Dr. Bob’s House – A History Workshop – Part 2 of 3 – Sandy B.

those of us that live here don't really believe that it's Florida anymore those of you that have come from the north think you're in the sunshine state and I have rumors that it is going to get better from here on in my name is Cheryl Ryan and I'm an alcoholic. I have the privilege of serving as your emcee for today. Thank you all for coming and helping to keep our beloved Dr. Bob and Ann Smith alive. Can we open this workshop with a moment of silence followed by the serenity prayer? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference we have an incredible day planned for you if you have not already had breakfast please help yourself it's going to remain open until 10 o'clock if you've had breakfast and you're still hungry you can go have seconds it's no extra charge uh bathrooms are out that door in the breezeway as soon as you walk out you'll see men and women and smoking is only permitted in the allowed area if you walk at this door and you make a left and then you make a left at the next opening there's a lovely little park area and there were ashtrays there please feel free to smoke and congregate and enjoy some fellowship outside. Please sign silent cell phones and refrain from texting and be courteous to our speakers and fellow attendees when moving throughout the room. We are privileged to have Vision Audio here to record this great day. Please take a copy home with you. It's only $25 for the set today and that will be for all our speakers. They have lots of other great gifts and mementos, so please wander by during our breaks. We also have limited edition lapel pins from Dr. Bob's house. They are on the donation table, and there's John with the sign. They're only $5, and all $5 goes straight to Dr. Rob's house, so it's a great way to take something home with you, give to sponsees, and to help celebrate the house. And then we have Wayne there he is and he's got raffle prizes they are one for a dollar six for five and it's a your choice auction which means you buy your tickets you take half and you put it in one of the little baskets that you want to win and at the end of the day we will draw perhaps your winning number also in the back there's some great merchandise AA stuff some mementos to take home with you back to your home groups to sponsees to sponsors please take it home and pass it on, there is no charge. And my opening remarks have taken less than I thought. You ready, young lady? Yes. All right. It is my pleasure to introduce, almost... Oh, I still hear it. My dear friends, Gail LaCroix. She is a trustee and archivist of Dr. Bob's House. Thank you, I love you so much. It's so good to be here. You need a microphone now. Morning everybody. As you know, my name's Gail, I'm an alcoholic. And there's no sweeter sound than the sound of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. When you guys start filling up the room, I just listen. I just listened to the joy of the unity and the family atmosphere that we have here together it just fills me with joy so I'm in a really good place right now and I want to thank you all for coming this is like I think it's a win-win I think that it helps dr. Bob's house but it also adds so much unity to the area here when we all come together and have breakfast and lunch together it's real special so I want thank the committee for all their hard work. They've been at this. This is the third one, right? Fourth one. Well you guys got it down. I mean they got it down and it was a joy last night when I walked in and saw all of you and it was already set up. I thought you'd still be at it but you were already done and it's a lovely facility and I want to thank both of you. What a power couple you guys are it's not just what you've done for the house it's what you look at today look what you're done thank you so much and i want to yes and if you like bob and ann would you clap once i think it's a great way to start uh since this is um an effort to try to support our efforts in Akron. I think it's really nice that we may start out with a talk that will tell you a little bit about the home, about the Smiths and about what those of us, I call it boots on the ground. You're here and you're a part of it because you've come today but those of us that are in Akron and there's not a lot of us you know I wish there was more I think It's the best job in town but we're boots on The Ground doing it for you there and this is the way you support us. So on behalf of the board I want to Thank you so much for being a part of us now. You're connected to us by your donation of being here today and by having this event every year. All right, so let's get started. I've put together some new slides for those of you. Apparently my little slide thing doesn't want to work, so I'm going to slide in the other one. Can you do that for me, Jim? I had it out. I'm just going to flip it for now. I should have tested it, but I switched it. All right, so you're looking here at... It's the piece that was in here that I didn't think I put it back. Oh, I did. If you could put that in instead. Okay, Matt, it's on the table here somewhere. Oh, there it goes. I think this one's working now. Okay, let me back that up. I think we got it. Just a little field trip back to Akron. This is an old postcard of how Akron might have looked when Dr. Bob and Bill were walking the streets, because you know Dr. Bobs' office was in downtown Akron. You can see the streetcars. And Dr. Bops is going to come. He's a young intern at City Hospital, and that's what brings him to Akron, and this is his office. So if you're in downtown akron, there's another historical place for you to see. It was kind of like the headquarters of Alcoholics Anonymous in the early days. You know, it may have either went to Bill or if it was on this side. that Mel would come in there. So for a long time, Dr. Bob's office was our headquarters and as you know he later became a proctologist and that's probably why he's so good with us don't you think? Up here it says diseases of the rectum. Now he is going to bring his lovely bride to Akron in 1960 actually the home was built in 1950, cost $4,000 originally, which they had trouble paying off, as you know. It wasn't until we got the Rockefeller money and we paid down $3,000 on that because we almost lost that home. We almost lost that home because of a depression. When you think of our story, our story is going to take place in the darkest time in our country's history. And we try to bring that out when we tell the history. You've got to understand there was times there was not enough food. There was times that, and both our co-founders felt that it brought people together. So that home was almost in foreclosure. The banks were foreclosing on homes back during that time. I love this picture of Ann Smith. That's the mother of AA you're looking at here. And I love that picture of her because it always reminds me to tell you, I think she's looking out the window waiting on Dr. Bob. Now, Dr. Robb and Ann Smith courted for 17 years so you might think dr bob was a little slow right i don't know so she's waiting on him there i think i'm not sure um and uh we recently framed their wedding invitation if you visit the home on the on the bureau there that is an original wedding invitation there along with her wedding picture they were married on january 25th of 1915 and i gotta girls hold on to your seats baby because this is one handsome man that's dr bob over here with his nurses and the nurses loved him and uh i got a couple pictures of him there he is with the with the gals they used to they used to sniff his breath after he got sober to make sure he was uh not drinking look at him here i know wow right i know i've swooned a couple times on these slides yeah Gregory Peck how about there that is a young Dr. Bob you don't often see pictures of him young, you see him in his later years before the alcoholism has progressed and there he is yeah now I recently somebody sent me a negative that we had made into this I have no history on this picture. I have no idea. We checked the bedroom out over at the Smith. It's not the Smith bedroom. There's some gal up here. I'm not sure about that, and he looks very relaxed, but it's just a recent picture you probably haven't seen, so I threw it in because I've given this talk a few times. I wanted some new stuff. I love this picture because you never see a young picture of Ann. You know, she always