MARCH ROUNDUP

Many unknown facts about the convention we now know as the March Roundup

The March Roundup as we know it today had roots that go back to the middle of 1961. The General Service structure in the Detroit area was beginning to wane, from the way it was originally set up by Bill W, in 1950. Groups were springing up everywhere, but interest in General Service work was in the decline.

A group of people decided to put together a kind of gathering which included General Service Representatives (G.S.R.s) and anyone else interested in General Service. It would be a 3-4 hour function with a light lunch and a speaker from the General Service Office (G.S.O.) in New York.

This early function was called “General Service Meeting.” It was put together by some of the Delegates of the time, Daniel G., Panel 7 (57/58), Jack L., Panel 9 (59/60) and Andy A., Panel 11 (61/62) and some young men who would be future Delegates, Joseph C., Panel 19 69/70) and William (Gus) J., Panel 23 (73/74).

From 1964 to 1972 it was referred to as the “G.S.R. Rally,” then in 1973 some changes began to occur. The name was changed to “General Service Rally” and the event would take place over two-½ day periods. Each year a district would ‘bid” on it and it would take place in a high school gymnasium or a local auditorium. There would be a speaker from G.S.O. and a dance later with a live band. The Area officers at the time felt uncomfortable that not everyone was able to have dinner with the speaker, so they expanded it to include a Friday night dinner with the G.S.O. speaker, which would cost the princely sum of approximately $5.00 to $7.00.

Then in 1976 there were some changes, the name being changed from “G.S.R. Rally,” to the “March Rally.” This name change caused a slight rift with between General Services of Southeast Michigan and AA of Greater Detroit, fondly called “Ferndale,” which closely resembled their long time event named the “Spring Rally.”

The General Service Assembly declined to give the committee the requested $300.00 start-up money, but instead would give them $200.00 seed money, with no further requests for money. The “Rally” committee would go on to print 3000 tickets. This would also be the first year that the tradition of holding it on the second full weekend of March would be the designated weekend each year.

In 1976 the “March Rally” was held at the U.AW. Hall at Mack & Conner Ave, on March 14th. The speaker was Yolanda of G.S.O. and she was registered at the Holiday Inn on I94 and Connor Ave. the luncheon that day was “Dutch Treat.”

On January, 1977, Andy A., Delegate, Panel 11 (61/62), Regional Trustee (68/71) reported that Ben c. would be chairperson and that he would be the treasurer. The speaker for the “Rally” would be Frank M. of G.S.O. Frank started at G.S.O. in the fall of 1976 and would go on to be an archivist at G.S.O. for many years.

G.S.R.s and their spouses were invited to a smorgasbord at the Detroit-Cadillac Hotel on Saturday, March 12th at a cost of $7.50.

Hank S., Alternate-Delegate, Panel 27 reported that the 1978 “Rally” would be held at the Allen Park Civic Auditorium, near Southfield Road and I94 Expressway on March 19th. The “Rally” chairperson would be Jean P., the first female chair and that the registration cost would be $1.50.

There was a reception for the “Rally” speaker, Retha G., the managing editor of Grapevine Magazine at 7:00pm, March 18th at St. Bernard’s Seminary Hall at Telegraph Road and Ann Arbor Trail. There was to be a buffet dinner at the Hall beginning at 8:00pm with a masquerade dance following. The entertainment was music by the “Nobleman,” which played music from the 40s’ and up. A prize was offered for the best costume and the admission cost was a $5.00 donation.

There was an embarrassing break of traditions, when the “Rally” tickets were donated by a funeral home, whose name appeared on the bottom of the ticket. In the spirit of self-support and non-endorsement, members were requested to cut off the name from their tickets. The Rally committee also reimbursed the funeral home for the cost of the tickets. The speaker and some members stayed at the Presidential Inn in Southgate.

The 1981 “Rally” was held at the State Fair Grounds, March 8th and the speaker was Nell Wing. Nell was Bill Ws personal secretary; later she was to be the first activist of G.S.O. and was a non-alcoholic.

The 1982 “Rally” speaker was Vinnie McC. from G.S.O.

The 1986 “Rally” was held on Van Dyke north of 13 Mile Road. Ed G. was the “Rally” committee chair. The dinner was held at the Ramada Inn on Telegraph north of Northwestern Hwy, the “Rally” itself was held at Birmingham-Seaholm High School.

The 1987 “Rally” was held March 7th at the Holiday Inn, Plymouth at a cost of $11.00 per person.

For 1988 only, this event was called the, “Southeast Michigan Area Conference.” The “Rally” was held at the Southfield-Hilton on March 11, 12 and 13. Yes, this was the first three day convention, but it was not to happen again until 1992.

This convention had had two speakers, Jack W. East-central Regional Trustee, Past Delegate, Area 32, Central-Michigan. The other speaker was frank M., Archivist of G.S.O., who spoke at the “Rally” in 1977.

The 1989 “march Rally” was hosted by the Port Huron area and held at the McMorran Place on March 12th, being just a one day event.  The speaker was John G. of G.S.O.

On March 11, 1990, we would hold the last 1-1/2 day “Rally.” It would be held at the Pontiac Northern High School and would feature guest speaker Richard B. of G.S.O. and dinner tickets would be $7.00. In late 1990 Adam T., Delegate Panel 35 (85/86) suggested setting up an ad-hoc committee for conventions and rallies, that the sole aim of either is to raise funds to send the Delegate to New York for the delegates conference in April. It was the sense of the assembly meeting was that we have a rally. During this General Assembly meeting, District 14, led by Bob McC. and Ralph M. agreed to host the rally.

At the December 12, 1990 General Assembly meeting, the newly elected Delegate, Ken K., Panel 41 (91/92) made a motion that we have a permanent committee for the “Rally,” to help us keep track of our obligations and assure a timely beginning of the planning.

On March 9, 10, 1991, at the Novi Hilton Hotel we held the March Roundup/March Rally. This gradual name change would begin the gradual healing process between General Services of Southeast Michigan and AA of Greater Detroit. The “Roundup/Rally” would be on Saturday and Sunday with the guest speaker being Sarah P., of G.S.O.; District 14 hosting an Alkathon on Friday evening. Bob McC chaired this event proving it could be successful.

On March 13, 14 and 15, 1992 at the Holiday Inn-Fairlane, we held the “1st official March Roundup” or the “31st March Rally.” This event was chaired by Sam R., Delegate, Panel 43 (93/94). Our guest speaker was Helen T., of G.S.O.

In the State of Michigan we have three delegate areas. Through co-operation and unity the State of Michigan Convention rotates between the three delegate areas. When Area 33, Southeast Michigan hosted the State Convention, it would piggy-back the March Roundup off of the State Convention for fear we did not have enough volunteers.

In 2003, it was decided by the General Assembly that it was better off for everyone involved to break apart the State Convention and March Roundup, which we had enough resources to put on both affairs. It has been that way ever since.

The March Roundup continues to grow and break new milestones, getting as many people involved with it, to make it an enjoyable event for the whole family.

June 1, 1945 Detroit Celebrates 10 Years of AA

It was decided by local (Detroit) members of AA that they would put together a celebration to mark the 10th Anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous in existence, something they never dreamt of in 1935.

There was a big celebration being put together in Cleveland, but every area big or small would put on its own celebration to mark this milestone. Detroit was to have theirs on June 1, 1945 and it would be held at the East Group location, St Columbia Episcopal Church.

There were approximately 315 people in attendance. Some of the attendees were Archie T. (founder of AA in Detroit), H. R. “Mike” E. (Area 33’s first Delegate), Jim H. (who worked for Mike and founded the Tuesday Morning Group and the South Macomb Group), Dr. Dean M., who was the speaker for the event, Roy M., who was Archie’s first twelfth step and who in turn twelfth stepped Mike E. Wilf W., an early member from Windsor was in attendance also.

The photo taken for this event was done by Jim H. Pictured in the photo to the left is Roy M., Mike’s brother-in-law, which was the man that was Archie’s first twelfth step call. In the center is Archie T. and on the right is Mike E. These men were the first three men to get sober in Detroit. Sad to say, Roy M. was to relapse and die of alcoholism in 1948.

THE DETROIT PRAYER

Our Heavenly Father,

We ask Thy Blessings on this meeting.
Please Bless the Spirit and
purpose of this group.
Give us strength to follow this program
according to Thy will and in all humility.
Forgive us for yesterday and grant us
Courage for today and
Hope for tomorrow.
Amen

Opening AA Meeting Prayer, Detroit, Michigan, 1945.

Around the Christmas of 1943, the group purchased a Fifth printing of the First edition of our beloved Big Book. It was sent to our co-founder Bill Wilson, for inscribing. It was then sent to Dr. Bob Smith for his inscription. Also signing it were Marty Mann, the first woman in AA, Bill Dotson of Akron, the first member after the co-founders, Archie Trowbridge, the founder of AA in Detroit, Mike Eshleman, the first man to become a member in Detroit and Ruby V., the first woman member in Detroit.

All future inscriptions in the book were closed by unanimous motion of the group. The book was then hand bound and tooled in India Goat-skin, lettered in gold on the cover and presented to the North-West Group by its own members as a Christmas present to itself, in perpetuity, at Christmas, 1943. It was paid for from the treasury of the group at a cost of twenty-five dollars.

The inscriptions are as follows:

“Best wishes to a grand group in the finest of fine undertakings.”

Ruby V. (L.D. Jan, 1941) (The first Detroit woman in AA)

“To Detroit AA may they flourish forever.”

Marty Mann (The first woman in AA)

“May the Northwestern Group always have God’s richest blessings.”

Mike Eshleman (L.D. Sept, 1939) (The second, sic-third) Detroit AA member.)

“Congratulations to the Northwester group for their splendid work and
with best wishes for their continued service in the work of the Lord.”

Bill Dotson (L.D. June, 1935) (The first customer, see page 170)

“Nothing would afford  me more pleasure in the years to come then to see every group in this United States accomplish what the Northwestern
Group has in the last three years.”

“The Fearful One” Arch Trowbridge (L.D. Sept 1938) (The Detroit AA
Founder, see page 332.)

“To the Detroit Northwestern Group of Alcoholics Anonymous;
Greetings-and may your beacon, burn ever bright.”

Ever, “Bill”, (L.D. Nov, 1934)

“Best wishes to your continued successes in all your tests of using the
message.”

Dr. Bob (L.D. June 10, 1935)

Sad to say, this book has disappeared; it would be nice to discover it again and bring it home to the archives, so that, it could be appreciated by everyone. 

Westside > Northwest > Plymouth-Ilene Group #0003

The North-West Group of Alcoholics Anonymous of the City of Detroit was formed in 1941. It was the outgrowth of a separation. The original single group, then numbering approximately forty members and meeting at 4242 Cass Avenue The members decided to divide into three units as a matter of convenience. Accordingly, the Central Group, meeting at 4242 Cass Avenue, East Group meeting at the Mack Avenue Business Men’s Club, the Westside Group, meeting at a barber shop on Hamilton and Puritan Ave, came into existence.

In the early days the group’s name changed from the Westside group to the Northwest Group and finally to the Plymouth-Ilene Group. The first meeting of the Westside Group was held on the night of October 16th, 1941 and located at a barber shop at Puritan near Hamilton. They were there about a month before they moved to Richard’s Card Shop at 10216 Plymouth Road. They stayed for a couple of months.

In June, 1943, a group of members proposed the idea of a separate discussion meeting to more advantageously present the Twelve Steps of the Recovery Program to the new affiliates. A decision was made to hold a closed meeting for alcoholics only for this purpose. Since that Thursday night there has been a meeting every Thursday night of this group in the same hall regardless of weather, time or season of the year (1948). The first discussion meeting of the North-West Group was held at 10216 Plymouth Road on Monday night, June 14th, 1943, and has been held every Monday night without exception thereafter. Mon. – Instructional meeting, Thur. – Closed meeting, Fri.-Open meeting.

A plan of presentation of the Twelve Steps of the Recovery Program was developed prior to this meeting in 1942, but greatly promoted by this group in 1943.

A group information sheet dated September 29, 1943 lists the group with 68 members, one of which was in the armed forces.  They met on Plymouth Road on Thursdays at 8:30 pm.  Helen King was the contact person for the group.

Around the Christmas of 1943, the group purchased a Fifth printing of the first edition of our beloved Big Book. This Book was autographed by all the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

As of January 11, 1944, the group had 87 members.  They continued to meet on Thursday at 8:30 pm.

An updated form for the group was received August 14, 1944. 14 members met on Wednesdays at 8:30 pm.

Since its inception, the North-West Group has grown until, March, 1948; the following are some of the other groups formed either in total or in part, by separation from the parent North-West Group.

April 1948

In 1961 the church at 10216 Plymouth Rd build a new building next door at 10226 Plymouth Rd, then in 1962-63 the group moved to 13650 Ilene St, the Church’s Club Hall.

In 1968 the group had an 8:30 pm Monday closed meeting, Thursday 8:30 pm open meeting, and moved to St. Paul’s Church at 14025 Hubbell Street at Grand River, Detroit. By 1971 the Thursday meeting was discontinued.

STATUS: Disbanded, 1974.

Bill Wilson’s 1st Talk In Detroit

“Ex-Drunks Toast Freedom with Jokes And Ginger Ale”-Detroit News      “Religious Cure For Alcoholism Told by Wilson”-Detroit Free Press

“Mix science and religion, then throw in a dash of personal experience and you have the formula to ‘Alcoholics anonymous,’ according to William ‘Bill’ Wilson, co-founder of the nationwide organization which to date has reclaimed more than 5000 hopeless alcoholics from their obsession.”

“I started this work to keep myself sober,’ Wilson said as he addressed 300 Detroit members and friends of the organization at the local headquarters, 4242 Cass Ave (Central Group).”

” The Detroit chapter founded less than two years ago, now has 250 members. Anyone can become a member who will admit that he has the ‘alcoholic illness and he honestly wishes to be rid of it.” On August 3, 1941, the Detroit Free Press ran an article introducing A.A. to Detroit and stating there were approximately 100 members at the local chapter, a 250% increase in two months.

