Not-God (61 page)

55
    Trs. of Dorothy M., Lloyd T., Dave T., J.T.C., Joseph K., Bob E., p. 20; interview with Clarence S., 20 August 1977, and Clarence S. to writer, 9. September 1977.

56
    Clarence S. is the main source here and for much that follows; beyond the other trs. cited in the preceding note, his version is supplemented by Dorothy M., tr. Dorothy M. was in 1939 the wife of Clarence S. Her tr. is of a 1954 interview by Wilson, and thus especially useful in sorting out the discrepancies between the Wilson and the Clarence S. versions of A.A. history. Also extremely helpful was Warren C., interviews of 7 and 8 September 1977. Warren came into A.A. as Clarence’s pigeon in mid-1939. He has remained above the disputes between Clarence and A.A.’s New York General Service Office, and he was recommended by Clarence as “the best source for the real story.” I found Warren knowledgeable and of trustworthy memory: in cases of otherwise unresolvable contradictions, I have tended to follow his recollections.

57
    Much of the Catholic lore surrounding these events is courtesy of John C. Ford, S.J., interview of 12 April 1977;
cf
. also Clarence S. to writer, 9 September 1977; Warren C., interviews of 7 and 8 September 1977. It seems a reasonable assumption that Wilson’s misunderstanding
re
papal condemnation of the OG was rooted in awareness of this occurrence in Cleveland.

58
    Dorothy M., tr.; Clarence S., tr. Clarence offered vivid and colorful details of the Akron meeting of 10 May and the Cleveland meeting of 11 May in a letter to the writer of 9 September 1977.

59
    Dorothy M., tr.; Clarence S., tr.;
cf
. also trs. of T. Henry Williams and Lloyd T. According to Clarence S. (letter to writer of 9 September 1977, interview of 22 October 1977), the “fussbudgets” among the Oxford Groupers “were very unhappy with me (really some were damned nasty).… If I [thought] that was a riot [his Akron announcement of the Cleveland meeting], you should have witnessed next Thursday nite at Cleveland at our first meeting. That whole bunch from Akron and other places descended upon us and tried to break up our meeting — one guy … was going to whip me!” The harassment continued through the summer and into autumn, and Clarence at times later claimed that it was the reason for the split into the Orchard Grove and Borton groups in November of 1939. Warren C., interview of 7 September 1977, testified to the continuing but diminishing “bother.” The history of the matter to 1942 is too complicated as well as inconsequential (once personalities are left aside) to detail here: my evaluation of its significance appears within note #1 to
Chapter Four
, below.

60
    “Dr. Bob,” 23; Bob E., tr.; NW, “Outline;”
LM;
“Another Fragment of History — by Bill".
AAGV
10:9 (February 1954); Dr. Russell Smith, interviews of 12 and 13 June 1977. The matter of hospital use in Akron and Cleveland is the most complicated and I believe essentially insoluble problem in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. While insisting that the history narrated in the text here is substantially correct, I offer in this and the following note some hint of the complexities involved. Frank Amos, “Notes on Akron, Ohio Survey,” attached to Amos (New York) to Albert Scott, 23 February 1938, reported of his interview with Judge B., the Chairman of the Board of Akron City Hospital: “His Board, he said, was proud to give Smith fullest privileges in handling alcoholics at City Hospital.” I have difficulty in accepting this and suspect that Amos misunderstood B. or that one of them was less than fully accurate. Beyond the sources just cited, the tr. of Dr. Smith’s nurse at this time, Emma K., and the detailed research of Niles P. into Smith’s biography belie such a claim.

