Minnesota, and Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, he began in 1929 to specialize as a proctologist and rectal surgeon. He was also first-call surgeon in Akron for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for many years—that is, if there was illness or accident in the area, he was the first doctor called. This provided him with some extra money and a railroad pass.
But as the drinking years went by, the effort it took to do his work and keep up a facade of normality became more and more grueling. His usual pattern was to stay dry but well-sedated every day until four o’clock, then go home. In this way, he hoped to keep his drinking problem from becoming common knowledge or hospital gossip.
Gradually, the façade was crumbling. Dr. Bob may have thought no one knew, but there is considerable evidence that quite a few people were aware of his problem with alcohol. For instance, at the start of his recovery, when he announced to a nurse at City Hospital that he had a “cure” for alcoholism, her first remark was: “Well, Doctor, I suppose you’ve already tried it yourself?”
Anne C., an A.A. member who knew Dr. Bob before she ever took her first drink, remembered how he would come down to the lunch counter in the Second National Bank Building and order Bromo Seltzer, tomato juice, and aspirin. “I never saw him eat. One day, I asked Bill, the owner, what was wrong with that man. ‘Does he have palsy?’ ‘No, he has a perpetual hangover,’ Bill said.”
III. Husband, father, and drunk
Dr. Bob’s drinking had its inevitable effect on family life, as well as on professional practice. But his two children were unaware of it in their early years, and their memories of childhood are mostly happy.
In Anne’s mid-forties, she was advised that she could not have any more children. Sue was adopted then, five years after the birth of the Smiths’ son. “They didn’t want to raise Smitty as an only child and spoil him rotten,” said Sue. “So they got me and spoiled us both rotten. Oh, we got spankings all right. Not often, but when we did, we really deserved it. We learned early that the louder we yelled, the sooner it was over.”
Sue, who was five years old when she was adopted, recalled that she was more frightened than anything else when she first met her father. “I didn’t know what to expect. I remember him driving up the big circular driveway at City Hospital and telling me to wait while he went inside for a minute. I thought that was where I was going to live. The first night, I picked a fight with a neighborhood girl and got bawled out. I remember I didn’t think that was right at all.”
There was only five months’ difference in the children’s ages. Since school authorities didn’t know Sue was adopted, this was hard for them to understand. And both Sue and Smitty remembered their father’s answer when they said their teacher had asked them how old their parents were. Dr. Bob said, “Tell them we’re 70.” They did, causing further mystification.
With his stern, rather forbidding appearance, Dr. Bob was not the type children would flock to. And he wasn’t exactly comfortable around them, either. But he made the effort. He would go out and play ball with the neighborhood kids. “We’d have a lot of fun,” said Sue, “with 15 or 20 people out there, him six-foot-two and a little kid three years old.”
“He appeared to be stern,” said Smitty. “But he was a real confidant. He would come home and talk to us.”
This was echoed by Sue. “He looked stern, but he was really quite a softy.”
Smitty also noted that he was 21 years old before he knew that there was any medicine but bicarbonate of soda. “I used to ask Dad for medicine,” Smitty recalled, “and he told me, ‘Why, hell, son, these are for selling, not for taking.’ ”
“As a father, he was the best,” Sue said. “He was loving and at the same time would want to be obeyed. He was fun to be with. I enjoyed many an evening playing cards and had as good a time with him as I have ever had with anyone.”
Sue felt that Dr. Bob’s strict upbringing not only was responsible for his stubborn resistance to authority, but also led him to give more freedom to his own children. “As I look back on it,” she said, “I see he was ahead of his time, or didn’t want us to go through what he did when he was a child, having to go to bed at five o’clock in the evening.”
Dr. Bob had tremendous drive and great physical stamina, according to Smitty, who said that except for the effects of drinking, he was never sick a day in his life up until his last illness. “I remember when he was 56 years old, he played six sets of tennis with my sister and me. It wore us both down. He had more steam at that age than anyone I ever knew.”
“He wasn’t idle much of the time,” said Sue. “And he always took off at a run. We often used to take long hikes in the woods—Dad, my brother, myself, and a dog. We had great times like that. He loved to take his car down a dirt road to see where it went.”
Their recollections of their mother also show deep affection. “She was quiet and unassuming—a lady in the true sense of the word,” Smitty recalled in correspondence with Bill Wilson. “She was of medium build and always battling to keep her weight down. She had a delightful sense of humor and a melodious laugh. All of us spent a good deal of time playing tricks on her, because she took it so well.”
One trick that their mother never even suspected was played on her after she started to smoke—at 56! Sue and Smitty were not only stealing her cigarettes, but swiping the butts as well, since all Anne ever did was take a few puffs and lay the cigarette down before lighting another. “If she ever inhaled, it was a mistake,” said Sue, who felt that the chain smoking was a sign of the tension created by Dr. Bob’s alcoholism. “She was broiling inside. She had to be.”
It was the middle of the Depression, and Anne bought a roll-your-own machine. “We thought this was beneath our dignity,” said Smitty. “We volunteered to roll her some and mixed pencil shavings with the tobacco. When she lit one, it flamed up, and she had to blow it out. The same thing happened with the next. Finally, she said, ‘You know, these don’t taste as good as the ones you get in the package.’ ”
Smitty also remembered that his mother chided him when she found he had started to smoke. “What about you?” he replied. “You smoke.”
“Don’t you say anything to me about smoking now,” Anne replied. “And if you wait until you’re 50 years old before you start, I won’t say anything to you, either.”
Dr. Bob also smoked, but would say, “Me? I don’t smoke. Anne’s the one who smokes in this family.”
“Mom was easily shocked, and her shyness and un-worldliness were a source of constant delight to Dad, who loved to bring home some items of unconventional action and watch her reaction,” said Smitty.
“After being involved with drunks for a while, however, nothing could surprise or shock her,” he said, as his memories moved ahead to the A.A. years. “Even though their ways might be foreign to her own upbringing, Mother was extremely tolerant of others. She just would not criticize. She always sought to excuse their actions.
“Her advice was never given on the spur of the moment, but was reserved until she had time to pray and think about the problem,” Smitty said. “As a result, her answer was given in a very loving, unselfish way and served to steady Dad to a very great degree.
“Mother always had a very deep loyalty to our family, and later to the A.A., which made no personal sacrifice too great. She just would not spend any money on herself, in order to help the family get the things she thought they needed.
“By nature a rather timid person, she could nevertheless rise to great heights if she thought the occasion warranted,” said Smitty. “I am thinking of the times when she thought the A.A. program was in danger. When this happened, Mother would be ready to do battle with anyone for the principles she believed were right. I have also seen her rise out of her quiet disposition in defense of Dad or myself personally.”
But memories of the family’s last pre-A.A. years are naturally darker. As the children were growing up, the Smiths