“Of the 300 persons at the meeting, about 100 were women, but the Detroit chapter has only six women members. The others were visitors who came with husbands, or sons, or fathers.”

In the Detroit Free Press, they rereferred to Bill as, “William ‘Bill’ Wilson.” The Detroit News referred to him as, “Mr. X, a New York Stockbroker.” Keep in mind the Twelve Traditions had not yet been established.

“Wilson told how seven years ago, a hopeless alcoholic, he was given up by physicians. Through a friend (Ebby Thatcher), also an alcoholic, recently cured, he defeated the obsession and since has devoted his life to spreading the plan.”

“If we will examine what modern psychiatry tells us,’ he said, ‘ and compare it to what religion has been telling us for centuries, we will see that they are much alike, merely employing different terminology. The alcoholics anonymous can take these plans and add to them his own experience.”

“Having encountered the same experiences as the man with whom he is dealing, he can breakdown the wall of misunderstanding and join a bond of common interest.”

“The members enjoy their new freedom and make a point of joking about liquor. They were drinking ginger ale Wednesday night, meanwhile smilingly that it was spiked.”

“One man arrived at the meeting ‘half a seas over.’ It was explained that he was a ‘new acquisition. The alcoholics anonymous cast furtive glances at the stranger although inquiring, ‘Are you a drunk too, or did you just come to look at us.”

“The movement, as explained by Mr. X, is essentially religious. Science can explain the workings of the brain as a chemical reaction, but it cannot explain away personality,’ he declared. ‘That part of the brain may be close to the greater mind which is God.’ He suggested that yielding to the religious impulse is an essential part of the remedy for alcoholism.”

The First News Article About the Success of AA in Detroit

On August 3, 1941 a 2nd article about Alcoholics Anonymous appears in the Detroit Free Press.

It has been 14 months since the Detroit News had introduced a new method of recovery in Detroit. In the Sunday Free Press August 3, 1941, it explains how this new “club” of alcoholics helps other alcoholics to refrain from drinking.

“The article goes on to explain how important it is for one alcoholic to help another alcoholic. It is, “An organization without formal initiation, dues or officers: its only function is the giving of help by former victims of drink to other persons who have given up the lone fight against their obsession.”

“Here in Detroit, the organization numbers approximately 100 people.”

It goes on to tell the story of an alcoholic. “He is a man who a few years earlier was worth over two million dollars (this was 1941), he had a family of six, but had lost it all and now was living in a flop house on skid row. He was at a pawn shop on Michigan Ave about ready to pawn his overcoat for a few dollars to be able to buy a drink. He was 12th Stepped by a recovering alcoholic and urged to find a power greater than himself.

“From the time the victim cries for help he becomes the charge of the organization. Each day a selected member calls by telephone or in person to join in the battle. for it must be remembered that the man who gives the helping and was no better a case than his protégé and it this very act of helping another which makes his own fight easier.”

“The denunciations of professional reformers, they say, too often lose their point because the crusader by the very nature of things knows nothing of the pitiful fight that the alcoholic makes periodically against his affliction. They know little of the shattered nerves and the hells of remorse that follow a protracted ‘binge.”

The 1st Inter-Group

The first mention of the Metropolitan Area Groups in our files was June 1, 1941. This entity was created because of the urging by Bill Wilson for large metropolitan areas to create central committees for a couple of reasons, 1) to handle the large influx of alcoholics requesting information and 2) to ease the burden of our New York office having to correspond with so many groups.

June 1941-No Name

Contact person: Archie Trowbridge

75 members

Contact persons: Archie Trowbridge and Jim Booth

December 1941- No Name

74 members, 4 groups

There is a Preamble and Code of Procedure for the A.A Group of Metropolitan Detroit dated September 28, 1942.  In the preamble, to define local groups, they listed 6 groups that were affiliated with AA in the metropolitan area.  Those groups were Central, Dearborn, East, North, Northwest, and Tuesday Morning.

This Code for membership had very strong “regulations.” To achieve membership a new person had to attend four “Instructional” meeting and read the “official” AA book completely. They also had to attend four “regular meetings” concurrently. Afterward two members with a minimum of six months sobriety could submit his name for membership.

If a member were to relapse they would lose their “membership.” The relapse would have to go before a “tribunal” board made up of three members with at least six months of sobriety (keep in mind Archie T. has 3 years). After the interview, they could recommend you for membership to anyone of the several group chairs or deny you membership.

This may seem harsh, but this was a new fellowship and we were in unchartered territory.

The Metropolitan Groups continued to be listed in New G.S.O.’s print directories until 1951.  Here is a complete listing of the Metropolitan Groups:

April 1942- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Jim Booth

175 members

September 1942- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Jim Booth

175 members

On January 12, 1943 Jim B. wrote to Bobbie B., secretary at the GSO, in response to her inquiry as to the number of members in the Metropolitan Groups.

I have put the matter right up to the secretaries of the various groups and I get a figure of 170. You showed 175 before and I suggest you repeat that.

Tire rationing is telling.  Our Dearborn group has given up its Friday night meetings, because so many went out from Detroit and would not go that far under present conditions.  They have, however, started a Sunday “instructional” meeting in the music studio of Herb S.

I am enclosing a corrected meeting card which shows six meetings per week, not including the Pontiac meeting and four weekly “instructional” meetings.  These are held in different places and so it is quite impossible to fill out your form in this regard.

We have five distinct groups here not inducing the Pontiac or former Dearborn group, now divided among other groups.

January 1943- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Jim Booth

175 members, 5 groups

May 1943- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

5 groups: Central, 30 members

East Side, 30 members

North Side, 15 members

Northwestern, 50 members

Tuesday Morning, 20 members

November 1943- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

5 groups: Central, 30 members

East Side, 30 members

              North Side, 15 members

Northwestern, 68 members

Tuesday Morning, 35 members

By this time Helen King was the acting secretary for the groups.  A January 28, 1944 correspondence between Helen K. and Bobbie B.:

The letter reveals that Paul S., of the North Group ran an ad that attracted a lot of attention.  They had 150 calls in three days.

February 1944- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

6 Groups: Central, 30 members

Eastern Group, 30 members

North Group, 30 members

Northeastern,    -?-

Northwestern, 87 members

Tuesday Morning, 30 members

August 1944- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

7 groups: Central, 30 members

Eastern, 59 members

Hubbell, 35 members

North, 20 members

Northeastern, 14 members

Northwestern, 35 members

Tuesday Morning, 15 members

February 1945- Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

10 Groups: Central, 50 members

East, 46 members

North, 35 members

Northeastern, 28 members

Northwestern, 44 members

Tuesday Morning, 15 members

Hubbell, 36 members

Grosse Pointe, 25 members

Uptown, 16 members

Ann Arbor,   -?-

In February, 1945 the Metropolitan Committee instructed WWJ radio, that was starting a new radio program called, “The Glass Crutch” that all communication for the program was to go through the Central Committee, including all stories written by members and request for help by active alcoholics.

The Central Committee wanted the first AA Club, located at 14 Milwaukee Ave to be disbanded because of lack of control over the club.

A May 1, 1945 correspondence lists two other groups to join the Metropolitan Group, the Hubbell Group and the Windsor Group.   

August 1945: Detroit Metropolitan Group

Contact person: Helen King

10 Groups: Central, 35 members

North, 40 members

Northwestern, 100 members

East, 93 members

Grosse Pointe, 25 members

Northeastern, 40 members

Uptown, 12 members

Tuesday Morning, 10 members

Dearborn, 45 members

Harper–Warren, 15 members

In a letter dated Feb. 11, 1946 from John S., secretary of the committee, identifying himself as the “public relations counsel” for AA in Detroit is written in a kind of rigid legalese. He states, “I want to make it clear that any individual member contacting the New York Office from Detroit has no official standing unless he bears a letter of authority from the Central Committee through the General Secretary, Helen King”

“Conversely (sic) AA in Detroit will not accept any representatives from any individual member unless authorized as aforesaid purporting to convey any information to us from the New York Office.”

Bill W. says in his reply that: “It is with real distress that I have just finished reading your letter…Naturally I feel badly to find so many people, all good friends of mine, arrayed against each other in what appears to be a rather serious split among Detroit Groups.”

February 1946: Detroit Metropolitan

Contact Person: Helen King

700 members

In February 1946, Helen King, requested that the groups be listed in the directory as the Detroit Metropolitan

Area Groups- Sixteen Groups.

Helen K. – Box 5 College Park Station.

Membership 700

She also asked that the Hubbell Group be listed separately.  

In early 1946, there were some disagreements among the groups and they split into two committees, the Metropolitan Group and the Alcoholics Anonymous Groups of Greater Detroit. 

17 groups were represented by the Alcoholics Anonymous Groups of Greater Detroit. They were: Lincoln Park, Dearborn, Southwest, Windsor South, Grand River, Northwest, Tuesday A.M., Central, Uptown, Highland Park, Pontiac (Stevens), Pontiac (Y.M.C.A), Northeast, Indian Village, Royal Oak, Windsor North Group, and Sunday Group.  Frank N. served as the General Secretary for these Groups.

August 1946: Metropolitan Area Groups

Contact Person: Helen King

4 Groups: East

Harper–Warren

Hubbell

North

300 members

Helen King, general secretary of the Metropolitan Area Groups, wrote to the GSO on January 8, 1947 with some updates. 

Everything was going smoothly at the time, with attendance being somewhat lower than normal, but the groups were going on quietly and efficiently. She also said that some of the members had 6 years of sobriety.

February 1947: Metropolitan Area

Contact Person: Helen King

6 groups, 200 members

August 1947: Detroit Metropolitan Area Group

Contact person: Helen King

6 groups, 200 members

February 1948: Detroit Metropolitan Area Group

Contact person: Helen King

6 groups

August 1948: Detroit Metropolitan Area Group

Contact person: Helen King

6 groups

In a letter to Helen King, Bill Wilson writes about the passing of the first ten years of A.A.  He mentions Archibald Trowbridge’s return to Detroit and the starting of a group there:

One of those milestones I’d like you to regard once more with me. It was that day, when after a long convalescence at Dr. Bob’s in Akron, Archibald Trowbridge looked at Bob and me and said, “I’m going back to Detroit and face the friends I hurt. And I’m going to try and start an A.A. Group.”

In a May, 1949 letter, Bill Wilson says, “Alcoholics Anonymous is in the process of evolution concerning its relations with the outside world. When you consider the vast army of screwballs that we really are, I think we have done astonishingly well.” A big part of the reason that the Fellowship was healthy was that groups learned from their mistakes, and the solutions to their problems were codified in the 12 Traditions.

Spring 1949: Detroit Metropolitan Area Groups

Contact person: Helen King

Spring 1950: Detroit Metropolitan Area Groups

Contact person: Helen King

Grosse Pointe Farms

Sherwood Forrest Group, 30 members

University Group

Spring 1951: Detroit Metropolitan Area Groups

Contact person: Helen King

Grosse Pointe Farms

Harper- Warren, 25 members

Sherwood Forrest Group

University Group

 In 1951 this office was closed and merged with AA of Greater Detroit.

The Saturday Evening Post

The History of How the Article Came To Be Jack Alexander of Saturday Evening Post Fame Thought A.A.s Were Pulling His Leg
AA Grapevine, May, 1945

“Ordinarily, diabetes isn’t rated as one of the hazards of reporting, but the Alcoholics Anonymous article in the Saturday Evening Post came close to costing me my liver, and maybe A.A. neophytes ought to be told this when they are handed copies of the article to read. It might impress them. In the course of my fact gathering, I drank enough Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, ginger ale, Moxie and Sweetie to float the Saratoga. Then there was the thickly frosted cake so beloved of A.A. gatherings, and the heavily sweetened coffee, and the candy. Nobody can tell me that alcoholism isn’t due solely to an abnormal craving for sugar, not even a learned psychiatrist. Otherwise the A.A. assignment was a pleasure.

It began when the Post asked me to look into A.A. as a possible article subject. All I knew of alcoholism at the time was that, like most other non-alcoholics, I had had my hand bitten (and my nose punched) on numerous occasions by alcoholic pals to whom I had extended a hand–unwisely, it always seemed afterward. Anyway, I had an understandable skepticism about the whole business.

My first contact with actual A.A.s came when a group of four of them called at my apartment one afternoon. This session was pleasant, but it didn’t help my skepticism any. Each one introduced himself as an alcoholic who had gone “dry,” as the official expression has it. They were good-looking and well-dressed and, as we sat around drinking Coca-Cola (which was all they would take), they spun yarns about their horrendous drinking misadventures. The stories sounded spurious, and after the visitors had left, I had a strong suspicion that my leg was being pulled. They had behaved like a bunch of actors sent out by some Broadway casting agency.

Next morning I took the subway to the headquarters of Alcoholics Anonymous in downtown Manhattan, where I met Bill W. This Bill W. is a very disarming guy and an expert at indoctrinating the stranger into the psychology, psychiatry, physiology, pharmacology and folklore of alcoholism. He spent the good part of a couple of days telling me what it was all about. It was an interesting experience, but at the end of it my fingers were still crossed. He knew it, of course, without my saying it, and in the days that followed he took me to the homes of some of the A.A.s, where I got a chance to talk to the wives, too. My skepticism suffered a few minor scratches, but not enough to hurt. Then Bill shepherded me to a few A.A. meetings at a clubhouse somewhere in the West Twenties. Here were all manner of alcoholics, many of them, the nibblers at the fringe of the movement, still fragrant of liquor and needing a shave. Now I knew I was among a few genuine alcoholics anyway. The bearded, fume-breathing lads were A.A. skeptics, too, and now I had some company.

The week spent with Bill W. was a success from one standpoint. I knew I had the makings of a readable report but, unfortunately, I didn’t quite believe in it and told Bill so. He asked why I didn’t look in on the A.A.s in other cities and see what went on there. I agreed to do this, and we mapped out an itinerary. I went to Philadelphia first, and some of the local A.A.s took me to the psychopathic ward of Philadelphia General Hospital and showed me how they work on the alcoholic inmates. In that gloomy place, it was an impressive thing to see men who had bounced in and out of the ward themselves patiently jawing a man who was still haggard and shaking from a binge that wound up in the gutter.

