Alcoholics Anonymoua History and Dr. Bob

“The Prince of all Twelfth Steppers”
Cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous

Dick B.
© 2008 by Anonymous. All rights reserved.


Books about Dr. Bob and Alcoholics Anonymous

DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980)
RHS: Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Our Beloved Dr. Bob (NY: The A.A. Grapevine,
Inc., 1951, 1979).
The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks
(NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975).
Bob Smith and Sue Smith Windows, Children of the Healer: The Story of Dr. Bob’s Kids
(Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1994).
Dick B., Dr. Bob and His Library: A Major A.A. Spiritual Source, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI:
Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998).
URL: http://dickb.com/drbob.shtml
Dick B., The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2d ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research
Publications, Inc., 1998).
URL: http://dickb.com/Akron.shtml\
Dick B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His Excellent Training in the Good Book As a
Youngster in Vermont (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2008)
URL: http://dickb.com/drbobofaa.shtml
Dick B., Dr. Bob’s Days in St. Johnsbury, Vermont – work in progress.
Dick B., The Prince of All Twelfth Steppers: A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous’ Cofounder Robert Holbrook Smith, M.D. (Dr. Bob) – work in progress.


Photograph Pages
(Soon to follow these Dr. Bob pages)

Boyhood Home and Birthplace, 297 Summer Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

North Congregational Church, 1325 Main Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

St. Johnsbury Academy, Main Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont (founded in 1842 by Erastus, Thaddeus, and Joseph Fairbanks, with Thaddeus contributing the buildings [North Hall, 1873] and South Hall [1872]).

The Young Men’s Christian Association Building, St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum (Free Public Library, donated by Horace Fairbanks, and opened November 1871), 1171 Main Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science and Rotary Planetarium, Main Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Fairbanks Scale Factory (owned by ET and …), circa 1880

Fairbanks & Co., 1890, providing hundreds of jobs to people in the area.

A Panoramic View of St. Johnsbury

One of the Original Drafts of the proposed Alcoholics Anonymous first edition cover


Biographical Data

Judge Walter Perrin Smith and Mrs. Susan Amanda Holbrook (Smith) were married in Vermont on August 15, 1876.

Judge Smith and his wife Susan were first listed in the North Congregational Church, St. Johnsbury Yearbook, in 1878.

Their only son Robert Holbrook Smith [Dr. Bob] was born at the family home on Summer Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on August 8, 1879

Robert H. Smith was first listed in the North enrolled in North Congregational Church, St, Johnsbury, Yearbook in 1880.

Judge Walter and Mrs. Smith became members of the North Congregational Church on May 7, 1883.

Young Bob Smith attended the Summer Street School in St. Johnsbury.

He entered St. Johnsbury Academy in 1894

Bob met Anne Robinson Ripley of Oak Park, Illinois at a St. Johnsbury Academy dance while Anne (a student at Wellesley) was spending a holiday with a college friend.

Robert H. Smith was a good student, debater, fraternity member, manager of the Glee Club, and Commencement Orator when he graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy in 1898. He graduated with good grades.

Throughout his years as a youngster in St. Johnsbury. Dr. Bob received excellent, extensive, and continuing Christian religious training from his parents. Bob’s father Judge Smith was a member, Sunday school superintendent, Sunday school teacher, and later a deacon at North Congregational Church. Bob’s mother Susan H. Smith was a member, Sunday school Superintendent, Sunday school teacher, president of the Congregational Women’s Club, singer in the church quartet, and involved in domestic mission work at North Congregational. Judge Smith had been a president of the YMCA and examiner at St. Johnsbury Academy. Mrs. Smith was a graduate of the Academy, a teacher there, an Academy historian, and a member of the Alumni Executive Committee. All scholars at the Academy were required to attend Daily Chapel with prayer and Scripture reading, and all were required weekly to attend a church service and Bible study. Bob specifically stated that from childhood through high school, he went to church, Sunday school and evening service, Monday night Christian Endeavor, and sometimes to the Wednesday-evening prayer meeting. His activity in the Christian Endeavor Society involved confession of Christ, Bible study meetings, prayer meetings, conversion meetings, discussion of religious literature, and the observing of Quiet Hour.

Robert H. Smith attended and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1902.

Bob spent the next three years in Boston, Chicago, and Montreal; and, for the first two years out of Dartmouth, he was employed by Fairbanks Morse, the St. Johnsbury scales manufacturing company for which his father had once been an attorney.

He occasionally came to Chicago on business of Fairbanks Morse (and, said an A.A. publication, probably to see Anne, who was then teaching school at nearby Oak Park).

He worked at various jobs in Boston and Montreal and then entered University of Michigan as a premed student, after which, despite his drinking problems, he received his credits and was enabled to transfer as a junior in the fall of 1907 to Rush University.

In 1910, after further training at Rush Memorial College in Chicago, he received his medical degree. In fact, his scholarship and deportment had been so meritorious that he secured a highly coveted two-year internship at City Hospital, Akron, Ohio.