looks kind of, she just didn't care much about her physical appearance she was just kind of a down-to-earth kind of gal but here she's looking kind of spiffy and I love that picture of them younger but check this one out with her what she got hanging out of her mouth there start smoking in her late 50s and then of course this is a bill and Lois here and some of the new guys there's Bob here I love picture though it's great picture You'll see some of these pictures on the walls in the home. And here the two of them are with their dog, Roger. And I found out that Roger's buried somewhere in the yard somewhere, but please don't come and dig him up and put him on eBay, okay? Another picture of Dr. Bob. There's some pictures. We have a few to try and put the house back, which I'm going to give you the history of the home, to try to put it back for the period that it was and not redecorate. But really, you know, we've got this span of time, and so we just kind of blend that a little bit. We can't put the table back here. We have too much traffic. You'll see that chair later in another picture, but that's how the home looked back then. And here's a picture of the couple, and I love this picture because in the house next door, which I'm going to show you, there's a museum, and I have her cut up and kind of mounted on the fireplace there by herself. And I was upstairs in the archives office and I heard some two young girls downstairs going, I didn't know the Queen Mum was in AA. Look at his long legs, his ears, you can tell he's well endowed with a pair of ears and he had long bony fingers pretty intimidating when he was pointing at you they give you a look how long his legs are geez there's a picture of him in the back of the home on the back steps and ann's garden can be seen at left i'll tell you more about her garden and what we're doing i know i want you they had one biological son smitty how many of you knew smitty well there he is as a there's no cuter baby there's no cuter baby than smitty let me ask you this how many have been to akron and have been to dr bob's house okay how many had been there in the last five years not as many okay because a lot of these slides are going to be what's happened recently so yeah i just love that little picture of smitty and here's the smith children now sue is not biological dr bob you know was an only child. And so he did not want his son to grow up like he grew up, right? So he's going to come home one day and bring home Susie, who was at the age of five, which put him at about the same age. They were about seven months apart. And that really screwed up the teachers down there at Portage Pass School. They couldn't figure that one out. They have a book that's now out of print that kind of tells you a little bit about their childhoods, it's called Children of the Healer. And Sue will marry the fourth man in. I know, Dr. Bob, I'm going to introduce you to the first guy she was dating in a minute down the road here. But she had a boyfriend and his name was Ray, but his father was kind of an alcoholic custodian. And the Smiths weren't too happy about her seeing him, so she was always sneaking out of the house, and she would use the window shade in her bedroom to signal to this guy who would stand on the corner because the Smiths were pretty busy setting up Alcoholics Anonymous, and these kids are going to be teenagers at that time, so they were real happy about their parents starting AlcoholicsAnonymous because it gave them a lot of time to screw around. And I just wanted to tell you, this is Sue's daughter, Bona, and this is her husband here, Ernie Galbraith. Oh, we're being taped. Well, Ernie G. And this is young Ernie here, and this is Mama Galbraith. For those of you that know about the upper room, Mama Galbreath dropped those off at the homes in the early days. So that's just a little family picture there, and this ist her son Mickey. So that would be Sue's children. And here they are about the time I met them, which I'll tell you a little bit how I got involved here shortly. and here's a picture of them sitting here in the living room I was with them that day and they said Gail take this picture they posed for this one they made me take this pictures and now I'm glad I did because now I can tell you they did not get along as children that whole idea Dr. Bob had to bring her home they fought like cats and dogs they got along great later and here they are in the kitchen and this picture if you read the there's five akron pamphlets uh one of them because of billy um that we added to it that paper that you found but in the first one the akron manual i believe it talks about the aa church was the kitchen so here you see him in the AA church sitting at the kitchen table. And here's a picture of them right before Ann dies. That is one month before she died, that picture was taken. Dr. Bob is in ill health. Ann knows he's dying. And she's had cataract surgery and she's probably blind. She went blind in one eye and she refused surgery in the other eye. So she's towards the end of her life and that's an important picture. That would be the last picture that would be taken of her. And that's how you can see, you can just see in that picture how Dr. Bob feels about losing Ann Smith. You know, he's lost without her. They had a beautiful marriage. He would come home. This isn't Dr. Bobby and the Good Old Timers. He would say, he would come back to me and he would say Ann, how is our love today? Isn't that beautiful? Again, another picture Here you're going to see the carpeting We have a piece at the house now of that Now originally this wasn't painted It got painted later You can see she collected teapots And kind of gives you One of the periods of the home And here's Dr. Bob I think this is probably the Detroit picture But you know he's going to give his last talk In Cleveland And on November 16th of 1950, he will pass. And for a simple grave, you know, when Bill came back, we were going to build a monument befitting a... We had lost Dan and we had a blueprint we gave him to look over. We're going to built a monument befitting the co-founder and his wife because we know we're losing Bob. And he put that blueprint down on the floor and he looked up at Bill and he said, let's just you and me get buried like regular folks. So it was a pretty humble grave at the graveyard there and if you go and visit I just want to tell you Sue is behind there and Ray her second husband so after Dr. Bob dies in 1952 Sue has executor of the home and she will sell it and what happens from that time on you're going to have motorcycle gangs going to be in there for a while oops let's get back there I'm about to enter but wait a minute up here I thought these clicked a little bit then you have some drug dealers up here it was rented I mean it was just you know it went through all kinds of things in fact I've had people on the tour bus when you came to Akron nothing was available to you at this time I get sober in 1978 nothing's happening you could draw if you the buses for founders, they used to drive by it and people would have fun. The hippies would be sitting on the porch and they'd throw beer cans at the buses. It was a joke to them. And so I get sober May 13th of 1978. And by the way, I'm not 43 years old. It's funny. The program was 43 years old. I needed to say that. Somebody came up to me the last time, and they said, man, you really look young for being 43 years old. I just want to remember to tell you that the program was 43 years old when I came in, and I came into the very first group, the King School group, and the love in that room, absolutely. I didn't even know I was alcoholic. I just wanted to be a member. I wanted to be a part of what was going on in 1978 in Akron, Ohio at Dr. Bob's home group. The vibration in that room and the unity in that room and the dedication they had because you see Akron since Dr. Bill is going to organize it in New York. There's a lot of 12-stepping going on in Akon. It's a lot where a lot of the experience that went into the big book comes out of Akron. So it was still going on when I came in. By the way, that is not Woodstock. I'd like to tell you that it was. And as you can see, I've got a half a gallon of wine here. This is my qualifying picture. I got a cigarette. This is me. Deck of cards here, cigarette here, half a gown of wine there, half a wine here, there's a Harley over here somewhere, and yes, my zipper's down. Okay. now i fell in love with a.a at