Akron was the next stop. Bill met me there and promptly introduced me to Doc S., who is another hard man to disbelieve. There were more hospital visits, an A.A. meeting, and interviews with people who a year or two before were undergoing varying forms of the blind staggers. Now they seemed calm, well-spoken, steady-handed and prosperous, at least mildly prosperous.

Doc S. drove us both from Akron to Cleveland one night and the same pattern was repeated. The universality of alcoholism was more apparent here. In Akron it had been mostly factory workers. In Cleveland there were lawyers, accountants and other professional men, in addition to laborers. And again the same stories. The pattern was repeated also in Chicago, the only variation there being the presence at the meetings of a number of newspapermen. I had spent most of my working life on newspapers and I could really talk to these men. The real clincher, though, came in St. Louis, which is my hometown. Here I met a number of my own friends who were A.A.s, and the last remnants of skepticism vanished. Once rollicking rumpots, they were now sober. It didn’t seem possible, but there it was.

When the article was published, the reader-mail was astonishing. Most of it came from desperate drinkers or their wives, or from mothers, fathers or interested friends. The letters were forwarded to the A.A. office in New York and from there were sent on to A.A. groups nearest the writers of the letters. I don’t know exactly how many letters came in, all told, but the last time I checked, a year or so ago, it was around 6,000. They still trickle in from time to time, from people who have carried the article in their pockets all this time, or kept it in the bureau drawer under the handkerchief case intending to do something about it.

I guess the letters will keep coming in for years, and I hope they do, because now I know that every one of them springs from a mind, either of an alcoholic or of someone close to him, which is undergoing a type of hell that Dante would have gagged at. And I know, too, that this victim is on the way to recovery, if he really wants to recover. There is something very heartening about this, particularly in a world which has been struggling toward peace for centuries without ever achieving it for very long periods of time.”

Jack Alexander
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

East>Eastside>Manistique Group #0002

The archive’s has many small notes and information on this group, much of it appeared to be inaccurate and confusing. We had to dissect the many notes and become forensic detectives.  The Group’s name went from East Group to Eastside Group to Manistique Group which added to the confusion.

By late 1940, Archie Trowbridge had moved out of skid row and was renting a room from a young Grosse Pointe couple. Mike Eshleman and his wife were living at St. Jean and Jefferson Ave and were looking for a home near the Cadieux Road and Warren Ave area. Alcoholics Anonymous was growing in Detroit and most of the twelve step calls being made by these two men who were basically on the east side of Detroit.

After much discussion they decided to open a second group and because of the logistics decided to call it the East Group (go figure). This group began on February 2, 1941 above a furniture store on the corner of Mack Ave and Cadillac Ave which had a Men’s Club upstairs which Mike was a member and played euchre weekly there.

In the next few months the group began to face a few issues, 1) the attendance began to swell immediately and 2) probably of more concern was that women alcoholics were very hesitant to go into a private Men’s Club to attend an alcoholic recovery program.

By October, 1941 the group made the decision to move to St. Columbia Episcopal Church, 1021 Manistique, Detroit. At this time the members decided to break up into two groups. Some would continue being the East Group and the others would start a new group called the Grosse Pointe (Memorial) Group. This group would hold meetings at the Memorial Church in Grosse Pointe.

On June 1, 1945 the Eastside Group had the honor of hosting the 10th anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous nationally. This type of event was celebrated all over the country. This was also the event the “Detroit Prayer” was created.

There was an anniversary celebration held on June 20th, 1975 for the Group’s 30th anniversary which was really their 39th anniversary. Charlie Quackenbush who chaired the anniversary was an early member who came into AA in 1945. Charlie sponsored Bill McDonald (from the Glenwood Group) who was the M.C. for the Anniversary.

Group Secretaries:

STATUS: Disbanded, 1993..

December 31, 1940 New Year’s Gala

This event would be the beginning of many sobriety celebrations.

The very first major event held in Detroit was a New Year’s celebration on December 31, 1940. It was held at Mike Eshleman’s home with about 20 members along with their spouse or guest, so roughly there were forty people in attendance.

For the 1941 celebration it was moved to the Fairview Gardens arena located at Mack Ave and Fairview Ave. This facility held boxing matches there from November 1, 1937 thru May 27, 1942, and then eventually this location would become a venue for Detroit “Big Time” wrestling and finally becoming a roller ring rink.

In 1944, they were still holding their New Year’s celebration at the Fairview Gardens, but they had gotten to the point of outgrowing it and would have to figure something out. In the same year the city began to hold no-alcoholic parties for young people at the Moose Lodge.

Through 1942 to 1945 the parties were smaller because of the ban on large gatherings, but we did party with our Vernors and Stroh’s Ice Cream. The gatherings continued to grow and we became shining examples on how people could celebrate without drinking.

In 1948, this celebration became so enormous that it could not be held at any one place, with so many parties going on. So this year it appears would be the last year. The celebration would be broken up into a half a dozen smaller affairs with the two largest being held in Highland Park and Farmington Hills.

The total amount was 2000 people, with largest holding 500 people. There were sober people attending with six months to ten years. The youngest attending was nineteen years old and that his first drink lasted two years. Mike Eshleman mentioned he was on skid row for fifteen years before coming into the program.

There were so many big events that went on in 1948, including Bill Wilson speaking here on January 17,1948, Dr. Bob Smith speaking on November 7th with 3000 in attendance at both events. The beginning of the Gratitude meeting for the members of the time began in 1949.

First Public Announcement of Alcoholics Anonymous in Detroit

Before this date little or nothing as known about this recovery program for drunks in Detroit.

A dawn of a new era was begun on June 22, 1940 when local members announced in a Detroit News article that a local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous was begun in Detroit.
It started in January, 1940 (Benson’s Basement on Taylor St, Highland Park) and had grown from 3 members to 35 members, which was then located at 4242 Cass Ave.

Inquires in Detroit could be received through the Alcoholic Foundation, Post Office Box 33, North End Station and allotted to members for investigation. The North End Station was located on Milwaukee Ave east of Woodward Ave.

The article goes on to discuss a group of alcoholics banded together at the Ypsilanti State Hospital, called the Mutual Aid Society. These two bands of alcoholics were helping each other to stay sober. The Mutual Aid members upon being released were sent to the Detroit Group. This sounds as if the Director of this group of men had gotten a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous from the Alcoholic Foundation in N.Y.

This would be the beginning of complete cooperation between Detroit Alcoholics Anonymous and Treatment facilities.

Detroit>Downtown>Central Group #0001

We were at first confused by the many names of groups that we were “digging” up, but finally come to realize they were names of the same group.

The first group in Southeastern Michigan was born out of necessity. At this point in time we had come to rely too heavily on people outside of recovery, and for that we owed them a debt of gratitude which we can never repay, but it was time for us to stand on our own.

The wonderful accommodations at the Benson’s home on 860 Taylor Street were quickly becoming too small, we had grown to a group of twenty-five; the drunks were breaking things and spilling coffee, even though the Bensons never complained. This band of drunks’ were known as the Detroit Group. Before departing the Bensons’ home, Dr. Bob Smith was to visit and give his first of three talks in Detroit.

After what was probably to become our first group conscience, it was decided to move to Doty Hall, it was located north of the Benson’s. After a month or so there it was decided it was too far from where the chronic alcoholics were and we decided to look for a location close to where it all began and that was in the skid row of Detroit.

Archie Trowbridge mentions in an open talk that we had a meeting or two at the Doty Hall, “but it did not work out. We eventually worked our way to 4242 Cass Ave, which became the first meeting place where we attempted to pay rent and learn to become self-supporting.” This location was the Community Center for the Cass Avenue Methodist Church located a couple of blocks south of the center.

Archie Trowbridge and Jim Booth (Scripps & Booth family) were considered to be the founders of the group, even though every member at the time pitched in to make it a success. All other groups were created off of this group as they became necessary. At this time the group decided to purchase a copy of the “Big Book” for the group’s use (This is currently in the Archivist’s possession.)

On October 15, 1941 Bill Wilson, founder of AA, did a talk here to help the group celebrate the Central Group’s anniversary, with 300 people in attendance. Bill was interviewed by both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News about this new organization. The article goes on to report that there were currently six women members in the “Detroit Chapter.”

A group information sheet dated September 19, 1943 lists the group with 30 members who met on Wednesday at  8:30 pm.  They met on Cass Avenue. A group information sheet dated January 11, 1944 lists the same information for the group.  Helen King was the secretary.

In an August 14, 1944 report the Central Group: 30 members who met on Wednesday at 8:30 pm.

A group information card dated February 10, 1947 lists Farley F. as the contact person for the group.  They had 75 members and met on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Thomas M. was the treasurer of the group.

As of January 28, 1949 the group had 50 members.  They met on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:00 pm for closed meetings.  Henry G. was the secretary of the group and Bill S. was the treasurer. They met at St. John’s Parish House.

STATUS: Disbanded, 1966.

Mutual Aid Organization-for Alcoholics

There are many myths and urban legends about the treatment center that help start AA in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many views.

On June 16, 1930 construction for the hospital had begun. Albert Kahn was the architect that had designed the building. Kahn had his own design firm in Detroit, Michigan. The hospital was opened a year after construction had begun. Over the course of the first year the hospital had admitted 922 patients. At the end of World War II the Ypsilanti State Hospital had built two new wards with over 4,000 patients. After adding the two wards, this still brought the hospital over capacity.

During 1937-1940 periods, Ypsilanti State Hospital had a large intake of men with the disease of alcoholism. At that time we were still debating whether to put alcoholics into jail/prison or insane asylums. The State of Michigan built this facility to help ease the problem, but it quickly filled up.

In 1936 through the 1940s these alcoholics published their own newsletter, called, “Ypsi Slants.” This publication would give information of what was going on in their little community in the hospital. Dr. Bob Smith would get most of the alcoholic cases rather than Bill Wilson for two reasons. He was based at home without much traveling and he was a medical doctor. Dr. Bob Smith had done his early studies at the University of Michigan, so he was familiar with the lay of the land. He, therefore, would send to Ypsilanti State Hospital some of the real tough cases he felt weren’t safe to be around his family because of physical outbursts.

The hospital’s monthly publication, the “Slants” articles by the patients, states, “Mutual Aid Organization plans close co-operation with Alcoholics Anonymous, a rather similar organization now coming into national prominence, with recovery, the association of former patients of the Psychiatric Institute in Illinois. There is a fellowship of Alcoholics An­onymous in Detroit.”

The first meeting was starting in Detroit, its original name being the Detroit Group, a result of the “Bensons’ Basement Meeting.” From this beginning service outside the group was developing. Mike Eshelman encouraged fellow members to go in a car load to carry a meeting out to the State Hospital.

One of the cases that Dr. Bob sent to Ypsilanti was Roy M., who was Archie Trowbridge’s first Twelfth Step experience. Roy was such a chronic alcoholic, he made many attempts, but finally succumbing to the disease in late 1948.

Archie Trowbridge, with the urging of Sarah Klein would do open talks at Ypsilanti State Hospital and would eventually bring Roy to the “Detroit Meetings.” The beginning of the expansion of Alcoholics Anonymous in Metro Detroit.

The Articles from the “Plain Dealer” Considered the 1st Pamphlet

These articles appeared in the main Cleveland newspaper, the Plain Dealer, just five months after the first A.A. group was formed in Cleveland. The articles resulted in hundreds of calls for help from suffering alcoholics who reached out for the hope that the fledgling Alcoholics Anonymous offered.

The thirteen reliable members of the Cleveland group handled as many as 500 calls in the first month following the appearance of Davis’ articles.  The following year Cleveland could boast 20 to 30 groups with hundreds of members.

Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
October 21, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

Much has been written about Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization doing major work in reclaiming the habitual drinker. This is the first of a series describing the work the group is doing in Cleveland.

Success
By now it is a rare Clevelander who does not know, or know of, at least one man or woman of high talent whose drinking had become a public scandal, and who suddenly has straightened out “overnight,” as the saying goes-the liquor habit licked. Men who have lost $15,000 a year jobs have them back again. Drunks who have taken every “cure” available to the most lavish purse, only to take them over again with equally spectacular lack of success, suddenly have become total abstainers, apparently without anything to account for their reform. Yet something must account for the seeming miracle. Something does.

Alcoholics Anonymous has reached the town.

Fellowship
Every Thursday evening at the home of some ex-drunk in Cleveland, 40 or 50 former hopeless rummies meet for a social evening during which they buck each other up. Nearly every Saturday evening they and their families have a party — just as gay as any other party held that evening despite the fact that there is nothing alcoholic to drink. From time to time they have a picnic, where everyone has a roaring good time without the aid of even one bottle of beer. Yet these are men and women who, until recently, had scarcely been sober a day for years, and members of their families who all that time had been emotionally distraught, social and economic victims of another’s addition.

These ex-rummies, as they call themselves, suddenly salvaged from the most socially noisome of fates, are the members of the Cleveland Fellowship of an informal society called “Alcoholics Anonymous.” Who they are cannot be told, because the name means exactly what it says. But any incurable alcoholic who really wants to be cured will find the members of the Cleveland chapter eager to help.

The society maintains a “blind” address: The Alcoholic Foundation, Box 657, Church Street Annex Post office, New York City. Inquiries made there are forwarded to a Cleveland banker, who is head of the local Fellowship, or to a former big league ball player who is recruiting officer of the Akron Fellowship, which meets Wednesday evenings in a mansion loaned for the purpose by a non-alcoholic supporter of the movement.

Cured

The basic point about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it is a fellowship of “cured” alcoholics. And that both old-line medicine and modern psychiatry had agreed on the one point that no alcoholic could be cured. Repeat the astounding fact:

These are cured.

They have cured each other.

They have done it by adopting, with each other’s aid, what they call “a spiritual way of life.”

“Incurable” alcoholism is not a moral vice. It is a disease. No dipsomaniac drinks because he wants to. He drinks because he can’t help drinking.

