietta Seiberling received a telephone call from an absolute stranger.

“It was Bill Wilson, and I’ll never forget what he said,” she recalled. “ ‘I’m from the Oxford Group, and I’m a rum hound from New York.’

“Those were his words. I thought, ‘This is really like manna from heaven.’ I (who was desperate to help Bob in something I didn’t know much about) was ready. ‘You come right out here,’ I said. And my thought was to put these two men together.

“So he came out to my house and stayed for dinner. I told him to come to church with me the next morning and I would get Bob, which I did.”

Active in the Oxford Group, Henrietta Seiberling hoped

that its program would relieve Dr. Bob’s alcoholism.