king school group number one i mean i just purely i can't explain i just fell in luck with with what the love the love in alcoholics anonymous and i loved it so much and then i be i caught a hold of this book there was no history books at that time maybe a comes of age but we didn't have dr bob in the good old time we didn' t have pass it on we didn have all that I got a hold of this book here and I went oh my god this thing started in my hometown I hated my hometown it was the reason why I drank it's gray there right now it's cold you know I had a lot of resentment about that and now I'm in love with AA and now i'm in loved with the history of AA and it started in town so I wanted to buy the house but I didn't know how to do that and I wanted to preserve it. My mother was a collector and she had sold all our family history and God, I didn't want that to happen in Alcoholics Anonymous and so for some reason my setup as a kid seeing all our history sold to make money I didn' t want to see that happen to AA so I began to care about it and I was on the board at our office and I asked to host Lois Wilson at Founders Day and so lois came and i i i didn't know how to be a hostess really and they just said we'll just seat her and her companions so one of her companions was no wing which was this is now in the back seat here um and lois there in the front and it was taken the same year that that they came so it's a very accurate picture of that time and um no was a real bubbly gal and I was seating her and there happened to be an empty seat next to her and we talked and I said now if there's anything I can do for you just ask and she said yes Gail there is I'd like you to start an archives so that began where am I gonna put in archives Akron just thought we should it be answering the phone that was the only thing that was important and I then we ended up I ended up I shouldn't put this one next I don't think it's a little bit about now she was a secretary to bill wilson she was our first archivist she was like a wilson if you go to stepping stones there's a bedroom for her she waslike a daughter to bill and lois and so i mean when i met her it was like my eyeballs popped out of my head went back in like a cartoon character you know i'm sitting here just tell me all about how she helped bill write the 12 and 12 and oh well it's just awesome so anybody know who this guy is he's your guy he's your guy and I hope you keep doing history on this guy this is Wesley Parish there's a lot to know about this guy we're finding out aren't we this guy did so many good things for our fellowship and one of the things he did is he came to speak at an Akron at Founders Day and he stirred him up about getting the house and he became a part of the movement to try and secure the property so I'm at an old-timers funeral on an old timer comes up to me and said would you like to get involved in the purchase of the home and I say well yeah I've been thinking about it for years in fact I I was gonna buy it way back and I called the real litter up and you know who the name of the guy was that owned the home at the time? O.D. That's Kay. She's the gal that asked me, and I had to take $100 and swear on the Bible to secrecy. This was a secret movement. Now you know that we're as sick as our secrets, so I was pretty sick with it, but I went to a meeting. This is the first board, But I went to a meeting, and I was chosen to negotiate the purchase on the home because I had read the book, I'd driven by the home, and I found the owner, andI said, here's my card. If you as much as remove a doorbell or a light from this house, would you call me? I'll come pick it up. And so I had that contact with him, and that's why one night I had an appointment with him to make a cold call on the guy that owned the home. He wasn't up for sale. I was a student at the university, and I prayed before I went, but I went to dinner with my mother, and I said, Mom, I'm on a secret mission of international importance, but I can't tell you what it is. Of course, my mother her little alcoholic daughter, she just rolled her eyes like, there she goes again. And I'm happy to say I pledged my $100 to secrecy and um that's how the home looked and uh i brought back that contract i think it was a miracle i mean you don't make a cold call and actually get the guy to go with it and he did and i think it's 38 000 on there and i held it and i know you gotta appreciate that that that god must have wanted us to have that home that that deal worked i did get in trouble because i had to go another 500 and there's a retraining wall in the front and i'll never forget the uh being in trouble for going the extra 500 but i thought in my mind who's going to care two years from now right i'm here to tell you there were 12 steps leading up to the door we didn't put them in a lot of people think oh the foundation just put it in to be cute no there was 12 steps and we had to wear these big badges that say ask me about dr bob's house because you know a lot a lot of people don't know the house is not alcoholics anonymous when see because i after we get the house. I take off and go to New York to study under Nell Wing. Now I've got the house, I'm going to put the archives in the house. Teach me how to do it. I want to be an AA archivist. And Nell says, well, if you want to become an AA Archivist, you can't put it in the House. I spent the next three days trying to talk Nell wing out of our traditions. Because I didn't want to hear that that was going to be a much harder road, the house would have the support, the money and everything would work great for me, but I had to make a decision as to did I want to work under structure or did I wanna be a part of the foundation and it was pretty new in my sobriety. So I eventually chose to try to put it under structure which took me 10 years. There's Nell and here I am with Nell, you can see this work has aged me a little bit. Today you'll find the work that I did for 15 years at our office. You come for the house, there's plenty to see in Akron, but make sure you stop in at the intergroup office. I'm currently on the board of Dr. Bob's Home for the last couple years, but you'll know it by the stained glass window. Took us a year to do that. There's sobriety coins around it. Men and women who normally would not mix came in, and we asked them to donate their coins and we framed it. There's 1,000 pieces of glass in there. If you had come in, you could have cut a piece of glass and been part of it the year we did it. Anyway, the house went on, and they got a rock. We opened it up for the 50th. There you see Sue and her husband Ray, who I'll tell you about. And John Seiberling, when we became—this is Henrietta's son. I don't know if you knew that or not, but he became a congressman and a wonderful man. if you ask him to talk about alcohol he said not unless he'd break down crying about the early days that's how much he loved what he witnessed and he helped us get on the National Register of Historic Places and that plaque is to the left of the door when you come to the home and here is the grand opening it was so timing that we got the house and we rolled it over then I held it for six months then they got enough money to make a down payment and they rolled it Overland into a foundation So again, it is not Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a private foundation. 