He will drink when he had rather die than take a drink. That is why so many alcoholics die as suicides. He will get drunk on the way home from the hospital or sanitarium that has just discharged him as “cured.” He will get drunk at the wake of a friend who died of drink. He will swear off for a year, and suddenly find himself half-seas over, well into another “bust.” He will get drunk at the gates of an insane asylum where he has just visited an old friend, hopeless victim of “wet brain.”

Prayer
These are the alcoholics that “Alcoholics Anonymous” cures. Cure is impossible until the victim is convinced that nothing that he or a “cure” hospital can do, can help. He must know that his disease is fatal. He must be convinced that he is hopelessly sick of body, and of mind — and of soul. He must be eager to accept help from any source — even God.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a simple explanation for an alcoholic’s physical disease. It was provided them by the head of one of New York City’s oldest and most famous “cure” sanitariums. The alcoholic is allergic to alcohol. One drink sets up a poisonous craving that only more of the poison can assuage. That is why after the first drink the alcoholic cannot stop.

They have a psychiatric theory equally simple and convincing. Only an alcoholic can understand another alcoholic’s mental processes and state. And they have an equally simple, if unorthodox, conception of God.

Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
October 23, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

In a previous installment, Mr. Davis outlined the plan of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drinkers who have found a solution to liquor in association for mutual aid. This is the second of a series.

Religion

There is no blinking the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous, the amazing society of ex-drunks who have cured each other of an incurable disease, is religious. Its members have cured each other frankly with the help of God. Every cured member of the Cleveland Fellowship of the society, like every cured member of the other chapters now established in Akron, New York, and elsewhere in the country, is cured with the admission that he submitted his plight wholeheartedly to a Power Greater than Himself.

He has admitted his conviction that science cannot cure him, that he cannot control his pathological craving for alcohol himself, and that he cannot be cured by the prayers, threats, or pleas of his family, employers, or friends. His cure is a religious experience. He had to have God’s aid. He had to submit to a spiritual housecleaning.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a completely informal society, wholly latitudinarian in every respect but one. It prescribes a simple spiritual discipline, which must be followed rigidly every day. The discipline is fully explained in a book published by the society.

Discipline

That is what makes the notion of the cure hard for the usual alcoholic to take, at first glance, no matter how complete his despair. He wants to join no cult. He has lost faith, if he ever had it, in the power of religion to help him. But each of the cures accomplished by Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual awakening. The ex-drunk has adopted what the society calls “a spiritual way of life.”

How, then, does Alcoholics Anonymous differ from the other great religious movements which have changed social history in America? Wherein does the yielding to God that saves a member of this society from his fatal disease, differ from that which brought the Great Awakening that Jonathan Edwards preached, or the New Light revival of a century ago, or the flowering of Christian Science, or the camp meeting evangelism of the old Kentucky-Ohio frontier, or the Oxford Group successes nowadays?

Every member of Alcoholics Anonymous may define God to suit himself. God to him may be the Christian God defined by the Thomism of the Roman Catholic Church. Or the stern Father of the Calvinist. Or the Great Manitou of the American Indian. Or the Implicit Good assumed in the logical morality of Confucius. Or Allah, or Buddha, or the Jehovah of the Jews. Or Christ the Scientist. Or no more than the Kindly Spirit implicitly assumed in the “atheism” of a Col. Robert Ingersoll.

Aid

If the alcoholic who comes to the fellowship for help believes in God, in the specific way of any religion or sect, the job of cure is easier. But if all that the pathological drunk can do is to say, with honesty, in his heart: “Supreme Something, I am done for without more-than-human help,” that is enough for Alcoholics Anonymous to work on. The noble prayers, the great literatures, and the time-proved disciplines of the established religions are a great help. But as far as the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is concerned, a pathological drunk can call God “It” if he wants to, and is willing to accept Its aid. If he’ll do that, he can be cured.

Poll of “incurable” alcoholics who now, cured, are members of the Cleveland Fellowship of the society, shows that this has made literally life-saving religious experience possible to men and women who, otherwise, could not have accepted spiritual help. Poll shows also that collectively their religious experience has covered every variety known to religious psychology. Some have had an experience as blindingly bright as that which struck down Saul on the road to Damascus. Some are not even yet intellectually convinced except to the degree that they see that living their lives on a spiritual basis has cured them of a fatal disease. Drunk for years because they couldn’t help it, now it never occurs to them to want a drink. Whatever accounts for that, they are willing to call “God.”

Some find more help in formal religion than do others. A good many of the Akron chapter find help in the practices of the Oxford Group. The Cleveland chapter includes a number of Catholics and several Jews, and at least one man to whom “God” is “Nature.” Some practice family devotions. Some simply cogitate about “It” in the silence of their minds. But that the Great Healer cured them with only the help of their fellow ex-drunks, they all admit.

Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
October 24, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

In two previous articles, Mr. Davis told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drinkers, banded to overcome their craving for liquor and to help others to forego the habit. This is the third of a series.

Help

The ex-drunks cured of their medically incurable alcoholism by membership in Alcoholic Anonymous, know that the way to keep themselves from backsliding is to find another pathological alcoholic to help. Or to start a new man toward cure. That is the way that the Akron chapter of the society, and from that, the Cleveland fellowship was begun.

One of the earliest of the cured rummies had talked a New York securities house into taking a chance that he was really through with liquor. He was commissioned to do a stock promotion chore in Akron. If he should succeed, his economic troubles also would be cured. Years of alcoholism had left him bankrupt as well as a physical and social wreck before Alcoholics Anonymous had saved him.

His Akron project failed. Here he was on a Saturday afternoon in a strange hotel in a town where he did not know a soul, business hopes blasted, and with scarcely money enough to get him back to New York with a report that would leave him without the last job he knew of for him in the world. If ever disappointment deserved drowning, that seemed the time. A bunch of happy folk were being gay at the bar.

At the other end of the lobby the Akron church directory was framed in glass. He looked up the name of a clergyman. The cleric told him of a woman who was worried about a physician who was a nightly solitary drunk. The doctor had been trying to break himself of alcoholism for twenty years. He had tried all of the dodges: Never anything but light wines or beer; never a drink alone; never a drink before his work was done; a certain few number of drinks and then stop; never drink in a strange place; never drink in a familiar place; never mix the drinks; always mix the drinks; never drink before eating; drink only while eating; drink and then eat heavily to stop the craving — and all of the rest.

Every alcoholic knows all of the dodges. Every alcoholic has tried them all. That is why an uncured alcoholic thinks someone must have been following him around to learn his private self-invented devices, when a member of Alcoholics Anonymous talks to him. Time comes when any alcoholic has tried them all, and found that none of them work.

Support

The doctor had just taken his first evening drink when the rubber baron’s wife telephoned to ask him to come to her house to meet a friend from New York. He dared not, his wife would not, offend her by refusing. He agreed to go on his wife’s promise that they would leave after 15 minutes. His evening jitters were pretty bad.

He met the New Yorker at 5 o’clock. They talked until 11:15. After that he stayed “dry” for three weeks. Then he went to a convention in Atlantic City. That was a bender. The cured New Yorker was at his bedside when he came to. That was June 10, 1935. The doctor hasn’t had a drink since. Every Akron and Cleveland cure by Alcoholics Anonymous is a result.

The point the society illustrates by that bit of history is that only an alcoholic can talk turkey to an alcoholic. The doctor knew all of the “medicine” of his disease. He knew all of the psychiatry. One of his patients had “taken the cure” 72 times. Now he is cured, by fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. Orthodox science left the physician licked. He also knew all of the excuses, as well as the dodges, and the deep and fatal shame that makes a true alcoholic sure at last that he can’t win. Alcoholic death or the bughouse will get him in time.

The cured member of Alcoholics Anonymous likes to catch a prospective member when he is at the bottom of the depths. When he wakes up of a morning with his first clear thought regret that he is not dead before he hears where he has been and what he has done. When he whispers to himself: “Am I crazy?” and the only answer he can think of is: “Yes.” Even when the bright-eyed green snakes are crawling up his arms.

Then the pathological drinker is willing to talk. Even eager to talk to someone who really understands, from experience, what he means when he says: “I can’t understand myself.”

Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
October 25, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

In three previous articles, Mr. Davis has told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drinkers banded to break the liquor habit and to save others from over drinking. This is the fourth of a series.

Understanding 
What gets the pathological drinker who finally has reached such state that he is willing to listen to a cured rummy member of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that the retrieved alcoholic not only understands what only another alcoholic can understand, but a great deal that the unreformed drunk thinks no one else could know because he has never told anyone, and his difficulties or escapades must be private to his own history.

Fact is the history of all alcoholics is the same; some have been addicts longer than others, and some have painted brighter red patches around the town — that is all. What they have heard in the “cure” hospitals they have frequented, or from the psychoanalysts they have consulted, or the physicians who have tapered them off one bender or another at home, has convinced them that alcoholism is a disease. But they are sure (a) that their version of the disease differs from everyone else’s and (b) that in them it hasn’t reached the incurable stage anyway.

Head of the “cure” told them: “If you ever take another drink, you’ll be back.” Psychoanalyst said “Psychologically, you have never been weaned. Your subconscious is still trying to get even with your mother for some forgotten slight.” Family or hotel physician said “If you don’t quite drinking, you’ll die.”

Reproof 
Lawyers, ministers, business partners and employers, parents and wives, also are professionally dedicated to listening to confidences and accepting confessions without undue complaint. But the clergyman may say: “Your drinking is a sin.” And partner or employer: “You’ll have to quit this monkey business or get out.” And wife or parent: “This drinking is breaking my heart.” And everyone: “Why don’t you exercise some will power and straighten up and be a man.”

“But,” the alcoholic whispers in his heart. “No one but I can know that I must drink to kill suffering too great to stand.”

He presents his excuses to the retrieved alcoholic who has come to talk. Can’t sleep without liquor. Worry. Business troubles. Debt. Alimentary pains. Overwork. Nerves too high strung. Grief. Disappointment. Deep dark phobic fears. Fatigue. Family difficulties. Loneliness.

The catalog has got no farther than that when the member of Alcoholics Anonymous begins rattling off an additional list.

“Hogwash,” he says. “Don’t try those alibis on me. I have used them all myself.”

Understanding 
And then he tells his own alcoholic history, certainly as bad, perhaps far worse than the uncured rummy’s. They match experiences. Before he knows it the prospect for cure has told his new friend things he had never admitted even to himself. A rough and ready psychiatry, that, but it works, as the cured members of the Cleveland Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous all are restored to society to testify. And that is the reason for the fellowship’s weekly gatherings. They are testimonial meetings. The members meet to find new victims to cure, and to buck each other up. For years their social and emotional life has all been elbow-bending. Now they provide each other a richer society to replace the old. Hence, the fellowship’s family parties and picnics.

Never for a moment do they forget that a practicing alcoholic is a very sick person. Never for a moment can they forget that even medical men who know the nature of the disease are apt to feel that failure to recover is a proof of moral perversity in the patient. If a man is dying of cancer, no one says: “Why doesn’t he exercise some will power and kill that cancer off.” If he is coughing his lungs out with tuberculosis, no one says: “Buck up and quit coughing; be a man.” They may say to the first: “Submit to surgery before it is too late;” to the second: “Take a cure before you are dead.”

Religion 
Retrieved alcoholics talk in that fashion to their uncured fellows. They say: “You are a very sick man. Physically sick — you have an allergy to alcohol. We can put you in a hospital that will sweat that poison out. Mentally sick. We know how to cure that. And spiritually sick.

“To cure your spiritual illness you will have to admit God. Name your own God, or define Him to suit yourself. But if you are really willing to ‘do anything’ to get well, and if it is really true — and we know it is — that you drink when you don’t want to and that you don’t know why you get drunk, you’ll have to quit lying to yourself and adopt a spiritual way of life. Are you ready to accept help?”

And the miracle is that, for alcoholics brought to agreement by pure desperation, so simple a scheme works.

Cleveland alone has 50 alcoholics, all former notorious drunks, now members of Alcoholics Anonymous to prove it. None is a fanatic prohibitionist. None has a quarrel with liquor legitimately used by people physically, nervously, and spiritually equipped to use it. They simply know that alcoholics can’t drink and live, and that their “incurable” disease has been conquered.

Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
October 26, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

In previous installments, Mr. Davis has told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an informal society of drinking men who have joined together to beat the liquor habit This is the last of five articles.

No Graft 
It is hard for the skeptical to believe that no one yet has found a way to muscle into Alcoholics Anonymous, the informal society of ex-drunks that exists only to cure each other, and make a money-making scheme of it. Or that someone will not. The complete informality of the society seems to be what has saved it from that. Members pay no dues. The society has no paid staff. Parties are “Dutch.” Meetings are held at the homes of members who have houses large enough for such gatherings, or in homes of persons who may not be alcoholics but are sympathetic with the movement.

Usually a drunk needs hospitalization at the time that he is caught to cure. He is required to pay for that himself. Doubtless he hasn’t the money. But probably his family has. Or his employer will advance the money to save him, against his future pay. Or cured members of the society will help him arrange credit, if he has a glimmer of credit left. Or old friends will help.

At the moment members of the Cleveland Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous are searching the slum lodging houses to find a man, once eminent in the city’s professional life. A medical friend of his better days called them in to find him. This friend will pay the hospital bill necessary to return this victim of an “incurable” craving for drink to physical health, if the society will take him on.

The society has published a book, called “Alcoholics Anonymous,” which it sells at $3.50. It may be ordered from an anonymous address, Works Publishing Co., Box 657, Church Street Annex Post office, New York City; or bought from the Cleveland Fellowship of the society. There is no money profit for anyone in that book.

It recites the history of the society and lays down its principles in its first half. Last half is case histories of representative cures out of the first hundred alcoholics cured by membership in the society. It was written and compiled by the New York member who brought the society to Ohio. He raised the money on his personal credit to have the book published. He would like to see those creditors repaid. It is a 400-page book, for which any regular publisher would charge the same price. Copies bought from local Fellowships net the local chapters a dollar each.