He completed his internship in 1912 and opened an office in the Second National Bank Building, and remained there until his retirement in 1948.

Dr. Bob Smith married Anne Ripley on January 25, 1915, in a ceremony at the home of Anne’s mother, Mrs. Joseph Pierce Ripley.

Robert H. and Anne R. Smith purchased a home at 855 Ardmore in Akron, Ohio—the place where Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on June 10, 1935 by Bob and Bill Wilson.

The only son of Dr. Bob and Anne Smith was named Robert Ripley Smith. He was born on June 5, 1918, and he was given the nickname “Smitty.” Many years later, Smitty became a much sought after speaker at A.A., Al-Anon, and history meetings.

After a period as a general practitioner, Dr. Bob decided to become a surgeon. He received further medical training at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. In 1929, he began a specialized practice as a proctologist and rectal surgeon.

The other Smith child, Suzanne Smith Windows, was born February 15, 1918. Her biological mother had turned her children over to their maternal grandmother who, in turn, gave up the children to the Summit County, Ohio, Children’s Home. In the summer of 1935, at age 5, Sue was adopted by Dr. Bob and Anne Smith. Sue spent the next 17 years living with them and her step-brother Smitty in the Smith house on Ardmore Avenue.

Dr. Bob’s daughter Sue Smith Windows was very clear in a phone conversation with Dick B. that she and her brother Smitty were regular attenders at the Church of Our Saviour in the Akron, Ohio, area. She told Dick B. that the church was located at the corner of Oakdale and Crosby Streets. Sue could not verify that her father (Dr. Bob) had belonged to the church, but stated that he probably did because “We got to the Church of Our Saviour Sunday School somehow.” At age 80, both children recalled for Dick B. that they had been taken to Sunday School by their father Dr. Bob.

Dick B. personally verified that Dr. Bob and his wife Anne became charter members of the Westminster United Presbyterian Church in Akron, Ohio, by “letter of transfer.” They joined the church on June 3, 1936 and remained members of that church until April 3, 1942.

Anne Ripley Smith died on June 1, 1949. Anne was called by A.A. Cofounder Bill Wilson “one of the founders of A.A.” and “the Mother of A.A.”

Shortly after Anne’s death, and before he died, Dr. Bob became a communicant at St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Akron, Ohio. This was the church of which Dr. Walter F. Tunks was rector when Bill Wilson contacted him in 1935, searching for a drunk to help. Tunks was Harvey Firestone, Sr.’s pastor and was a substantial participant in the events that brought Oxford Group Founder Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman, to Akron in the famous events of January, 1933, that soon led to the founding of A.A. in 1935. Tunks performed several liturgical services involving Bob’s family.

Dr. Bob died of cancer at City Hospital, Akron, on November 16, 1950. He was not only the Cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, but was rightly called by Bill Wilson “The Prince of All Twelfth Steppers”—certainly in recognition of the fact that he helped over 5000 drunks without any thought of pay.

Robert Holbrook Smith, M.D., left a legacy of many things not material: He believed that the Good Book contained all the answers to his problems and those of the A.A. pioneers. He read the Bible from cover to cover at least three times and freely quoted from it when asked a question about the A.A. program. He read voluminous amounts of religious literature and widely circulated it among the A.A. pioneers and their families. He insisted that new members profess a belief in God. He also insisted that they, as he and Bill Wilson themselves had done, signify their decision to commit their lives to Christ. Quiet Time, where there was reading of the Bible, prayer to God, and seeking God’s guidance, were “musts” in the early Christian Fellowship. Dr. Bob declared that A.A.’s basic ideas came from their study of the Good Book. He professed that the Book of James, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 were “absolutely essential” to the program for the cure of alcoholism. Of the Twelve Steps, while declaring that he had nothing to do with writing them, he said that, when simmered to the essence, they involved the principles of “love and service.” And he assured all, at the close of his personal story: “Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!”

Dr. Walter F. Tunks delivered the Eulogy, stating in the last portion:

Here is the lesson of his life. God can use human weaknesses to demonstrate His power. No man need stay the way he is. With God’s help he can throw off the chains of any enslaving habit and be free again to be what God wants him to be. His monument is not the money he left in the bank, but the gratitude in the hearts of so many men and women who owe more than they can ever repay to his example.

O God we thank Thee for the life and service of Thy dear servant, Dr. Bob, whom we remember at Thy altar this day. Bless and prosper the work of Alcoholics Anonymous, in whose founding he played such an all important part. Prosper the work of this organization that it may reclaim the lives of many who are ashamed of their own weakness. This we ask in the name of Him who taught us that no failure ever need be final – our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Gloria Deo

Dick B.: PO Box 837, Kihei, HI 96753-0837; 808 874 4876 dickb@dickb.com; http://DrBob.info; http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml; http://www.dickb-blog.com