July in A.A. History—day unknown

1938: [Bob P.’s Manuscript of A.A. History says “early 1930s”] Sterling C., an insurance salesman and trumpet player from a prominent Little Rock, Arkansas, family, was fired for excessive drinking. According to Bud G., Sterling was also “a screwball from one of Arkansas’ oldest and most revered families.”^* After his termination, Sterling moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where his struggle with alcohol persisted until he discovered Richard C. Peabody’s book, The Common Sense of Drinking. Peabody’s book advocated self-reflection and mental retraining as a method for managing alcohol consumption.

Sterling successfully applied Peabody’s program, overcame his drinking problem, and was reinstated at his old company in Memphis, Tennessee

[right: map showing locations of Little Rock, New Orleans and Memphis], on the condition of sobriety. Despite his commitment, he relapsed twice during out-of-town trips. Determined to honor his word, he resolved to confess his lapses and resign. However, upon returning home, he was shocked to learn his boss had died the previous day.

This unexpected event triggered a spiritual awakening that led Sterling to permanent sobriety. He returned to Little Rock, where he began making amends, a practice encouraged by the Peabody program. His efforts likely laid the groundwork for future support, as he would receive a particular call for help years later that would lead to forming the first group in Arkansas.

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^*It seems likely that this was Sterling Robertson C――, descendant of Chester Ashley, U.S. Senator (1844–48), the co-founder of the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, and the namesake of Ashley County in south Arkansas; grandson of Sterling Robertson C――, Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court (1884–93); and father of Sterling Robertson C――, Jr., a significant figure in the Arkansas politics (1956–70), mostly in the House of Representatives. Junior had been working with his father in the insurance business until he decided to run for office.

1939: [Early] Marty M. [left, at Blythewood with her sisters Chris (L) and Betty (R), 4 Jul 1938] had been a charity patient for over a year at the upscale Blythewood Sanitarium [right] under Dr. Harry Tiebout [below left], yet she showed no signs of progress. Dr. Tiebout had given her a manuscript copy of Alcoholics Anonymous to assess its value. Marty had read it eagerly, thrilled to have discovered a name for her affliction: alcoholism, a disease. “I love the word alcoholic!” she had exclaimed.

However, she soon had encountered a significant obstacle. “On every page, there were four or five capital Gs [‘God’]!” The next day, she had confronted Tiebout, declaring, “God is nothing but self-hypnosis. I’m not about to accept this! I can’t buy it.”

Tiebout had responded calmly but firmly, “Oh, never mind about that. Go back and read some more, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Marty had resisted, reading just enough each day to arm herself for their next session. Tiebout consistently had replied, “All right. Now go read some more.” This routine continued for six weeks, and she was only halfway through the manuscript.

Then a crisis erupted involving her sister Chris and her friend Grennie, sending Marty into a rage unlike any she had experienced. Feeling responsible, she stormed up to her third-floor attic room. “I was angry with a kind of anger I had never felt before, and thank God, never have since,” she later recounted. “I was raging. I wanted to kill!” She literally saw red as the blood vessels in her eyes began to break.
As she contemplated getting “two big bottles of whiskey and get good and drunk” to drown her anger, she noticed “that damn book,” Alcoholics Anonymous, lying open on her bed out of the corner of her eye.

In the middle of the page was a line that stood out as if carved in raised block letters, black, high, sharp—“We cannot live with anger.” That did it. Somehow those words were the battering ram that knocked down my resistance.