The Rev. Dr. Dilworth Lupton, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, found in a religious journal an enthusiastic review of the book by the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, and sent it to the president of the local Fellowship. It has been similarly noted in some medical journals.

The Foundation 
To handle the money that comes in for the book, and occasional gifts from persons interested in helping ex-drunks to cure other “incurable” drunks, the Alcoholics Foundation has been established, with a board of seven directors.

Three of these are members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Four are not alcoholics, but New Yorkers of standing interested in humane movements. Two of them happen also to be associated with the Rockefeller Foundation, but that does not associate the two foundations in any way.

First problem of the Cleveland Fellowship was to find a hospital willing to take a drunk in and give him the medical attention first necessary to any cure. Two reasons made that hard. Hospitals do not like to have alcoholics as patients; they are nuisances. And the society requires that as soon as a drunk has been medicated into such shape that he can see visitors, members of the society must be permitted to see him at any time. That has been arranged. The local society would like to have a kitty of $100 to post with the hospital as evidence of good faith. But if it gets it, it will only be from voluntary contributions of members.

Meantime the members, having financed their own cures, spend enormous amounts of time and not a little money in helping new members. Psychiatrists say that if an alcoholic is to be cured, he needs a hobby. His old hobby had been only alcohol. Hobby of Alcoholics Anonymous is curing each other. Telephone calls, postage and stationery, gasoline bills, mount up for each individual. And hospitality to new members. A rule of the society is that each member’s latch string is always out to any other member who needs talk or quiet, which may include a bed or a meal, at any time.

A NOTED DIVINE REVIEWS “ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS”
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
November 2, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

In a recent series, Mr. Davis told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drinkers banded together to beat the liquor habit. This is the first of two final articles on the subject.

The Book 
When 100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous, the extraordinary fellowship of men and women who have cured themselves of “incurable” alcoholism by curing each other and adopting a “spiritual way of life,” had established their cures to the satisfaction of their physicians, families, employers and psychotherapists, they published a book.

It is a 400-page volume of which half is a history of the movement and a description of its methods, and the other half a collection of 30 case histories designed to show what a wide variety of persons the fellowship has cured. It is called “Alcoholics Anonymous,” and may be bought for $3.50 from the Works Publishing Co., Box 657, Church Street Annex Post Office, New York.

The name of the publisher is that adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous for its only publishing venture. The address is “blind” because the name “Alcoholics Anonymous” means exactly what it says. The price of the book is “cost,” 50 cents a volume less than one of the country’s soundest old-line book publishers would have charged if the fellowship had accepted that house’s offer to publish the book and pay the society 40 cents a copy royalty on sales.

Among the first reviews of the book to see print was that written by the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick for the Religious Digest. That review so attracted at least one well-known Cleveland minister that he obtained a copy of the book, got in touch with the Cleveland chapter of the society, and plans to preach a sermon about the movement.

Dr. Fosdick is himself the author of seventeen books. His review of “Alcoholics Anonymous” follows:

“This extraordinary book deserves the careful attention of anyone interested in the problem of alcoholism. Whether as victims, friends of victims, physicians, clergymen, psychiatrists or social workers there are many such, and this book will give them, as no other treatise known to this reviewer will, an inside view of the problem which the alcoholic faces. Gothic cathedral windows are not the sole things which can be truly seen only from within. Alcoholism is another. All outside views are clouded and unsure. Only one who has been an alcoholic and has escaped the thralldom can interpret the experience.

Truth
“This book represents the pooled experience of 100 men and women who have been victims of alcoholism-and who have won their freedom and recovered their sanity and self-control. their stories are detailed and circumstantial, packed with human interest. In America today the disease of alcoholism is increasing. Liquor has been an easy escape from depression. As an English officer in India, reproved for his excessive drinking, lifted his glass and said, “This is the swiftest road out of India,” so many Americans have been using hard liquor as a means of flight from their troubles until to their dismay they discover that, free to begin, they are not free to stop. One hundred men and women, in this volume, report their experience of enslavement and then of liberation.

“The book is not in the least sensational. It is notable for its sanity, restraint and freedom from over-emphasis and fanaticism.

“The group sponsoring this book began with two or three ex-alcoholics, who discovered one another through kindred experience. From this a movement started; ex-alcoholics working for alcoholics, without fanfare or advertisement, and the movement has spread from one city to another.

“The core of their whole procedure is religious. They are convinced that for the helpless alcoholic there is only one way out-the expulsion of his obsession by a Power Greater Than Himself. Let it be said at once that there is nothing partisan or sectarian about this religious experience. Agnostics and atheists, along with Catholics, Jews and Protestants, tell their story of discovering the Power Greater Than themselves. ‘Who are you to say that there is no God,’ one atheist in the group heard a voice say when, hospitalized for alcoholism, he faced the utter hopelessness of his condition. Nowhere is the tolerance and open-mindedness of the book more evident than in its treatment of this central matter on which the cure of all these men and women has depended. They are not partisans of any particular form of organized religion, although they strongly recommend that some religious fellowship be found by their participants. By religion they mean an experience which they personally know and which has saved them from their slavery, when psychiatry and medicine had failed. They agree that each man must have his own way of conceiving God, but of God Himself they are utterly sure, and their stories of victory in consequence are a notable addition to William James’ ‘Varieties of Religious Experience.’”

A PHYSICIAN LOOKS UPON ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
by ELRICK B. DAVIS
November 4, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer

Dr. Silkworth 
The first appraisal in a scientific journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, former drunkards who cure themselves by curing each other with the help of religious experience, was published in the July issue of the journal Lancet. It was “A New Approach to Psychotherapy [in] Chronic Alcoholism.: by W. D. Silkworth, M.D. physician in charge, Chas B. Town’s Hospital, New York City. A drunkard during a moment of [deep] depression had the spontaneous “religious experience” which started his cure. This was the seed from which came Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Silkworth was at first skeptical. He is no longer. Excerpts from his paper follow:

“The beginning and subsequent development of a new approach to the problem of permanent recovery for the chronic alcoholic has already produced remarkable results and promises much for the future. This statement is based upon four years of close observation. the principal answer is: Each ex-alcoholic has had and is able to maintain, a vital spiritual or ‘religious’ experience, accompanied by marked changes of personality. There is a radical change in outlook, attitude and habits of thought. In nearly all cases, these are evident within a few months, often less.

“The conscious search of these ex-alcoholics for the right answer has enabled them to find an approach effectual in something more than half of all cases. This is truly remarkable when it is remembered that most of them were undoubtedly beyond the reach of other remedial measures.

Religion 
“Considering the presence of the religious factor, one might expect to find unhealthy emotionalism and prejudice. On the contrary, there is an instant readiness to discard old methods for new which produce better results. It was early found that usually the weakest approach to an alcoholic is directly through his family or friends, especially if the patient is drinking heavily. Ex-alcoholics frequently insist a physician take the patient in hand, placing him in a hospital when possible. If proper hospitalization and medical care is not carried out, this patient faces the danger of delirium tremens, ‘wet brain’ or other complications. After a few days’ stay, the physician brings up the question of permanent sobriety. If the patient is interested, he tactfully introduces a member of the group. By this time the prospect has self-control, can think straight, and the approach can be made casually. More than half the fellowship have been so treated. The group is unanimous in its belief that hospitalization is desirable, even imperative, in most cases…

“An effort is made for frank discussion with the patient, leading to self-understanding. He must make the necessary readjustment to his environment. Co-operation and confidence must be secured. The objectives are to bring about extraversion and provide someone to whom he can transfer his dilemma. This group is now attaining this because of the following reasons:

1. Because of their alcoholic experiences and successful recoveries they secure a high degree of confidence from their prospects.
2. Because of this initial confidence, identical experiences, and the fact that the discussion is pitched on moral and religious grounds, the patient tells his story and makes his self-appraisal with extreme thoroughness and honesty. He stops living alone and finds himself within reach of a fellowship with whom he can discuss his problems as they arise.
3. Because of the ex-alcoholic brotherhood, the patient too, is able to save other alcoholics from destruction. At one and the same time, the patient acquires an ideal, a hobby, a strenuous avocation, and a social life which he enjoys among other ex-alcoholics and their families. These factors make powerfully for his extraversion.
4. Because of objects aplenty in whom he can vest his confidence, the patient can turn to the individuals to whom he first gave his confidence, the ex-alcoholic group as a whole, or to the Deity.

CAP’T TOM CROCKER>BIRTH OF HARBOR LIGHT

There are many myths and urban legends about Harbor Light in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many views.

Tom Crocker was born November 8, 1894 at the Newbery, Michigan County Jail. His father was the sheriff of the county. Coming from a large family and often interacting with the inmates he probably was exposed to the effects of alcoholism.

He started his adult life getting drunk, but getting by. Today we would call this a “functional alcoholic.” Drifting from job to job, he eventually enlisted into World War I. Tom was discharged at a base in New York, eventually taking a train from there to Detroit, drinking all the way.

Margaret Troutt, author of “Cap’t Tom” writes, of the Skid Row, Detroit, in the 1930s, “A decaying business and residential area overrun by bars, pawnshops, flophouses and greasy spoon restaurants. Where men curse often and fluently against everything and everybody, where dirt and filth prevail, where hate and fear destroy courage.”

According to the Detroit Free Press, ‘A city within a city where an estimated 5,000 men live—most of them chronic alcoholics—stumblebums, human derelicts.’ Skid Row inhabitants drink rubbing alcohol, cheap wine, canned heat, “bay horse”—a mixture of bay rum and other after-shave lotions—all kinds of concoctions to get the alcohol they crave. Winds blow rotting garbage, filth of all kinds from the gutters into the faces of the human debris who stagger along the sidewalk. But Skid Row habitués are used to dirt and bad smells. Men sleep where they fall, in doorways, on the sidewalks, where they are often scooped up by police and taken to jail in the paddy wagon. Those who pass out in the alleys or ‘jungles’—weed-choked vacant lots—are usually left alone until the police rout them out at daybreak.’

If a man has a quarter he can get a bed in a flophouse dormitory, called ‘fleabag’ or ‘scratch house.’ A private room in a cheap hotel is a little better, but not much—a small cubicle with bed and chair, walls of plasterboard or chicken wire running halfway to the ceiling, smelling of filthy mattresses and blankets. Where clothing lockers are not provided, men sleep fully dressed and place their shoes under their head.”

Tom Crocker was in and out of jails and asylums since moving to Detroit, even losing a great job as clerk for Judge Gillis. His body was being totally ravaged by alcoholism, to the point of losing the use of his legs. He had become known for being a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a perpetual drunk. He lost job after job, become institutionalized and jailed more times than he could count, dabbled with drugs, lost his friends, become dirt broke, and ended up living on the streets of Detroit.

In one last black-out in Cass Park, he awoke not having feeling in his legs. He instantly yelled to God and pleaded for the return of strength to his legs, which did in a few hours. He then stumbled into the newly open Harbor Lights, at Michigan Ave and Cass Ave where he got on his knees and surrendered to God. That was October 7, 1939. At this point two men had crossed paths and became life long friends. Tom Crocker and H. R. (Mike) Eshleman who’s last drink was September 4, 1939. These men had ran into each other drinking in the dive bars. Tom went the way of the Salvation Army and Mike the way of Alcoholics Anonymous.

These two friend would always support one another, Mike sending Tom drunks to detox and Tom sending recovering alcoholics to Mike to continue learning a program of recovery.

When the Detroit Bowery Corps, later to become the Harbor Light Center, opened on Michigan Avenue in 1939 by Adjutant George Bellamy to aid the homeless man, no one imagined it would become the large multi-faceted, spiritual and social service agency it is today. The Harbor Light, as we know it today, slowly evolved under the direction of many officers and the efforts of unheralded soldiers and converts. It seemed that as each need was met for the homeless, and those afflicted with drug and alcohol addictions, a new challenge presented itself and the Harbor Light Center was there, pioneering a continuum of care approach that still exists today.

Tom stayed sober, but never went back to work, deciding to make it a career to work out of the Salvation Army with the Detroit Bowery Corps and help other suffering alcoholics. Tom went on to create a program called Harbor Light, which he eventually would set them up all over the country based on the one in Detroit. Doing all this wonderful work he was eventually raised to the rank of captain in the Salvation Army.

He was probably one of the most unique Commanding Officers of the Harbor Lights. A man who overcame his own addictions to alcohol and drugs living on Detroit’s Skid Row. Saved through Jesus Christ at the Harbor Light, and grew to show countless others God’s Grace and Love. He also helped to create and establish the Harbor Lights in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., and Chicago.

He would always say, “It is our dream to establish on the Skid Row of every large city in this country a Harbor Light – penetrating into the dreary darkness of the squalid flophouses, the sordid saloons, the littered alleys – a light penetrating into the darkness in the souls of those unhappy and desolate human beings who so desperately need our help.”

The facilities at Harbor Light were very limited at first. Tom knew that a detoxification unit was needed, along with more beds and equipment. Gradually the facilities were enlarged, often through the financial help of interested friends.

As word spread about the conversion of Tom, he was invited to speak at service clubs and always presented the needs of Harbor Light. Local businessmen helped finance many projects at the corps. One of these men, himself a converted alcoholic, was Mike E., owner of Springfield Products Co. in Detroit. He became Tom’s close friend and benefactor throughout Tom’s life.

The Harbor Light had a modest beginning as a “Soup, Soap and Salvation” mission aided by the efforts of its own converts. The Corps continued to grow over the years in services and programming. Just after WWII the Harbor Light acquired additional space and instituted a basic spiritual and work therapy rehabilitation program designed especially for Harbor Light clientele. A historic change came in 1962 when urban renewal forced the Harbor Light from Michigan Avenue. Major Kenneth Stange acquired a residence for the men in the program. With this residence, and its complement of new facilities, it became possible to expand the community services to include medical service, prescriptions (made available through World Medical Relief), transient welfare and many other services.