501C3 nonprofit. And here we have Sue and the governor at the time. And it was quite an event. A little ribbon cutting there. And this is our first newsletter. The house is now ours. A dream has become a reality. The home of Dr. Bob and Ann is yours now. You have worked hard to make it so. I've heard that God will do the impossible if we do the possible. Come home to Dr. Bob's house and visit often. What's a home without its family? We began trying to restore the home. Remember, it's been rented. You know what a rented home would be like at this point in time. Now, if you look at Stepping Stones, Stepping Stone had a foundation already in place getting royalties from the book even 10 years after Lois dies Lois almost dies in the bed she was born in, in the house everything's in place we had a different beginning we had to go from scratch we have no furniture we've got a house that's in bad repair there was red shag carpeting on the floor I mean it was totally this is where we start in Akron no money except for the kindness of people who cared about what we were doing there were people that were contributing at that time Wesley was running that end of the deal he was he was sending out stuff so I just want to show you a few pictures of some of the years of what happened in the early days with the home as we began to prepare it and get it ready for visitors and uh and every year we had these men I love these are the old timers we had a gratitude sunday and the old-timers would fill the house up and talk more restoration in 1994 we buy the house next door why we've got the gift shop in dr bob's house um bob and what we try to do today i try to bring it up every chance i get what would bob and ann want us to do what would it's not about us it's about keeping their legacy um so we want to we want to put them back in the house so we wanted to have the gift store and other artifacts and museum pieces next door. And we have a boardroom, and I'll show you a few. We just renovated there. Here I am with Sue. They're doing a movie. Some of you might have seen A House of Miracles. No, that's not it. That's not the right... That'll come up in a minute. There's Ray. Ray's from down here. All of you know Ray. There's The House of Maricles. This is Dick. He's signing. They're signing the contract to do the movie there. And here they're doing a movie we have. We have a movie we show at the house that was done years ago and uh some of you recognize the house like this i'm going to show you a new slide of the house then not too long ago we did a hundred thousand dollar renovation both homes are 100 years old if we're going to keep them with the amount of traffic they get the ceilings are sagging the beams are going you know there's electricity needed a lot of work which i'm gonna show you so the following content may be disturbing to members of our society and members are encouraged to say the serenity prayer before viewing here's why look there's your basement that's oh by the way that's our chairman that's harman there's the kitchen as it was when we started and i got to head up that project and uh i worked with these two guys and tried to research wallpaper going back to that period of time and what would have been appropriate there so they would uncover linoleum it was ugly but i said if that's what they had we're going with that. We took the ceiling out. We had to do all that. It was quite a project. We had to add these beams to support the flooring, and you can tell it's a good thing we did the wiring. We really didn't want the house burning down. That's the linoleum. If we ever tried to do that again, it's hard to even get the craftsmen that can do that kind of work. And what I want to tell you is as we talk about this what we're doing as a board we've got future generations coming up and this hard-working board that i'm a part of we're not just thinking of today we're thinking down the road to try to get this thing in such good shape that we can pass it on like we do and make their job a little easier so we really did quite a renovation as you can see and i'm going to show you in a minute by 2012 the secretary we get we get quite a standing because we are now a historical landmark along with Stepping Stones. We've upped our game. It's really helped for us to stop thinking so alcoholically and start thinking, but we belong now to our state and our country and the world, not just to alcoholics and we're getting people coming, we're not just getting alcoholics now, we are part of the nation. The Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior Ken Salazar recognized the home as a place that possesses exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. This is the greatest spiritual and social movement of the last century. Designated Dr. Bob's Home as a National Historic Landmark on October 17, 2012. There's your brass on that to the left of the door. Yeah, yeah. And there we are cutting. It was Mother's Day weekend when we had the dedication. And there's our chairman cutting the ribbon. Do you know it snowed out there? It was May and it snow'd. God, it was freezing up there. And of course, it's a symbol of hospitality now to all those who visit. And here's Sue, who died in 2002 at the age of 83 with a coffee pot and her husband. Unfortunately, the coffee pot is at Brown University. Sue at the very towards the end of her life ended up in a transaction that put a lot of stuff at Brown which I'll tell you about what we're going to do I love this picture you want to see what it was like the day dr. Bob and Bill met there you are there's a picture comes out of our grapevine but that's how the home looked at that time so you can see as a curator it's hard to pick to put it back which picture you're going to use how are you going to do it there's another picture of the couple we wanted to look like dr. Bob and Ann just stepped out and went to a meeting when you walk in the door I want you to we have the radio playing the old music if they people put our Kleenex boxes I even hide them it's got to be I want it to be like the day they lived in it so few more pictures so kind of hung a few things like that there and then there'll be pictures around the house and you'll see a deck of cards on the dining room table because dr. Bob said if you can't have fun in sobriety you're not doing it right and he loved cards and cars and you will see evidence of that so this is how the living room began to look after we did it there's the old Victrola that they used to sit around and would listen to the opera and political conventions and there's there'll be a little rope across there. All of this behind here is now original. There's that chair. Bob sat in the chair. He had insomnia, so we don't have as many books as we'd like, but there would have been books stacked up all over the house. He couldn't sleep at night, so he read. We wired this lamp. That has come home, and he wasn't very handy, so I'm a little impressed that he did that. There's Ann's Bible. In the morning when they'd have their quiet time, their prayer and quiet time. Ann would lead the prayer meetings. Bill would be in the kitchen probably with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth making coffee, and that door would be open. You know, alcoholic homes are closed, but when we get sober, that door opens, doesn't it? And the Smith home door opened, and there was always coffee on, and people were in and out of that house for these prayer sessions and fellowship, and much like many of you probably have today. And you can see we've put some teapots back. All the books behind here are original. When Sue made the transaction to Brown, there's 300 up there of his books that most people don't even know about, which will really surprise you if you see what he was reading. But the piece of the carpeting is here on the floor for you to see. And this is not a really great picture, but I wanted to tell you that in that case here that you're looking at are two important magazines. One of them is the Liberty magazine that came out in 39, but another one is the Saturday Evening Post that came OUT in 41. And it happens... The 41 copy happens to be the Smith copy of that magazine without the front cover. To the left is the liberty, and they were shunned in the neighborhood. They were thrown out of their church. Now they're running a halfway house for alcoholics in the 30s. You can imagine how popular they were. so when the liberty magazine comes out in 1939 they looked at each other and they could not wait to get up to the drugstore and they said hey we're finally getting a little respectable and i think that when we tell that story in the living room we really want you to know today you can come to events like this but back then there was still a lot of stigma on us and they they had to carry that stigma for a long time as they created a society of sober men and women that we have today in Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of stigma back then in the neighborhood. There's his chair. This is a recent picture of what the house would look like at Christmas if you visited. And there's an original mirror now up there that you see that we just got back that was once there, we found out in a picture. We had it in the dining room and then the stepdaughter came in and she said, oh no, I think the bottom of that picture So we put that back, and here you see the carpeting with books. And now we're in the dining room where a lot happens in the dining room. You're looking at the table where the big book was three-fifths of the stories came out of