61
    Sr. Ignatia, tr.; “For Sister Ignatia — by Bill,”
AAGV
22:3 (August 1966), 2-9; Sister Ignatia, “Care and Treatment of Alcoholics,”
AAGV
25:1 (June 1969), 5-8: this last is based on an interview given by Sister Ignatia in 1951;
cf
. also
AACA
, p. 7. Because Clarence S. denies Wilson’s and Bob E.’s accuracy concerning these events, it is important to note that reliance here and in the following paragraphs is also upon two brief informal histories (undated) of St. Thomas Hospital by Sr. Ignatia, and also upon her letters (Cleveland) to Wilson of 13 March and 3 April 1957: in the letters she is replying to Bill querying her about Clarence’s objections to the history recorded in
AACA
. These materials are in the files of Rosary Hall, the alcoholic ward of St. Vincent’s Charity Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, of which Sr. Ignatia was in charge from 1952 until her death in 1966. Further, the source suggested by Clarence “for the real story,” Sister Victorine, who was Sr. Ignatia’s predecessor and successor at St. Vincent’s, in interviews of 8 September and 23 December 1977, verified the details of Sr. Ignatia’s histories, contradicting Clarence on several points. An anonymously-authored (but not by Sr. Ignatia) “History of A.A. Activities at St. Vincent’s Charity Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio,” [1953] further confirms the narration here and the final sentence three paragraphs hence.
Yet:
one of Clarence’s claims is that Wilson inflated the St. Thomas Hospital and Sr. Ignatia roles in order to curry Catholic favor (interviews cited and marginated copy of
AACA)
. Thus it may be wise not to accept these sources without noting the following points: (1) Clarence was hospitalizing patients in Cleveland in early June of 1939 — Clarence S. (Cleveland) to Hank P., 4 June 1939; (2) These hospitalizations (at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital) involved Dr. Smith and were exceptional — most were still sent to Akron — Edna M. (n.p.) to Wilson, 5 February 1957; Dorothy M. (n.p.) to Wilson, 30 March 1957; (3) Clarence himself stressed that his claim to priority in hospitalization rested on his use of St. Vincent’s Charity Hospital; yet according to his own detailed history of this, his entree followed the Hemsley publicity of April 1940 by at least four months. Further, Clarence’s sometime claim that St. John’s Hospital admitted alcoholics before St. Vincent’s is belied by the testimony of Sr. Victorine, whose first Cleveland assignment was to St. Vincent’s and who went to St. John’s only after Sr. Ignatia replaced her at St. Vincent’s (interviews of 8 September and 23 December 1977).

Any interested in trying further to unravel the detailed sequence here will find the raw materials for such an effort, beyond the sources thusfar cited, in Clarence S. (St. Petersburg, FL) to Wilson, 20 February and 14 April 1957, and Wilson to Clarence S., 20 March 1957; also, Clarence S. to writer, 13 and 29 September 1978.

Wilson’s own final mollifying conclusion was that St. Thomas Hospital in Akron had been “the first to give
permanent
haven” to alcoholics and to A.A. — Wilson to Clarence S., 20 March 1957 (emphasis Wilson’s).

62
    Sr. Ignatia, tr.; Dr. Russell Smith, interviews cited;
cf
. also Smith (Akron) to Hank P., 15 September 1939. Wilson may be heard chortling over the same images, beyond
AACA
, p. 7, in, e.g., Wilson to Dorothy M., 22 March 1957.

63
    [Sr. Ignatia], “St. Thomas Hospital;” Father Vincent Haas, tr.

64
    Father Vincent Haas, tr.;
cf
. note #61 above. It may have been only in 1941 that St. Thomas Hospital
formalized
its admission and treatment procedures for alcoholics, but the Haas tr. makes clear that administrative approbation was obtained no later than March 1940.

65
    Bob E., tr., pp. 21-22. This point is complex; some who visited Akron in 1939 — e.g., Marty Mann — claimed that there were few alcoholics at the meeting attended and that the meetings were very Oxford Group. Others (interviews reported by Niles P.) claim that Akron meetings in this period were very much A.A. and very little OG. I hypothesize that both versions are true: the memories are simply of different perceptions of different meetings as this problem ebbed and flowed to resolution through the late summer and early fall of 1939. I offer Bob E.’s version in the text here because it seems to me that he best captures the process and its confusions. Clarence S., interview of 6 October 1978 supported this interpretation.

66
    Bob E., tr., pp. 23-24; interview with Henrietta Seiberling, 6 April 1977.

67
    Bob E., tr., p. 24; Smith (Akron) to Hank P., 1 January 1940; “Dr. Bob,” 26-27; William V., tr; Sue G., tr.

68
    T. Henry and Clarace Williams (Akron) to Bill and Lois Wilson, 29 February 1940; a letter from Clarence S. (Cleveland) to Ruth H., 5 January 1940, comments on “how much better Smith looks since he pulled his gang out of Williams” and reports Cleveland joy over the development.

69
    “Landmarks in A.A. History,”
AACA
, p. viii records: “1939, Summer: Midwest A.A.’s withdraw from Oxford Groups; A.A. fully on its own.” Wilson’s narration of this history is very subdued —
AACA
, p. 76.