The Harbor Light began a comprehensive treatment program for persons addicted to alcohol in 1969, followed by a program for narcotics in 1971, and the inclusion of women in the programs in 1973. In May of 1979, the Harbor Light opened its first satellite center in Monroe, followed in September of 1979 by a second satellite center in Macomb County (the original site opened in Warren, but the current location is in Clinton Township, MI.) Since the 1980s, the Harbor Light continues to evolve and is now one of the major providers of substance abuse treatment in the area of corrections (for the State of Michigan).

Since that time, Harbor Light and Alcoholic Anonymous have enjoyed a close relationship of co-operation, but never an affiliation.

THE BENSONS-“FRIENDS OF AA”

There are many myths and urban legends about the non-alcoholics who helped start AA in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many legends.

The Bensons, Elmer (Ben) and Elizabeth (Beth) were the couple who planted the seed of recovery and nurtured it to bloom in Archie Trowbridge.
The Bensons were an unassuming couple who were “upper-middle” class, which was a pretty good level coming out of the Depression. Ben was in upper-level management the J.L. Hudson Department Store. Beth was an associate director with the social service department of the Detroit Council of Churches. They lived at 860 Taylor Street, Detroit, which was just north of the Boston-Edison District.

The Bensons were members of the Oxford Group in Detroit. They were the type to do the hands-on service work with the down-and-outers, the nitty-gritty type of service work. Oxford Group meetings were being held first at a church at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Boston Blvd. Eventually they were moved to the newly built Northern Branch of the YWCA in Highland Park.

In early 1937, through the Oxford Group, Ben had learned of a new program of recovery for an alcoholic that was starting at the home of a member of the Oxford Group down in Akron, Ohio. Ben and his wife were so interested and such hands-on type of people that they went down to Akron. They stayed with this guy, by the name of Dr. Bob Smith for a couple of weeks to learn about this new “procedure.”

In the late summer of 1938, the Bensons were introduced, by a mutual friend, “Ralph,” to a young man by the name of Archibald Trowbridge, who was considered to be a chronic alcoholic. Arch had been a sheltered young man. He was emerged in fear when suddenly both parents had died with-in a year of each other and left him alone. He turned to alcohol for the support.

Archie met with the Bensons. Beth came right out and told Archie, that he alone would have to make that decision to get help to stop drinking. Then and only then would the Bensons help him get the help with the disease he had acquired.

After contacting the Doctor in Akron, Ohio, the Bensons drove Archie down to Akron and introduced him to the good Doctor and his wife Anne. Archie was to stay with this couple for about 10 ½ months to learn about this new program to help alcoholics like him to give up the drink.

Upon his return to Detroit, the Bensons, along with Sarah Klein, began to help Archie establish a group of alcoholics to help each other, at Archie’s Kirby Street attic room.

The group eventually grew to six people. With borrowed chairs from other rooms, five people sitting in his room and one in the hallway.

The Bensons offered the basement of their home at 860 Taylor Street to hold their meetings. The meeting was fondly called the “Bensons’ Basement Meeting.” This was started in November, 1939 with about eight people in a corner of the basement and quickly grew to about 25-30 people, that filled the basement. It had to be truly astounding to see 25-30 guys, former alcoholics, get off a street car at Woodward Ave and Taylor Street and walk two blocks to Bensons’ house every week. About 2-3 months later the meeting was moved to a place called Doty Hall.

Their meetings were only held for a short period of time at Doty Hall. It appeared that this location was too far from where the winos, drunks and low bottoms were hanging out, namely skid-row.

Before the meeting was discontinued at the Bensons’ basement, Dr. Bob Smith, a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and Archie’s sponsor, was invited to come up and look things over. Dr. Bob gave his first open-talk, as a celebration of the growth of A.A. in Detroit.

In late 1942 the Bensons moved to California, where Ben acquired a job managing a war-time factory for the War Department, leaving a wonderful legacy of recovery back in Detroit. In a 1951, Detroit News obituary it states, “Elmer Benson was very instrumental in starting A.A. in Detroit, but was NOT an alcoholic.”

“Alcoholics And God” by Morris Markey

Charles Towns, owner of Towns’ Hospital where Bill Wilson had sobered up, tried to get publicity for A.A. and finally succeeded. He had known Morris Markey, a well-known feature writer, for years. Markey was intrigued by what Towns told him of A.A., and approached Fulton Oursler, then editor of “Liberty,” a popular magazine that had a religious orientation. Oursler saw the possibilities at once and said, “Morris, you’ve got an assignment. Bring that story in here, and we will print it in September.” (Oursler later wrote a number of successful books on religion. He became a good friend of Bill’s and served as a trustee of the Alcoholic Foundation.)

In September 1939, when the “Liberty” piece hit the newsstands, Bill thought it was a bit lurid, and that the title, “Alcoholics and God,” would scare off some prospects. Perhaps it did, but “Liberty” received 800 urgent pleas for help, which were promptly turned over to Bill W. who turned them over to Ruth Hock for a response. “She wrote fine personal letters to every one of them,” wrote Bill, “enclosing a leaflet which described the A.A. book. The response was wonderful. Several hundred books sold at once at full retail price of $3.50. Even more importantly, we struck up a correspondence with alcoholics, their friends, and their families all over the country.” When Dr. Bob read the story he was elated. “You never saw such an elated person in your life,” said Ernie G. the second (there were two Ernie G’s). “We all were,” said Ernie’s wife, Ruth. Anne Smith said, “You know, it looks like we might be getting a little bit respectable.” It was AA’s first successful piece of national publicity. The stories in the Cleveland Plain Dealer followed shortly thereafter. One result of the article was that A.A. was started in Philadelphia. George S. of Philadelphia, one of the first “loners” had sobered up after reading the article. When the issue of Liberty first arrived, George was in bed drinking whiskey for his depression and taking laudanum for his colitis.

The Markey piece hit George so hard that he went ex-grog and ex-laudanum instantly. He wrote to New York, his name was given to Jim Burwell (see “The Vicious Cycle” in the Big Book), who was a traveling salesman, “and that’s how A.A. started in the City of Brotherly Love,” wrote Bill. Jim and George gathered others to them, and the first A.A. meeting in Philadelphia was held in George’s home. Chicago also reported getting several new prospects as a result of the “Liberty” article. Bill wrote to Dr. Bob, “We are growing at an alarming rate, although I have no further fear of large numbers.” A few weeks later he wrote Dr. Bob that “the press of newcomers and inquiries was so great that we have to swing more to the take-it-or-leave-it attitude, which, curiously enough, produces better results than trying to be all things at all times at all places to all men.”

H.R. “Mike” Eshleman-“AN INDUSTRIALIST”

There are many myths and urban legends about the “second” sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many views.

Prior to Mike’s sinking into the deep depths of the disease of alcoholism, he led a pretty normal life. He was married to a wonderful woman, Margaret, was an executive at an auto parts supplier, Motor Products Corp. and owned a home near St. Jean Rd and Mack Ave.

Mike had wrestled with “Ole John Barleycorn” for thirty years. It finally gave him an awful thrashing that he found himself in a terrible position. He was living in the world of darkness, filled with despair, discouragement and distress. Mike had been fired from his job of twenty years. He borrowed money to buy a punch press, struggled to make a comeback with his own little business, Springfield Machine and Stamping Co.

But every day, his drinking compulsion whipped him, and in his sober moments, he began to question whether he’d ever be right mentally.

He was sitting, one day, in a “gin-mill” two blocks from his home; a wife waiting, not for when he came home, but if he made it home. He asked his wife, who had become a crutch for him, if she could lift him out of this mess he had got himself in. Margaret replied, “No. You got into it, you’re gonna have to get out the best way you can.”

Mike was at home the next day coming off the worst drunk of his life, when he telephoned Roy M. Roy (Big Mike) was also in the auto industry, and he was the man who Archie had 12^th Stepped in March of 1939.

“I remembered a few short months before, seeing Roy sent to Akron to be given a cure that could help me. I saw this man leave Detroit in a most deplorable condition. His shoulders were stooped and his head was bowed. His hands were shaking and his eyes were blurry and his face was flushed. He was a broken man if I ever saw one. And I saw him return in less than two weeks time from Akron an entirely changed person. His shoulders were straight and his head was up. Those eyes were clear and the flush had left his face and his hands had lost their shake. He seemed to have been and entirely changed personality. I recognized that in this man. I sent for him and he came and he brought me this program and he explained these Twelve Steps.”

Mike never remembered the precise date of his frantic call to Roy, He believes it was sometime around September 1, 1939 (L.D.), and that he and Roy and two or three others began meeting every Thursday in an attic room of Archie Trowbridge on Kirby Ave, near the Art Centre.

Soon Mike, himself gathered in another automotive engineer and a barber. His conviction grew that his continued sobriety “depended on how much of this I gave away to someone else.”

Within the first few months, a non-alcoholic, Elmer Benson who was interested in the program offered the use of his basement as a meeting place. Then the expanded group found its own meeting hall and defrayed the cost—as is still the practice today—by passing the hat.

Mike was instrumental in opening the meetings downtown, eastside and westside groups, organizing them. He was was natural leader. He employed Jim Hardee (L.D. 10/18/41) who he allowed to work on company time to start the Tuesday A.M. meeting. With the help of Mike Jim handled the 1945 “The Glass Crutch” program on WWJ radio.

Mike and Cap’t Tom (L.D. 10/07/1939)of the Salvation Army came into sobriety pretty much the same time. Mike took the path of Alcoholics Anonymous and Cap’t Tom took the path of recovery through the Salvation Army. He created the Harbor Light program for the skid row drunks. Cap’t tom would detox them and feed them then send them to Mike and A.A. Mike and Cap’t Tom would remain life long friends.

Continuing his work with treatment centers, Mike would take a carload of A.A. members out to Ypsilanti State Hospital to do open talks to the alcoholics. In a copy of the January 1940 “Slant,” a hospital magazine talks about sending patients down to a new program going on in Detroit called Alcoholics Anonymous.

Mike started encouraging A.A. members to go into the prisons and jails all over the state, encouraging inmates to get into Alcoholics Anonymous. He would guarantee them a job when paroled if they maintained their sobriety.

“That’s why I had a representative in every correction institution in the State of Michigan. He started with the Federal Penitentiary at Milan and go right on down the string. They were men that were in A.A. They were men that had been involved with A.A. in those institutions. When they were ready for pardon and paroled it had been his great privilege, not a duty, to bring them in and supply work for them and they are some of the finest men he had.”

Through the years Mike’s business flourished, he feels because of his sobriety. He continued to purchase auto part factories, until he eventually created a company called Pullman Industries in which he united the numerous companies he had purchased, creating one of the largest auto suppliers in the country at that time.

Mike would go on to eventually be, Eastern (Southeast Michigan, Area 33) Michigan’s first Delegate on Panel 1, 1951-52.

Listen to Mike Eshleman’s talk

Among the First Five Sober

Tom Morrissey, who’s sobriety date was July 29, 1939, was a very humble member. Tom did not leave any photo or much other information behind. What we did discover was that Tom was from out of town, Ohio area. He was was transferred to Detroit in 1942, living on on the west side of Detroit. Due to the growth in Detroit, the early members decided to create two more meetings, as the first group, the Detroit Group was established. They next created the East Group, which Archie Trowbridge and Mike Eshelman developed. Then one was created in the Northwest Detroit area near Plymouth & Ilene area and that group was called the West Group (very imaginative). Tom was the member who took this task on to help develop this group with the aide of Mike.

Later, Tom was the lead to get a meeting started at Mariner’s Inn, which was founded in 1925 by the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. It was called the Detroit Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society. Its office headquartered at Mariners’ Church of Detroit. By 1934 a building on Griswold, owned by the Board of Trustees of Mariners’ Church, was refitted as an Inn where lodging, food and clothing were provided for the poor.

This proved that an alcoholic could get sober, move to another geographical location and stay sober.

SARAH KLEIN-“ANGEL OF A.A.”

There are many myths and urban legends about a non-alcoholic “member” of Alcoholics Anonymous in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many views.

Sarah Klein, a non-alcoholic, had received one of the earliest copies of the “Big Book” which contained the story of Alcoholics Anonymous in April, 1939. It held the instructions for a program of recovery from alcoholism. She was so impressed by what she read that she wrote to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City. In her letter, she inquired how they intended to put into practice that which they had wrote in the book. The Foundation had sent her a reply that they had a member in Akron that would be returning to Detroit about mid-summer. The Foundation also sent a letter to Archie Trowbridge recovering at Clarence Snyder’s home and informed him that they had received a letter of request from someone in Detroit and of course he assumed that S. Klein was not only an alcoholic, but also a man. Archie Trowbridge came home July 10, 1939 and immediately contacted S. Klein.

Sarah Klein could have been one of the leading socialites in Detroit, an outstanding art patron or belong to any of the many country clubs of the time. She chose instead to help a down and out recovering drunk in a flop house in Detroit’s skid row. She didn’t drink and never did.

Her unbelievable story has always been lightly touched on, the story of a social matron sitting with a recovering drunk in a dingy third-floor walk-up room on Kirby Street between Cass Avenue and Second Street, now a part of the Wayne State campus. Two people attending the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the city; the alcoholic, sick and penniless, who was determined to start that first meeting in Detroit. Sarah Klein, then 53, a wife of an alcoholic, mother of two. She and the alcoholic, Archie, were complete strangers. His home was bleak, hers was an elegant home in the Palmer Park District.

The only furniture in the room was single bed and a table with a wash basin. With no chairs in the room and Archie too weak to sit-up, Sarah would sit on the side of his bed as they talked. Her voice would carry, showing traces of her proper Bostonian schooling. She had been a student of the Greek, French and Latin languages.

She was the wife of Edward Klein, and advertising executive. They had raised two children, sending them off to college. She had been the perfect partner behind a bridge table. She had been one of the founders of the Women’s City club of Detroit, a group of local women that encouraged people to attend plays to help maintain culture in a city of blue collar workers. But bridge, travel and talk about the new plays, she left to those whose hearts were not touched by an inspiration like hers.