Akron. They were written around that table. And we now have the original table with the typewriter. Sue was going to business school. She typed up the stories, and she marries the fourth man in, so we put his story in there for you. And, of course, you see, again, this has a lot to do with what took place around here. They were reluctant writers. There's your first book. To the right is Samovar. Well, I can tell you about that later. Okay. This is an important corner in that room. That's where Ann Smith would sit. Because after the quiet time, you had a partner. And you would call that partner up or she would call people up. she would nurture people and she would call them up and ask how that quiet time went and we have a Goodyear ashtray there because I'm sure she was smoking quite a few cigarettes and that's an original lamp and an original table with a 1935 phone book in it there's our kitchen you can get a cup of coffee there, you can have a drink at Dr. Bob's house cup of copy and there's a kitchen table and that's not the original coffee pot though I'm sorry to say maybe someday see those potatoes there those potatoes are there because there were times they had people in the house or let's say they had a potluck everybody would just bring a different potato dish they did not have enough money during this time to do anything more than make potatoes there was a lot of times the food was very very scarce so somebody sent me those they're in the room, thank you very much somebody knew I was looking for some really authentic potatoes and one day they came and I don't even know who the person was okay, alright this is Smitty's bedroom now when the kids would come home and they'd smell the peraldehyde because that's what they detoxed them with that and sauerkraut and tomatoes stewed tomatoes or whatever uh you know they were uh smitty would tell you that the alcoholics were kind of a hearty bunch to be able to do all that but uh this would also be the place that bob and and uh bill would stay up late at night if they didn't have a wet drunk now if there was a wet trunk in the house and the kids smelled that proud hide smitty could go to the attic and sue would lose her bedroom and go to the couch so we owe those kids i mean they sacrificed a lot as well for the good of the whole so there's your beverages there on the table, the sauerkraut and the perot height and stuff there it is you know and back in Smitty's room is again the scene where when Bob says I'm going to go through with it, so if you get a chance to visit again that's where that happens that's probably where they put Archie Tobridge when Archie Dobridge came to town you see the cure was in Akron they're flying in because you know, you got Sister Ignatia there, you got the hospital, but all the homes were opening up there and they were bringing people in and the movie hasn't been done on that. And they were nurturing people back to health and one day after Ann Smith's quiet time, she was so good at her quiet time and listening that she said, we're ready to go out of town and she says, Bob, we can't go. Somebody's coming. Sure enough, Archie T from Detroit came in and they took him in and after a certain amount of time he was restless because he felt bad about there wasn't a lot of food and the house was almost in foreclosure and he was going to either leave or do something and Ann picked up on that and she said Archie as long as we have a home our home is your home. He stayed with the Smiths for 10 months and he went back to Detroit and started AA in Detroit. And where are we going to be for the next international? We're going to be in Detroit, and now you know how AA got to Detroit. So we tell that story there. This is Dr. Bob's bedroom, and as you can see there, we have the original linoleum and a lot of the original furniture pieces. However, this piece here, that's really the footboard. But you see Ernie, Sue's first husband, burnt the headboard up with the cigarette. So when we got it, and we had to put the footboard up at the end. I knew you'd love that story. Very believable story. The cane you see here in the back, when Bill and Lois take off and they go to Europe to take AA over there and to meet with the early members over there, they were given gifts. And I know from the... Do we have some people from Ireland in the house? We do, don't we? I know we do. Okay. That is a black hickory walking stick. It's not a shillelagh. It's a walking stick, I believe, right? I mean, that's what, if it's a shillelagh, tell me if I think it's. But anyway, it was your gift to us, along with some Irish linen that Bill brought back from Dr. Bob. And so we actually have that. And the dress was not Ann's, but I put it there so we could tell you a story about Ann Smith. You see, Ann Smith was probably one of the most humble people you'll ever read about. And I'll give you an example. I'll gave you one example of that. Dorothy Snyder, Clarence's wife. They did a lot of fellowshipping back then. They had a lot to do with it. A lot of things to keep people sober, events. And there was a dance coming up for New Year's and Dorothy said, hey, you got... Now remember, it's the Depression. The closets are real small. They didn't have much. And somebody had given Ann two new dresses. And Dorothy said to Ann, which one will you be wearing? She said, oh, I couldn't possibly wear one of my new dresses Some of the wives there may not have any new clothes to wear, so I'll just wear one of my old dresses. Yeah, that's Ann Smith in one story. Yeah, That's sweet. Thank you. That wouldn't be me. Some of her old hats and things like that we have around some of Bob's crazy ties. We recently got a donation of an old wire. George Hood George Hood came to town with a wire recorder you're looking at the wire but here's the recorder and he took it up to Dr. Bob's bedroom and in Dr.Bob's bedroom was towards the end I think it was about 47 Dr.Bob is in ill health he's had a surgery Ann's had her cataract surgery and he takes it in to record them which is beautiful because when you come to the home now because of this beautiful gift there's a drawer that comes out from there and there's these buttons that you push and you can push a button and hear the voice of ann smith the only recording we have of the mother of aa you'll hear her speak from the bedroom now if you push the next button um smitty speaks but we have one where dr bob speaks and he's hilarious he's talking about how when you have surgery on yourself it's a whole lot different than doing it on somebody else and he now has a lot of sympathy then bill gives this state a state of the union thing to bob about the condition of the the console he calls it a console he's working in his head about how he's going to put bring us all together and um and he gets mike bright and he screws up his words it's hard to believe bill wilson had a hard time talking into there it's precious and you press a button and you can hear all of this going on because when George Hood leaves, he goes to New York and records Bill. But there's one thing I put in, just Steve asked me to do. I had it out and I thought, and we have sound in, right? We've got sound. Do we have sounds? Yeah, we have sound. Bill is going to play the violin for Bob and Ann. And it's a new way of carrying the message of love. You will, I think if it plays, you'll get to hear him. I'm not going to play all of them but i want you to hear this hello ann and bob isn't this a great gadget that we have to talk through it was mighty good to hear from george how much better you both are you have no idea terrifically concerned so many of us have been now that the worst is over we can all breathe better i've just been having a long talk with george about the state of aa affairs out through the country and he has sharpened up to me as he doubtless did to you the tremendous necessity of getting some sort of council organized which can relate the foundation to the AA groups. I also went over the internal situation here with George, and on the whole he is inclined to think that the changes suggested in the reorganization plan are really necessary for us here in New York before we actually start the formation of a council. We'd awfully much like to know if you won't come down to Bedford Hills sooner than the fall, but I suppose there's small use in begging you. You know I still feel very awkward and hard put to find words to talk into this microphone. As you see, I have a good deal of mic fright. Even