IV 1939–1941

1
     Clarence S., tr.; Dorothy M., tr.; Virginia M., tr.; Abby G., tr.; Wilson, “Review;” also Clarence S. (Cleveland) to Wilson, 4 March 1941, and Abby G. (Cleveland) to Wilson, 28 June 1956; Clarence S. to writer, 9 September 1977; interviews with Warren C. and Dick P., 7 and 8 September 1977. “relative calm”: the OG harassment noted in
Chapter Three
, note #59, continued but diminished in intensity over this period. Despite the overt claim that the splitting off to be treated just below was due to this “bother,” the over-all weight of even Clarence’s evidence is that the Davis episode was the proximately precipitating factor;
cf
. Clarence S., (Cleveland) to Hank P., 4 June 1939; also, Clarence confirmed this in response to my direct question, interview of 17 December 1977. Dr. Smith traveled to Cleveland to participate in these meetings at least once a month until the split to be treated below (and less regularly thereafter); Smith (Akron) to Hank P., 15 September 1939; Sue G., tr.

2
     
Cf
. sources cited in note #1 above; also, Lloyd T., tr. The
Plain Dealer
articles appeared on scattered dates between 21 October and 4 November 1939.

3
     Dorothy M., tr., pp. 1, 8.

4
     
Ibid.
, pp. 9-10. According to Dorothy M., Davis had a drinking problem; according to Warren C., Clarence sought him out expressly for publicity.

5
     
AACA
, pp. 20f; Thomsen, pp. 291-292, 321; Clarence S., tr.; the Lupton sermon was reported in the
Plain Dealer
of 27 November 1939 and reprinted as a pamphlet titled, “Mr. Anonymous”: basically, it told Clarence’s story.

My interpretation is based not only on the founding date and locations of the first twenty-nine Cleveland groups (as “listed by Clarence [S] according to Harry [S]” — in Cleveland A.A. District Office archives), but also on my interviews with Warren C. who joined A. A. before the Davis publicity and with Dick P. who joined as a result of the Hemsley publicity to be described next. I suspect that because of the Hemsley publicity tie with the OG, to be detailed in notes #6 and 9 below, the newly self-conscious fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous unconsciously minimized its impact. This suspicion was confirmed not only by the interviews cited, but by the tone as well as the details in the letter of Clarence S. to writer, 9 September 1977.
Cf
. also Clarence S. (Cleveland) to Wilson, 4 March 1941 and 28 February 1943; also Abby G. (Cleveland) to Wilson, 28 June 1956. Clarence S. (Cleveland) to Ruth H., 21 April 1940, testified: “There is renewed activity starting already from the Hemsley articles.”

This is not to deny that “rapid growth” followed the Davis series: the approximately twenty A.A.s received over a hundred inquiries (interviews by Niles P.). But membership growth from about 120 to close to 1,000 seems more a “breakthrough” than the Davis-inspired growth from a score to just over one hundred.

6
     Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, 27 November 1939; for the Hemsley press conference, see front page of virtually any American newspaper for 17 or 18 April 1940, also the sports columnists over the next week. The flavor of the following paragraphs derives from the total newspaper coverage. The specific quotation at paragraph-end may be found in the
Plain Dealer
(18), the Cleveland
Press
(17), and the Chicago
Tribune
(17).

As evidence for the OG complication, note from the
Press
story of 17 April: “C.C. Slapnicka, vice-president of the Indians, said that it was the ‘Oxford Movement,’ and not ‘Alcoholics Anonymous,’ which had worked the reformation. Hemsley informed of this, insisted that his contacts were with Alcoholics Anonymous.”

According to Clarence S., letters to writer of 25 August and 9 September 1977, “the inquiries resulting from the Hemsley publicity were turned over to the Oxford Group rather than Alcoholics Anonymous.” No doubt some were, but the memories of Warren C. and Dick P. (interviews cited) make clear that a substantial number of inquirers found their way into A.A. rather than the OG. Part of the problem here, even according to Clarence’s own detailing of the situation, is that many in Cleveland were members of
both
the OG and A.A.: the distinction was just not that clear,
even to Clarence
, who in early 1941 was still working hand-in-hand with some Groupers in arranging “dryout houses” (letters cited).

7
     
Cf
. the sports pages of virtually every American newspaper for early April 1940; beyond the Cleveland
Press
and
Plain Dealer
, I have checked the
New York Times
and
Boston Globe
. The interpretation and details in this and the following paragraphs were discussed and verified through the Sports Desk of the
Boston Globe
from that newspaper’s morgue, baseball record-books, and the desk-man’s memory — interview of 28 December 1976.