She had been born into a proud and privileged New York family. The granite from father’s quarry built New York’s Grand Central Station and the Detroit Public Library on Woodward Ave and Kirby Street. She broke her mother’s heart because she didn’t want a debutante party, didn’t like teas, didn’t like chiffon dresses.

At the tender age of six, she had begun school in a Boston Girl’s boarding school, and through her schoolmate and closest friend, encountered her first alcoholic, the little girl’s mother. At 53, she recalled the compassion she felt for that beautiful alcoholic woman. Sarah recalled, “In those school years, more than twelve, no one ever mentioned that she drank. Three or four times a year she would lock herself into her room and drink for days and days. When she came out, the family went on like nothing had happened. I sorrowed for her. I cried on the inside, ‘Why doesn’t someone help her!”

Her yearning to help caused her to throw herself into issues of the day: The peace rallies before World War I, the preparedness parade down Fifth Avenue led by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt. She marched to the suffrage parades and her young husband, Edward would stand on the curb and laugh.

They moved to Cleveland, and then in 1920s they moved to Detroit, where her children, Charles and Jane Ann were born. She eventually went on to have four grandsons. During this time alcoholism touched her life again, someone very close. She said, “Again there was a prayer within me that somewhere there was someone who could help.” That alcoholic turned out to be her husband, Edward. They were separated, and then divorced, moving out of the Palmer Park District, over to the east-side of Woodward Avenue onto Longwood Street. Edward was on an early A.A. membership list, living in a skid row hotel, but eventually disappeared.

Alcoholics Anonymous had begun in Akron and New York City and stories had begun appearing. Sarah wrote asking for information. Her letter, signed S. Klein, was referred subsequently to the lone interested alcoholic in Detroit who thought he might be able to start a “chapter.”

Archie thought S. Klein was an alcoholic as well as a man. They met anyway. For three months, on Thursday nights the two held meetings, the jobless impoverished alcoholic and the slim aristocratic, divorced woman who didn’t drink.

They prayed for another alcoholic to join them. They acquired two more men that achieved sobriety, but they didn’t want to be involved in any of those “damned” meetings. Eventually, a man named Lloyd, his brother-in-law, a man named Steve, who was to become the group’s first secretary, and a man from the Ypsilanti State Hospital, who was Roy(Leroy), the first 12th step call Archie had made in March, joined their group.

Roy, the man from the hospital, was the first person from a “treatment center,” although back then they were called asylums. This man was a former executive for Hudson Motor Car Co. and was able to go back to work for a major automobile company. Sad to say, he eventually died from alcoholism in the late 1940s.

Others came and went; they had to borrow chairs from other boarders, until they reached six, with one member sitting in the archway. Only Sarah could afford a telephone. She took messages from her home, it was unchartered ground. The “Big Book,” Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t quite available or affordable yet, it was the princely sum of $3.50 for those “low-bottom” drunks. They had to feel their way and pray. Arch would start each meeting by saying, “I haven’t had a drink since September.” Week by week they moved on.

In October, 1939, Sarah and the Bensons’ urged Archie to go on the radio and be interviewed about his disease. The feeling was that by going on the air it would get the word out about Alcoholics Anonymous being available locally to the alcoholic. They also felt Archie was the best one to be interviewed, which would also help him with low self-esteem, even though the interview only last 6-7 minutes. This would probably be one of the first times A.A. was heard on the air.

Sarah was the office girl, secretary, receptionist, and finally, librarian. She carried “Big Books” in a briefcase, eventually going to six meetings a week, always going by bus and streetcar. This austere beginning was to set the stage for what was to become the Central Office, A.A. of Greater Detroit, incorporating in January of 1946. Sometimes her family would say, “Mother, you go with the queerest people.” Sarah tried to keep her personal life separate, but enthusiasm bubbled out wherever she went.

One time a woman asked Sarah to meet her for lunch at the D.A.C., Detroit Athletic Club. The woman said she had seen Sarah at so many places and knew about her work and she begged Sarah never to tell people that her husband was alcoholic. Sarah assured her she never had to worry.

At first, Sarah’s husband’s family urged her to join the country clubs and try to become a part of their life. But she didn’t fit in; she always felt she was a square peg. Near the end of her life, with the all the vigor she could muster in her voice, she would snap her fingers indignantly and say, “She’ll have no part of that angel talk. Her hair was white, not gold. She could scarcely walk, much less fly.”

Archie Trowbridge and Sarah Klein along with a lady named Helen King would start the first Intergroup in Detroit, called the Metropolitan Groups Association. This experiment would prove to be very disastrous as there were no Traditions yet in place.

Listen to Sarah Klein’s Open Talk.

THE SERENITY PRAYER
…its origin is traced…

At long last the mystery of the Serenity Prayer has been solved!

We have learned who wrote it, when it was written and how it came to the attention of the early members of AA. We have learned, too, how it was originally written, a bit of information which should lay to rest all arguments as to which is the correct quotation.

The timeless little prayer has been credited to almost every theologian, philosopher and saint known to man. The most popular opinion on its ownership favors St. Francis of Assisi.

Our version was written by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, of the Union Theological Seminary, New York City, in about 1932 as the ending book of prayers.

Dr. Niebuhr says, “Of Course, it may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don’t think so, I honestly do believe I wrote it myself.”

It came to the attention of an early member of AA in 1939. He read it in an obituary appearing in the New York Times. He liked it so much he brought it in to the little office on Versey St. for Bill W. to read. When Bill and the staff read the little prayer, they felt that it particularly suited the needs of AA. Cards were printed and passed around. Thus the simple little prayer became an integral part of the AA movement.

Today it is in the pockets of thousands of AAs; it is framed and placed on the wall of AA meeting rooms throughout the world; it appears monthly on the back cover of our magazine, The AA Grapevine and every now and then someone tells us that we have quoted it incorrectly. We have.

As it appears in The AA Grapevine, it reads:

• God grant me the serenity
• To accept things I cannot change,
• Courage to change things I can,
• And wisdom to know the difference.

Many tell us that it should read:

• God grant me the serenity
• To accept the things I cannot change;
• The courage to change the things I can;
• And the wisdom to know the difference.

The way it was originally written by Dr. Niebuhr is as follows:

• God grant me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;
• Give me the courage to change things which must be changed;
• And the wisdom to distinguish one from others.

Dr. Niebuhr doesn’t seem to mind that his prayer is incorrectly quoted…a comma…a preposition…even several verbs…the meaning and message remain intact.

“In fact,” says the good doctor, “In some respects, I believe your way is better.”

The AA Grapevine.

What this great article doesn’t state is his early life:

In 1915, Reinhold became an ordained pastor. The German Evangelical Mission Board sent him to serve at Bethel Evangelical Church, 2270 W Grand Blvd, Detroit, Michigan. The congregation numbered 65 on his arrival and grew to nearly 700 under his leadership. He served as a parish minister in Detroit, Michigan, an industrial city for 13 years.

Thus the connection of the Serenity Prayer to Detroit, Michigan.

The process for creating our book, Alcoholics Anonymous

The title of the book Bill Wilson wrote is Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is referred to by AA members as the “Big Book.” It’s main objective is to help the alcoholic find a power greater than himself that will solve his problem. The “problem” being an inability to stay sober on his or her own.

One of the main reasons the book was written was to provide an inexpensive way to get the AA program of recovery to suffering alcoholics.

In the early days of AA, after the new program ideas were agreed to by Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith and the majority of AA members, they envisioned paid AA missionaries and free or inexpensive treatment centers. Alas, initial fundraising efforts failed.

In 1938, Bill W’s brother-in-law Leonard Strong contacted Willard Richardson, who arranged for a meeting with A. Leroy Chapman, an assistant for John D. Rockefeller Jr. Bill envisioned receiving millions of dollars to fund AA missionaries and treatment centers, but Rockefeller refused, saying money would spoil things. Instead, he agreed to contribute $5,000 in $30 weekly increments for Bill and Bob to use for personal expenses.

Later, in 1940, Rockefeller also held a dinner for AA that was presided over by his son Nelson. It was attended by wealthy New Yorkers as well as members of the newly founded AA. Bill hoped the event would raise much money for the group. Upon conclusion of the dinner, Nelson stated that Alcoholics Anonymous should be financially self-supporting. That the power of AA should lie in one man carrying the message to the next, not with financial reward but only with the goodwill of its supporters.

Although Bill would later give Rockefeller credit for the idea of AA being nonprofessional, he was initially disappointed with this consistent position. After the first Rockefeller fundraising attempt fell short, he abandoned plans for paid missionaries and treatment centers. Instead, Bill and Bob formed a nonprofit group called the Alcoholic Foundation and published a book that shared their personal experiences and what they did to stay sober. The book they wrote, Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), is the basic text for AA on how to stay sober. It is from the title of this book that the group got its name.

The book had 8 Roman and 400 Arabic numbered pages. “The Doctor’s Opinion” started as page one. Later in the Second Edition it was moved to the Roman numeral section of the book.  The basic text ended at page 179 not 164. 29 stories were included: 10 from the east coast, 18 from the mid-west and one last-minute story from the west coast (which was ghost written by Ruth Hock and removed in the second printing). The Foreword to the first edition contains many of the key principles that later shaped the Traditions and the AA Preamble.

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism is a 1939 basic text, describing how to recover from alcoholism. It was primarily written by one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Bill Wilson  with two chapters, “To Employers” written by Henry Parkhurst. Dr. William D. Silkworth contributing the section on The Doctor’s Opinion.

In the entire 1^st Editions, Dr. Silkworth did not sign the letter he submitted to Bill for the book. He stayed anonymous because he did not want to be expelled out of the American Medical Association (AMA). The medical society of the time did not prescribe to the theory that alcoholism was a disease. The AMA had declared that alcoholism was an illness in 1956. So in the 2^nd Edition in 1955, Dr. Silkworth allowed his name to be used because of the changing attitude.

There was much debate over the God issue, therefore Chapter four was included, “We Agnostics.” This was credited to Jimmy B., who was a devote atheist. He is credited with the phrase, “A Power greater than ourselves.”

The debate over “spiritual experience” versus “spiritual awakening” happened after the publication of the 1^st printing of the 1^st Edition. Early members came to Bill and stated that none of them had a spiritual experience. He would have to elaborate on the difference between “spiritual experience” and “spiritual awakening.” In the 2^nd printing footnotes were added to pages 35, 38 and 72 along with an appendix II on page 399 explaining the difference between “spiritual experiences” versus “spiritual awakening.”

The Appendix II also contained information about William James’ book on, The Varieties of Religious Experience, a book Bill had read upon coming out of a blackout.

In addition on page 72 it is the only time a step has been altered. It read in the 1^st printing, “Having had a spiritual experience…” to “Having had a spiritual awakening…”

Archie Trowbridge, the founder of A.A. in Detroit, writes a note in his book which was one of the first one hundred of the first print, “were purchased from the printer in small 3-6 book lots because that is all they could afford to pay for at that time.”

On April 10, 1939, 4,730 copies of the first edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous” were published at $3.50 a copy ($54 in today’s dollars). The printer, Edward Blackwell of the Cornwall Press, was told to use the thickest paper in his shop. The large, bulky volume became known as the “Big Book” and the name has stuck ever since. On page 170 of “AA Comes of Age” Bill W wrote that the idea behind the thick, large paper was to convince the alcoholic he was getting his money’s worth.

Initially the Big Book did not sell. 5000 copies sat in the warehouse, and Works Publishing was nearly bankrupt. Morgan R., recently released from an asylum, contacted his friend Gabriel Heather, host of popular radio program, “We the People,” to promote his newly found recovery through AA. The interview was considered vital to the success of AA and its book sales. To ensure that Morgan stayed sober for the broadcast, members of AA kept him locked in a hotel room for several days under a 24-hour watch. The interview was a success. Hank Parkhurst arranged for 20,000 postcards to be mailed to doctors announcing the Heather broadcast and encouraging them to buy a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Book sales and AA popularity also increased after positive articles in Liberty magazine in 1939 and the Saturday Evening Post in 1941.

At the time of the publication of the first edition, The Big Book was typically well received by most critics, referred to by one reviewer as “the greatest redemptive force of the twentieth century.” A reviewer for the New York Times stated that the thesis of the book had more of a sound base psychologically than any other book on the subject and that the book is unlike any other book ever published. Other critics called the book extraordinary and stated that it deserved the attention of anyone worried about the problem of alcoholism. It was noted by the American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers that contacts with the members of an A.A. group increases one’s respect for their work. “To the layman, the book is very clear. To the professional person it is at first a bit misleading in that the spiritual aspect gives the impression that this is another revival movement” and that “it is more impressive to the professional person to watch the technique in action than to read the book.” However, not all reviewers, especially those in the medical field, found merit in the book. The review that appeared in the October 1939 volume of the Journal of the American Medical Association called the book “a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation…in no sense a scientific book.” Similarly, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease said The “Big Book” was “big in words…a rambling sort of camp meeting…Of the inner meaning of alcoholism there is hardly a word. It is all on the surface material.” This review went on to “degrade” the alcoholic: “Inasmuch as the alcoholic, speaking generally, lives a wish-fulfilling infantile regression to the omnipotent delusional state, perhaps he is best handled for the time being at least by regressive mass psychological methods, in which, as is realized, religious fervors belong, hence the religious trend of the book.” The views about the book and about alcoholism espoused in these two journals were typical of how alcoholics and other addicts were viewed by many in the psychiatric field during the middle of the 20th century.

On June 29, 1939, the New York Times did a book review written by Percy Hutchison  on the “Big Book.” This review was a glowing report on how something was put together by former alcoholics for alcoholics.

It is one of the best-selling books of all time, having sold 30 million copies. In 2011, Time magazine placed the book on its list of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923, the beginning of the magazine. In 2012, the Library of Congress designated it as one of 88 “Books that Shaped America.”

There are many myths and urban legends about the first sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the metro-Detroit area. We hope this clears up many views.

In the late-1930s there was a man living in the skid row of Detroit in need of a “cure” for the disease of alcoholism that he had acquired earlier in life. He was a handsome man, with a promising career. He said he was from a good “upper middle class” family from the Grosse Pointe area. This is a fallacy, as he lived in Detroit and did not live in Grosse Pointe until later in sobriety. This man was Archie Trowbridge.