now, I am beginning to get more and more confused. In fact, my face is getting quite red for you know i am not one who usually lacks words lois and i hope you both will surely get well and strong and that very very fast we think of you so very very much dear people and look forward to the moment when we can see her see you i've still got the mic right This is your announcer cutting in. We're now going to have a violin solo by Bill LaVertoso. ¶¶ Oh, my God. So long, dear people. We'll be seeing you soon. Thank you. I got mic bright. I think it's a nice window into the love that both Bob and Ann had for Bill and Lois and vice versa. So it carries a powerful message along with just the, it was like his heart through that music was going to them. He knows they're in bad shape. He knows that he's going to lose him and her. This is Sue's bedroom. That's a picture of Sue there. And it was used for detox as well. And I'm going to introduce you to the first guy that they detoxed. A lot of you probably thought Bill D was number three. You know, we all know about him. But very few people know about Eddie. And since this picture just came in, we just got a box of some of his things, which I'm surprised didn't get sold on the market. And somehow, through divine effort, we got it. and had this obit picture in there. And anyway, they were guinea pigs back then. Now when they're bringing people into the home, they don't know how to do this. They know they have something, but they don'T know how to approach an alcoholic. In fact, if you look through the 40s all over the country, if you Look at our history, we don'T figure it out until maybe around the, you Know, when we get the traditions and stuff, we start to unify. But so this is their first guinea pig. And he gave them, he said he could, this guy could have kept an army sober. He was so wild. a lot of stories take place in the house where he slides he runs away from them of course back then we chased him he slides down the drain pipe and he goes up to Lake Erie he's going to throw himself into Lake Errie he calls up Bill and Bob they're living in the House at this time 35, this first guy and this is before Bill D which is July so this is the very first guy and they run out up to Lake Erie to fetch him because he wanted them to come up and witness the event but they brought him home. I even found out recently that on one of the visits to Bill D they took him so he was part of actually some of the 12 step work on Bill D and he brought his wife and his kids, they brought his wife and two kids in and put them in the bedroom that little bedroom that's what it says and the Oxford group had told the wife that she should disclose her indiscretions. That's how the Oxford group did it, so she must have given him some information he didn't like because he roughed her up pretty good, and she came down to the breakfast table that morning, and according to Dr. Bob and the good old timers and the nephew who I've talked to, that's where we get when to do so wouldn't injure others. That was one of our very first lessons in that. Now at some point Anne's feeding him a tuna fish sandwich and he goes crazy and he grabs a butcher knife and chases her upstairs and she's down on her knees saying the lord's prayer you don't think the women lois and ann didn't make some sacrifices for us and bill comes in in the nick of time and gets that knife so they had to let eddie go and uh what they learned from that what we learn from our stuff today don't we And isn't Bill a master of pulling out lessons? We don't wet nurse a drunk. So they let him go. But I feel like Paul Harvey, because I'm going to tell you the rest of the story. You know how Paul Harvey said, here's the rest OF the story? This guy shows up at Dr. Bob's funeral. Smitty's next to Bill. He does one of these. He says to Bill, isn't that Eddie over there? Sure enough, Eddie came up, showed up with about a year of sobriety. But I want to tell you, he died when he was 17 years in Youngstown, Ohio. He was a great AA member. We actually worked for the National Council on Alcoholism at that time. Isn't that a great story? See, you never know when you're planting seeds, right? But he could have been number one. And that's a story we like to tell in the house along with Archie. There's things that happened in that house that are part of how we got there. This is the bathroom. It's got some great stories there. See this little door that's open here? that's the clothes chute and out on the porch off of here is a glove with a bottle of alcohol in it or a bottle of prohibition kind of bottle because Bob would put his stuff he would sneak it in on in he'd throw it up on the porch then he'd bring it in and there's a ledge up here and he put it up here was as a closed chute then he could drop it down into the closed chutes and when he's down in the basement he could hide it down there and he knew about the toilet huh yeah so it's a medicine cabinet oh come on come on I'm gonna take you up into the Attic you're looking here at dr. Bob's birth crib the crib that Ann Smith would put Smitty in the crib that Smitty would put his grandchildren in and the crib bit I know I love that oh yeah I know we're so blessed because there's no way this stuff doesn't come home but by grace because you know it just happens. This is the christening gown, Dr. Bob's christening down and I want to tell you where does the money go for the stuff that you do? It takes money to preserve things and so we've had that specially treated it's now in plexiglass but just want you know that was $1,500 to make sure that that stays preserved otherwise it will you know things die if you don't take good care of them. You're looking at Dr. bob as a baby and his picture will be to the left up there. He kind of looks to me like he needs a drink. I don't know. Doesn't he? Come on. That is not a hat. That is not. All right, compare that picture. Okay, so compare that picture to Ann and Smitty. Look at that compared to Bob. There's Smitty uh this is dr bob's mom suzy and this is walter his father sadly suzy ann smith said that suzy she believed was the reason dr bob drank of course we know better but suzy used to put dr bob to bed at five o'clock at night he would sneak out every night never got caught i think that set up his cat and mouse game with Anne. And unfortunately, and Walter would go fetch Bob all the time and bring him back. You know, if you've read Dr. Bob and the Good Old Times, this is his only son. He was bailing him out and enabling all the times, saving Dr. Bob. Sadly, Walter never lived to see Bob get sober, but mommy did. And this is a sampler of his mother's which is pretty cool on its own it's pretty cool we're lucky and very fortunate you can't tell a story if you don't have a few props so having the father's bible is really nice it'll be on display there when you come in and we try to make that attic a little bit to tell the story of vermont both our co-founders came from Vermont. And I think that's why they got along so well, really. I think they both did. And I just put this slide in. And the reason I did is I was telling a story to some of my friends here last night about, remember the letter I told you that I found in a bunch of Valentine's Day papers? Well, since I said that, I wanted to add this slide. This is the stepsister here. This is just recently something that I actually found when I stayed with Bona. and i found it amongst some valentine's day wrapping paper and i couldn't believe that i was fortunate enough that it ended up in my hands because what it is is a letter written by a little 10 year old boy dr bob to this adoptive aunt uh who might just have been a friend of his mother's that kind of uh became like the stepsister kind of thing it's probably the longest thing dr bob ever wrote you're looking at And it's so sweet, but I'll show you the contents of it. It's hard to read. So, dear Miss Northrup, I have been meaning to write to you every day, but have been putting it off till now. I thank you very much for sending me the pictures and book. I have enjoyed the book very much and hope you will read it when you come up here again. I went over to Mr. Harrington's and played with Rover the dog. They have a bull calf, and he said he would sell it to me for a dollar. Mama says if there's anything we need, it's a bull. I went fishing Wednesday and caught about 10 fish and a lizard. I have got the lizard in a pan of water and I expect to put him in alcohol. Pa