two connected A.A. stories

[honeydumplin]

From the book Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers
A biography, with recollections of early A.A. In the Midwest
copyright 1980
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., New York, N.Y.
Chapter 6 entitled: Two Alcoholics Meet
page 63


Bill had called Henrietta out of his own desperation when, after pacing up and down the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel on South Main Street in downtown Akron, he suddenly realized that he needed to talk to another drunk in order to keep from drinking himself.

The Mayflower, with its sleek Art Deco facade, was practically new—the best, most modern hotel in Akron. And on Saturday night, people came downtown to shop, maybe eat at a restaurant, and go to a movie. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were starring in “Roberta” at the Rialto, and James Cagney was featured in “G-Men” at another theater.

There was a festive air in the Mayflower lobby that night—with the warm, tempting laughter Bill remembered coming from the bar. Probably, the bar was unusually crowded and many private parties were being held in the hotel suites, because guests were gathering for the annual May Ball given by the St. Thomas Hospital Guild. Sister Ignatia would have been there, along with the young doctor Tom Scuderi. As a member of the courtesy staff, Dr. Bob, too, might well have put in an appearance, had he been sober.

Instead of joining the merrymakers at the bar, “Bill got the guidance to look at the ministers' directory in the lobby,” Henrietta said. “And a strange thing happened. He just looked there, and he put his finger on one name—Dr. Walter Tunks.

“So Bill called Dr. Tunks, and Dr. Tunks gave him a list of names. One of them was Norman Sheppard, who was a close friend of mine and knew what I was trying to do for Bob. Norman said to Bill, 'I have to go to New York tonight, but you call Henrietta Seiberling. She will see you.'”

As bill described it, he had already called nine names on his list of ten, and Henrietta's was the last. Bill remembered having once met a Mr. Seiberling, former president of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, assumed that this was his wife, and couldn't imagine calling her with such a plea. “But,” Bill recalled, “something kept saying to me, 'You'd better call her.'

“Because she had been enabled to face and transcend other calamities, she certainly did understand mine,” Bill said. “She was to become a vital link to those fantastic events which were presently to gather around the birth and development of our A.A. Society. Of all the names the obliging rector had given me, she was the only one who cared enough. I would like here to record our our timeless gratitude,”Bill concluded.

Henrietta, of course, was not the wife of the rubber company president, but his daughter-in-law. She lived in the gatehouse of the Seiberling estate on Portage Path, a short distance from the Smiths' home.

Henrietta tried to get Bob and Anne over to her house that Saturday. Could they come over to meet a friend of hers, a sober alcoholic, who might help bob with his drinking problem?