Archie Trowbridge’s grandfather, Edward Trowbridge Sr., was born and raised in Troy Corners, which was near Square Lake and Livernois Road, now known as Troy, Michigan. As an adult, Edward Sr., and his family moved to Marash, Turkey where Archie’s father, Edward Jr., was born. The family returned to the United States settling in the Detroit area when Edward was twelve years old.

Edward Jr. began working as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. A noted engineer he got a job with the responsibility for overseeing the stringing of AT&T’s long distant lines in Michigan. He then became the general manager of the Michigan Bell Telephone Co. Doing an exceptional job, the international utility empire, transferred him to Spain, Brazil and Mexico City. Returning to Detroit area’ working in the insurance field, he lived on Parker Ave between Jefferson Ave and the Detroit River.

Archie enlisted in the Army in September 1918, at the age of 19, however with WWI ending two months later, he did not serve very long. At the age of twenty-one he had begun his drinking career in the “gin-and-jazz era” of the early twenties. He had to drop out of college after a year due to family financial difficulties. It necessitated his going back to work. In the 1920 city directory indicates that Archie, working as a stockbroker, lived on Parker Ave with Edward Sr. and Edward Jr., who would go on to be a successful executive at Stroh’s Brewery Co. (apparently Archie’s mother had passed by this time). He entered the business world with every confidence that success lay ahead. He had endless dates and went to countless dances, balls and dinner parties.

This went on for many years. Archie always planned ways to sidestep the things he feared, carefully concealing them from everyone. During this time, he had to give up the presidency of a small real-estate firm even though it had gained success. Shortly thereafter, Archie’s life was suddenly shattered when he had a devastating nervous breakdown. Doctors could find nothing wrong with him. Psychiatry might have helped, but little was known about this field of medicine in Detroit at that time. Recovery from the nervous breakdown came very slowly; he spent three months in bed. He ventured out of the house for a walk, but became frightened by the time he reached the corner. He later learned to take short street-car rides, then longer ones and so forth, until he appeared to be doing most of the things other people do daily.

Gradually he was able to do more and even to work at various jobs. He got a part-time job selling printing for a small neighborhood printer. After a short time, he was able to get a job at a downtown printer, He couldn’t physically handle the stress of the hard work, so jobs came and went. That’s when his drinking started in the early evenings and afternoons. He found alcohol helped him relieve his many fears.

By the age of thirty, both his parents had died, leaving him a sheltered and somewhat an immature man, on his own. He moved into the Crestwood Arms Apartments a “bachelor hall,” where the men all drank on Saturday nights and enjoyed themselves. Archie drank with them, but also drank himself to sleep every night. Being a real estate agent, he struggled with the real estate business.

During this depressive time, in the mid-1932 he met “a lovely girl,” by the name of Margaret O’Meara, who he married a short time later. They had a son together named, Sean, born on August 9, 1935. The marriage lasted until January, 1937, when they finally divorced. Archie came home drunk one night from a party. His wife’s illness had kept her from going. By that time Archie had become the kind of drunk who would never dream of missing a party just to keep his sick wife company.

Archie came home letting himself in and struggled upstairs to his wife’s bedroom. She sat up in bed, took one look at him and screamed. Archie was standing in the open doorway in his torn evening clothes, his shirt spattered with blood, a red trickle oozing from his mouth, grinning foolishly at her. He had driven into a parked car on the way home. Margaret took their four-year old son and left the next morning, divorce was inevitable.

By this time, Archie compared his life from that point, like a toboggan ride that was starting to accelerate. He was homeless, jobless, penniless, and totally unable to quit drinking for more than a few hours, usually long enough to borrow or beg for more whiskey money from a few friends he had left. He would sit around Michigan Ave. bars waiting for something to happen to him, thinking more and more of suicide.

Archie was staying with whoever would put him up for a few nights. He eventually was staying with a friend he called “Ralph”, (we are still researching to find out who Ralph was), in the Grosse Pointe area whose family was on vacation  in Europe.

Nearing Labor Day weekend in 1938, “Ralph” knew his friend needed a new lease on life, new interests. He told Archie, he couldn’t help him with this. He inquired that if Archie was interested, he knew of a woman by the name of Beth Benson. She was (see section on the Bensons), a member of the Oxford Group and maybe able to give him these things. Archie was ready, as ready as a drunk could be.

The meeting was to be at 4:00 pm the next day. “I wondered how I was going to keep an appointment at four o’clock in the afternoon. And be reasonably sober! And I finally hit on a marvelous solution. I would get up a little earlier than usual and make an effort to get drunk faster. So that I would come home knowing my own habits and sleep off the first of the day’s drinks and then go straight over and see her to keep this appointment. I did these things and they worked out that way.” Archie began to wonder how he was to keep his appointment and arrive reasonably “sober!” He hit upon a marvelous solution. He would get up earlier than usual and make an effort to get drunker faster. He did these things and it worked.

Arch’s friend “Ralph” introduced him to Beth Benson, a non-alcoholic. The woman offered Archie a chance to go down to Akron, Ohio and to meet some men who had found a solution to their problem, which was his problem. Beth and her husband, Ben, offered to take Archie to Akron, and do it the next day if he were willing. The woman, however, insisted that Archie make up his own mind about it; perfectly, freely and without pressure from her. This took Archie quite a while. He spent a long time in her house thinking about it.

In an open talk years later, Archie described this, “I finally made the decision. I left her house with the full intention of hurrying as fast as my car would take me to the nearest saloon in getting a drink. Half way to the saloon something stopped me. I can’t tell you what it was. I know what I think it was. Today I’m sure of what it was. I’m sure that her prayers, which were all that were left to her to do after she let go of me, that her prayers did that. However, I went home and went to bed after 18 days of continuous drinking  and sweated it out all night. I don’t need to describe that part of it to you. It makes me shudder to think of it and it would make all you to shudder, but I was on deck the next day, pretty much of a wreck, but I was there to start to Akron.”

Dorothy Snyder, wife of Clarence Snyder (founder of A.A. in Cleveland), tells how while she was spending some time with Anne Smith, wife of Dr. Bob Smith (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), Anne announced that she would not go the picnic planned the next day because she had a sense that she would be needed at home. Early Sunday morning there was a call from Detroit about a man the Benson’s wanted to bring to Akron. The man was Archie Trowbridge

After what seemed like an endless trip to Archie, he, Beth and  Ben arrived in Akron. At Akron, Archie was turned over to Dr. Bob Smith and his wife Anne. The first order of business was to admit Archie into Akron City Hospital. This was the hospital where Dr. Bob was a surgeon and he convinced the staff to let him use a bed or two for his alcoholic friends.

Archie spent Labor Day in Akron City Hospital reading the book Sermon on the Mount. It changed the entire outlook on his life. It changed his direction. He was visited both in the hospital and at the home of Dr. Bob by fifteen to twenty men who came to him with their stories, each one different as could be from the next. Every one of those men came cleared eyed, neat and purposeful looking, full of confidence, not cockiness. They impressed him because they had all the things he lacked.

Dr. Bob had said ‘He was so run-down, there wasn’t much left. We thought he was kind of simple.’ At any rate it would be ten and half months before he would be able to return to work in Detroit. Archie stayed with Dr. Bob and his wife during much of that time. During that time Archie felt that it was wrong to impose on them. All members of A.A. in those days were poor. In the 1930’s you didn’t get a job just because you were willing to and you were going to reform. But Arch had to learn (like most alcoholics) to accept their goodness in the spirit in which it was given! But Arch would often rebel in his own mind against having to impose on them.

During the stay at the doctor’s house Archie became like a second son to Anne. In later years, Archie said, “I had been taken off the streets and nursed back to life by Anne Smith I was not only penniless and jobless, but too ill to get out of the house during the day and hunt for work. So great was Anne’s love and so endless her patience with me, so understanding her handling of me, ten months later, I left a new man, perhaps imbued with just a few grains of that love.”

Dr. Bob and fellow members of the yet unnamed society took Archie through the procedures they had developed to get sober. During this time, he met Clarence Snyder, from Cleveland. With just four months sober, in late December, 1938 Archie was asked, by Bill and Dr. Bob to pen his story of recovery for the society’s pet project, a book that was yet unnamed. This story was called, “The Fearful One.”

The society’s book project, eventually to be called Alcoholics Anonymous, was published in April, 1939. Archie’s story, “The Fearful One,” states he had six months sobriety. In notes contained in Archie’s “Big Book,” he states, “I write my story in the small hours of the morning, sometime in late December, 1938 or early January, 1939, just ahead of the printer’s deadline. I had been sober four months. The story said six months as due time was allowed for publication. My perspective was very limited and the story was unduly brief. Sixteen years later I was asked to rewrite it for the first (sic. 2nd Edition, First Print, 1955) new edition.”

In March, 1939 Bill Wilson, Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was in Akron—he frequently stopped there whenever he could get some business excuse to come. While sitting on the doctor’s front porch with Archie, he mentioned that he was on his way to Detroit to take care of some business. Archie replied, “I certainly would like to go up there (to Detroit) and see what the lay of the land is and look around and see whether I could take hold yet or not. And Bill says, ‘Why don’t you?’…I said, ‘Why don’t I?’…Bill said, ‘let’s go now.”

This was Sunday morning. They were going to start right away, then, they decided to wait until Monday morning. Archie and Bill Wilson went to Cleveland, to visit Clarence, and then come up to Detroit by the way of the Mercury Railway.

Bill and Archie stayed Monday and Tuesday at the Book-Cadillac. Archie still felt sick, frail, and frightened. His personal reputation and financial credit still zero, he visited some of his old friends and told them his story. He began to make amends everywhere he could. Bill attended to business, in the meantime. Friends of Archie asked Bill to stay on awhile, but he had to get back to New York. Archie stayed in Detroit and worked entirely on trying to make A.A. contacts that would later on produce prospects.

In order to get this picture, you have got to realize, that at that time alcoholism was, with the exception of a few advanced men who had spent time to study it, such as Dr. Silkworth in New York City, an unknown disease. The alcoholic in the public mind was an “ornery cuss,” who didn’t want to stop drinking and had no will-power. However, to plant the seed of recovery Archie talked to personnel men in factories, ministers, doctors, people on street corners, anybody and everybody who would listen. He planted the seed amongst a number of people, not themselves alcoholic prospects, but people who were likely to come in contact with the problem of alcoholism. Archie explained that his disposition was such that he couldn’t and wouldn’t be any good at running in and out of bars and trying to sell this solution cold turkey to some drunk. He had to go about it in a roundabout way of getting prospects where they were most likely to crop up.

During that March of 1939, Archie got his first prospect and he was a lulu. This prospect was Roy M. (Big Mike), an executive at Hudson Motor Car Co. “Big Mike” was staying with a doctor friend who was also a friend of Archie Trowbridge The doctor came over for dinner one night and said, “I’ve got a man for you. He’s down on Park Ave at a dollar a day hotel (Converse Hotel) and he tried to commit suicide twice that week.” Archie decided after some mental debating, that it was his responsibility to see the fellow.

Archie took a bus from the eastside of downtown Detroit. He went through a lot of mental torture for a half-hour on the bus ride. What was he going to say to the fellow? Every time he got wrought up over it, he finally said to himself, “Wait a minute, your job is get in the room with that man and see what happens next. This wasn’t a twenty-four hour program, this was down to be a five or ten minute program.” Archie got to Roy’s room and he wasn’t very receptive. Later Archie discovered that the man thought he was a private detective.

As every recovering alcoholic knows, there something about being an alcoholic that will win over another alcoholic if you have ten minutes with him. Within those ten minutes Archie had the fellow asking him if it was alright for him to go to work on his bottle. Archie said it would be fine and the man was suddenly at ease.

Over the next twenty-four hours Archie was able to raise money amongst his pigeon’s former friends to send him to Akron. Most of the donors thought they were getting a bad drunk out of town permanently. At the time people had no idea what recovery was all about.

Archie shipped the man out of the Union Depot the next afternoon at 5:30 p.m. on the Red Arrow Express. The prospect was all cleaned up with a pint of whiskey in his hip pocket. This was done to help him survive the trip.

Dr. Bob was waiting at the other end, just as he was for Archie. This part of the story was told to tell how Archie’s feet weren’t touching the train platform when he left the depot. As this was his first Twelfth Step attempt and he was in the clouds. Roy was to return to alcohol and eventually died in the late-1940s from this disease.

After three weeks in Detroit, Archie found that it was impossible for him to stay here and find a job. His health was yet not good enough; he returned to Akron exhausted. Upon arriving, waiting in the Smith’s living room was Ann Smith and two people from Cleveland. They had talked among themselves and decided that all Archie was doing was isolating himself in Akron. So, it was decided that Archie would go to Cleveland to help Clarence get AA established there. This is when Archie had acquired a get-tough attitude about recovery. He stayed there until July 10, 1939 when he returned to Detroit to start all over again.

Coming back, Archie had no place to live, no job and his health still very bad. He did come back full of a new attitude towards life and a desire to live differently than he had ever lived before. He made his living the first six months delivering dry cleaning out of a broken-down jalopy to the back doors of his one-time fashionable friends in Grosse Pointe. He eventually began selling hosiery and men’s made-to-order shirts. He did this partly because it was difficult getting a job, but it also left him freedom to do the A.A. he wanted to do.

Looking back in later years, Archie recognized time and time again, many examples of how our Higher Power has much better plans for us, than we make for ourselves! Because what Archie thought was wrong, that is to say his being delayed in Akron and left on Dr. Bob and Anne’s hands. This was part of a plan under which he absorbed A.A. from one of its oldest members, He learned to stand on his own two feet and he gained the strength and spiritual courage to go out alone. Archie didn’t think he could have done these things without those ten and half months.

Many times during his sobriety, Archie was introduced as, ‘The Instrument of God,” for his part played in the development of A.A. locally; he wished everyone would remember that he was blessed to play a small role in carrying the message of recovery.

Listen to Archie’s open talk from December 25, 1948.