Mother’s Day 1935: The Plant Was on the Table and Dr. Bob Was Under It – Mike F.

About This Speaker Tape

Mike F., sober since April 1985, shares his deep personal connection to AA history at this workshop in Roanoke. Growing up in an alcoholic home in Buffalo, New York, he was immersed in AA from childhood. After getting sober, his sponsor John C. in Texas — whose own sponsor got sober in 1946 — became his unofficial AA history professor, quizzing him on road trips and introducing him to old-timers who knew Bill W. and Ebby personally. Mike later inherited a library of 3,500 reel-to-reel recordings from Bill O., a pioneer of AA taping, and has spent 20 years digitizing and preserving them through recoveryspeakers.org.

The heart of the talk traces the golden thread of AA's founding: Ebby's Oxford Group conversion and his pivotal visit to Bill W. at Clinton Street, told from Ebby's own recorded perspective rather than the Big Book version. Mike walks through Roland Hazard's encounter with Carl Jung, the connection to Samuel Hadley's 1880 conversion at the Water Street Mission, Bill's spiritual experience at Towns Hospital, and the fateful Mother's Day 1935 meeting between Bill and Dr. Bob at the Seiberling estate in Akron — where Dr. Bob said he would give Bill 15 minutes and stayed six and a half hours.

Mike recounts the early struggles of carrying the message — Eddie, the first man Bill and Dr. Bob tried to help, who chased Ann Smith with a butcher knife but got sober 15 years later in Youngstown. He describes how Bill turned down a lucrative offer from Towns Hospital owner Charlie Towns after his home group invoked what became the Second Tradition. The talk covers the decision to write the Big Book, Bill turning down a $1,500 offer from Harper's, and the slow, painful growth from 40 sober members in late 1937.

Mike closes with a passionate appeal for AA members to study the traditions, arguing they are the glue holding the fellowship together yet remain poorly understood. During Q&A, he addresses Tradition 11 and the internet, the Christian roots of the Oxford Group principles versus AA's all-inclusive vision, and controversies about Bill W.'s personal life — pushing back on claims of sex addiction while acknowledging Bill's documented relationship with Helen W. and his request for alcohol on his deathbed. He finishes with the rest of Ebby's story: multiple relapses, a long stretch of sobriety in Texas, and dying sober at Ballston Spa, New York.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Mike introduces himself, sobriety date April 23 1985, explains how AA history found him through his father's sponsor and early connections in Texas
• 5:00 Meeting Ruth in Michigan, wife of Ernie G. (AA number 78), who described coming into AA through Dr. Bob's house and attending Oxford Group meetings
• 10:00 Inheriting Bill O.'s library of 3,500 reel-to-reel tapes and beginning the digitization project that became recoveryspeakers.org
• 15:00 Ebby's backstory: drinking progression, driving into a lady's kitchen, shooting pigeons while lying on his back drunk, facing mandatory jail time
• 22:00 Roland Hazard's story: Carl Jung's death sentence, the connection to Samuel Hadley's 1880 conversion at the Water Street Mission, and the golden thread of AA history
• 28:00 Ebby's version of visiting Bill W. at Clinton Street — the dinner, Ebby sharing the Oxford Group principles, Bill saying on the walk to the subway: I want what you've got
• 35:00 Bill's spiritual experience at Towns Hospital, reading Varieties of Religious Experience, and becoming the first lay therapist permitted to work with alcoholics in a hospital
• 42:00 Bill and Dr. Bob's first meeting on Mother's Day 1935 at the Seiberling estate — Dr. Bob gave him 15 minutes, they talked until 11:30 PM
• 50:00 Early failures and persistence: Eddie and the butcher knife, Clarence S. working with 100 drunks before one stayed sober, counting only 40 members by late 1937
• 58:00 The importance of traditions as the glue of AA, Q&A on Tradition 11 and the internet, Christian roots vs all-inclusive fellowship, and defending Bill W.'s legacy against revisionist claims