got me a new bridle and saddle blanket and I ride every day. I enjoy it very much. Come up here as soon as you can with much love, Robert Smith. I hope when I go back next year I go Back to Akron. I'm in Florida with you all. It's a geographic cure. It's not working this month. this is yankee cold baby this is yankee called but I will be I do go back and I do framing and I'll be putting this on display there why I think this is so important is Dr. Bob is a man's man he's an outdoor kind of guy and he plays that out through his whole life all through Dartmouth all through college he's great at pool he's good at horseshoes he's a fisherman he's all of that you can see where the roots of that go back from that very letter the kind of childhood he had this is where smitty would go when he smelled the peralta height this is this maid's quarters but they did they could afford a maid even during the depression but they they didn't have her live in the house so this became kind of a makeshift bedroom for smitty and we have a lot of artifacts up there for smity and i believe it was ann smith's sewing room she sewed for all the families always taking care of people with her sewing and in the basement which we now have because we've taken the gift shop out. We've redone that and I'm sorry that's a little blurry. I'll try to get you a better picture but that's great photo op. You can stand next to Bob in that Cadillac there and you can see we have the fishing poles and some things there. There's a picture on the wall of Dr. Bob in Smitty's car from Yellowstone. They're on a trip and I got to tell you this so It doesn't have a top. I think it's a Model A. And Smitty looks over at Dr. Bob, and he says, what are we going to do if it rains? Dr. Rob says, we're going to get wet. Okay, we'll go to the beach. We're in Florida. This is Daytona. This is Bob and Smitty racing on the beach, both of them are car guys, all-the-way car guys. there's dr bobbin his 1946 buick roadmaster and the neighbors all said that the older he got the faster he drove those cars he would rev it up and then he'd come sliding into the curb at 8 55 aardvark and slam on those brakes so it's kind of a hot dog when it comes to cars there's smitty with his car and we have a can there and a hose because he used to siphon gas out of smith's cars we tried to make it look like a garage again and we had a picture of him playing horseshoes and fishing we have an original golf club but i tell you it's on the wall it's his it's left-handed dr bob was right-handed so we asked Sue, why is it left-handed? She said, we were so broke he couldn't afford his own golf club. So somebody gave him those clubs and he learned to golf left-handedly. The washroom there. The old fruit cellar. And we have a little Burkhart beer there. Dr. Bob's last drink was a Burkhardt. Sue told me that, so we're going with that. This is the old coal bin. There's a couple of Burkharts. He used to hide a lot of bottles in there. You know, even if a child comes in with the parents or something, since the house is 100 years old, you see the phone. Remember when we were chained to the wall? You see the old typewriter and now we're using word processors. It's a museum in its own right at this point. Coal sellers and stuff like that. People come in and go, they all revert back to their grandmother, you know? The old ringer washer. We have on the 859 is the other, I mean, yeah, 859's the other house. in the medicine cabinet here you'll find his 1939 dictionary and his hourglass and some of the medical things from his office there's the dictionary and the hourglass and other pictures there's some ofthe pictures of the stories that were in the big book we'll see at that house with the stories you can read the stories right there that's what it looks like at founders day at founders date it goes all the way around the block better to come when we're not so busy if you want to really have a nice visit i asked the board. We had a board meeting Thursday. I said, I'm going to do this fundraiser and I said how many people do we have in a year? I thought you might be interested. You're supporting the house? We have over, we probably have about 7-8 thousand during the year but we have just that many at Founders Day. In one day Akron really does serve the history of Alcoholics Anonymous for Founders day so it's quite an experience. i happen to snap this picture because there was a march for recovery and i was pulling into the house and they were all standing there and the guy here was given a talk and it was just moving it was a neighborhood kind of walk for recovery from addiction and and they Were standing outside the house with that guy uh he's now a volunteer on the front steps there all right so we had another renovation on the outside and you can see we spent a lot of money on this because we're doing things historically correct and we got it all the way down to the original paint sample and this is how the house looked when the Smiths first moved in isn't it beautiful so if you haven't seen it in the recent couple years this is what you'll see when you visit I want you to know that all the windows have UV protection so we can put out those artifacts for you to see we've invested in that we have a great gardener now you're looking at ann smith's garden we're taking pretty good care of the yard and the things don't we just did another renovation in the house next door this is the first time we've shown a picture of the gift store it's also museum through here it's not quite all set up yet but there's a lot of artifacts oxford group things and more to learn here as well. In the upper room here is the archives and our boardroom. And now to tell you about 122 Everett. There is a house directly behind Dr. Bob's house. You almost run into it when you go out the back door. That's how it's sitting right in what a backyard would be. And this house came up for sale. What should we do? We need more space. We're sending you into a dank, bad basement to even see the film. We'd been talking about tearing down the garage and doing a welcoming center like Stepping Stones did, and then this house comes up for sale. So we had a strategic planning meeting and everything, and everybody was concerned that it could become a crack house. It also secures that corner for the future, and you only get a shot at this. You know, so we bought the house. And now we're kind of excited. I was a little nervous about it, but we're kind of excited now because now we're dreaming about what we're going to do with that house. And what the plans are now is, darling, let me show it to you. You can see. Look how close. Look what we'RE dealing with here. And it really kind of locks up that corner. It's got a solarium. It's a beautiful living room and a kitchen, two fireplaces, and upstairs rooms. so we're going to be moving the archives, I'm real cramped there's a little tiny room I'm in we're gonna move the archives and open it up we're gunna have a research room we're ganna get those books back from Brown if I have to buy them one at a time, maybe we won't have Dr. Bob's but it will be a research room for people, those books are gunna be harder and harder to get in the future if I'm gunna do it, we gotta do it now cause they get rarer and rarER and rARER so we'rE gunna begin to, Brown may have a lot of things, but we will duplicate it and put it into this home you will hopefully be able to go in and be able to see a film there. And we'll get you out of these dark steps. It's not good for anybody to be going down the steps where we have the film now. So I want to introduce you to the board, to the people who I love, who I get to be with, who I have the privilege of serving you in Akron with. My buddy Harmon Vealy. And he's a great guy. You'll see him at Founders Day if you come. This is Paul Gee. some of you might know Paul G he gets around a little bit he does IT and a lot of stuff that's Dolly, Dolly's in charge of that gift store and by God she's like a pit bull on that gift store you can visit us online because the gift store does help support the house we have the coolest thing now we just did I gotta tell ya I had a key at the other archives that was the original Mayflower key. And it's a picture of the Mayflower and it's the key that, like they would have had at the opening that Bill would have in his hand when he was there. And we duplicated it. And it has space on it where you can actually engrave your sobriety date if you want to take