May 12 in A.A. History

In 1935 , on this Mother’s Day, Bill W. [near right] (age 39) met Dr. Bob S. [far right] (age 55), his wife Anne, and their son Smitty (age 17) at the home of Oxford Group member Henrietta Buckler Seiberling [far left] —the Gate Lodge [near left] of the Stan Hywet estate^*—at 5 p.m.

     Dr. Bob was so badly hungover that he could not eat dinner and planned to stay only 15 minutes. Left alone in the library, Bill told Bob he was not there to help him but to keep himself sober. He then shared his own experience as an alcoholic, as suggested by Dr. Silkworth, i.e., to emphasize the medical hopelessness rather than preach. Dr. Bob opened up, and he and Bill talked until after 11 p.m., extending Dr. Bob’s planned 15 minutes to over 6 hours. As Dr. Bob would say in his story “Doctor Bob’s Nightmare” (included in all four editions of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous ) [emphasis is Dr. Bob’s]:

    … he was the first living human with whom I had ever talked, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience. In other words, he talked my language. He knew all the answers, and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading

---

^*  This was the estate of Franklin Augustus “Frank” Seiberling (1859–1955), co-founder of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 and of the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. Estate features include the historic 65-room Tudor Revival Manor House, the Gate Lodge, historic gardens, and the Corbin Conservatory. Frank was father to John Fredrick “Fred” Seiberling (1888–1962), who married Henrietta (1888–1979) in 1917. They separated in 1935, and he moved back into the Manor House; they never divorced.

In 1956, the First Annual A.A. Convention for England and Wales was a two-day event held at the Belle Vue Hotel [right, 1956] in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. At that time, there were 56 registered English groups at the UK headquarters. Sackville M. and Richard P., both from Ireland, served as speakers at the convention.