it to an engraver. And its been a really great little thing that we're doing right now. You're looking at Ryan. Ryan does building and maintenance and he's in charge of all the renovation things that we are doing at 859. And we have different phases and we're about finished with 859 so we were really ready to go into this next phase which will be developing anybody know this guy can't a great member and he does a lot of fundraising who he's done some things for us on the road but he's on our board real smart guy that's Dennis he's our secretary and nobody takes better minutes than Dennis and I here I am with your boys this is from the florida i know you recognize this if you've been to florida state convention or any archives and my boy's here uh that's bob bob does it although we're probably looking for a little uh expertise on that to help bob out because our face goes out to the world yes people come and visit the house but i just said at the last board meeting how are we going to reach all the foreign countries how are they going to reach ireland how are мы going to reach places because AA is now all over let's go to our web page but we really need help with that because it's a big you know we don't have the expertise to do it the way we'd like and I'd like to put more historical documents on it and do a little more with that if we could get that going a little bit so hopefully we're going to be working on that Allie just came on board she's our treasurer this is Sandy she's our only paid employee the board is doing the work for you We're not paying to have it done. We don't have an executive director. We are boots on the ground. We are doing the work. But we do have her there for just a few hours, maybe 12 hours a week, to coordinate shipping and to do some things like that. But we've kept our budget very, very low. And I'm real proud of that because we're a hardworking board. We're nicht ein Board, wir sind nicht ein Team, wir sind kein Team, wir machen die Arbeit. Wir sind hinter dem Radar. Und das ist Cindy. Sie hat Anne Smith Gardner gemacht. Sie ist unser Gardner. Wayne doesn't have a picture in John Stilwell John Stolwell's here in Florida somewhere right now but that's Shane he's our bookkeeper and by God one time I turned in a receipt with a coconut bar on it and he called me on that I'm giving all the time and he calls me on a $1 coconut bar he caught on a receipt that I didn't catch so he's good okay, he's great You know, alcoholics love to take things personally, don't we? Love to be insulted. This is our auditor, and he's the sharpest guy we can find for a 501c3. You know in New York they have Class A and Class B trustees. You do not want an alcoholic board, I promise you. All alcoholic boards, I've been on them, you don't want them. These guys that we have helping us have this expertise and kind of balance some of our thinking and things we don't know about. That's Kevin Crum. This is Mark Gillis. He's the architect that we consulted with. He's right down the street from us at the Gatehouse. His office is upstairs from the Gate Lodge. We've pulled in the best architect in town who's been doing all the work at the CyberLink Foundation called Stan Hewitt. He's part of our team as well. We're doing it right. it's costing us a little more but we're doing it right for the future we have grant writers thank God it's been very very helpful especially to the archives I'm hoping that I can get some grants to try to get these books that I want to pull in that are going to really surprise you when you see what he was really reading okay it wasn't all what we think but I want it to be the full picture my job isn't to interpret it as much as it is to present it so I want to make sure we get that and we have a newsletter, the House Call Magazine beautiful display over here I hope you'll visit it those are for you to take as part of today and the newsletter's there that goes out twice a year or you can visit us online you can sign up for it and you can find out if you want to donate we have endowments now you know, to help the endowment fund's really important I know I'll be leaving a certain portion of my will to the home and you can choose what you want yours to go to if you wanted to participate in that all right so what are we doing today we have non managing trustees here with Cheryl and Steve Ryan so what is a non managing trustee it's just somebody that's out maybe not in Akron out from Akron that will put on an event like this that will help us to do what we're doing in Akran and again this This is the fourth one. But see, this is a win-win. You can't tell me a breakfast and lunch in a full day of AA and somehow it still manages to help Dr. Bob's home. And it's because of the guy in the kitchen that gave up his day to cook. And it was because of Dr. Robb and it's also because of the committee that came in here last night and have met throughout the year. It's their time that's really producing the money that we take back to Akron because this is a full-day and certainly worth anything that you paid to be here. So I believe it's their hard work So we have a fundraiser in New York. Those guys have been doing it for a long time, and we really appreciate them. We have now one in Scott in Philadelphia does a dinner, and they're selling out, and he's looking for a bigger place because people, if you give them a darn chance to help, they want to help. We just had to build the room, and they came. I believe that's true wherever people can be a part of what we're doing. And I hope you do feel a part OF it. seattle has started some really fabulous ones um again you're here about sometimes don did one uh one in fort lauderdale um england does a dinner boxer frank does a diner in england we're getting one from australia he's coming to founders day this year he'll be doing a dinner in australya you see that connects us in unity cleveland has in our area starting to do some and uh las vegas has a something that goes to us as well sandy beach and bob used to do a weekend and that was really helpful to us and they dedicated their weekend to helping us and i miss that i miss certainly miss sandy but that was a big help as well so i don't call them fundraisers i call them fundraisERS you having fun today i hope so because this is a wonderful wonderful fellowship event and i'm just gonna uh um tell you that in my mind i consider you stockholders because you're here today i i hope that if there uh and that's why i want to open this up if there's any questions as stockholders if you have any questions about what we're doing if i can answer them i will um and i hope you continue to um you know visit us online or come to Akron and actually you know travel through that home and experience the story for yourself people come from all over the world and I wish I think it's the best job in town earlier today I was talking about it I'll give you one day to tell you what it's like when people come I'm talking to a volunteer in the home and a gentleman walked into the living room and of course this is how they enter the livingroom if they've never been there before especially if they're from far away. They've waited a lifetime. The guy was 30 years sober and I heard him say out loud to himself, I've waited 30 years for this experience. He was from India. 30 years in India is a big deal. I couldn't help it. I always drop whatever I'm doing and I'm with whoever comes. I'm there as soon as they come where you want to go, I take them all over. I can't help myself it's an addiction I don't know and then another gentleman came in and I was upstairs and I said she's blind in one eye she's going blind in the other eye and she won't have the surgery she's just about blind and he bursts into tears and he says I'm going blind too and I wanted to see this before I can see anymore if I could give you all the stories of the people, of our family nationally and internationally and how this home touches them by just walking through that door or walking up those 12 steps. I want you to know that that's what today is about. It's about helping us to carry the heritage of Bob and Ann Smith today and for future generations. Thank you very much. Thank you. A standing ovation for a commercial. That's pretty good. Any questions? You got a question? Yes. The first time I went to see Dr. Bob's house, it was shortly after the house had been acquired a couple years. Hello? Okay. I never have a problem with people hearing me because I have a big mouth.