DickB
07-02-2008, 07:11 PM
How Bill W.’s Story Really Begins:
A.A.’s Cofounder and His Younger Days
Dick B.
© 2008 by Anonymous. All rights reserved.
Part Two
The Wilsons, the Griffiths, and East Dorset Congregational Church
The Story of Mrs. M. and the “100% Whole Truth”
Let me tell you the story of Mrs. K. M. of Hollywood. I was her attorney from 1955 to the date of her death a number of years later. Mrs. M. was forever involved in litigation. She was frequently called to the witness stand to testify.
Each time Mrs. M took the stand, the clerk would tell her to raise her right hand. Then the clerk would ask: “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Inevitably Mrs. M. would reply: “Only if I am allowed to tell the 100% whole truth.”
Mrs. M. had long seen the problems that arise from just “telling the truth.” She knew that if she were not allowed to tell the whole story, all the facts, the “100% whole truth,” her point would never get across to judge and jury.
Now let’s get to A.A. Cofounder Dr. Bob and the “100% whole truth.”
In his last major address to AAs at Detroit, Michigan, in December, 1948, Dr. Bob stated:
In early A.A. days. . . our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of. When we started in on Bill D. [Bill Dotson was A.A. Number Three], we had no Twelve Steps, either; we had no Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book.
This simple, truthful statement about the A.A. answer is very clear. It is contained in A.A.’s own “Conference Approved” literature. It can be purchased through any A.A. meeting and read at any A.A. meeting. It does not mention the Washingtonians, the Oxford Group, Emmet Fox, Carl Jung, or William James. It speaks only of the Bible.
Dr. Bob simply pointed out that the pioneers didn’t rely on stories, steps, or traditions. They relied on the Bible, which they called the Good Book. Yet, in some seventy years of existence, AAs have heard varying amounts of truth about their roots, but almost always something less than the whole truth. They rarely if ever get to the good stuff—the good stuff in the Good Book—the materials in the Bible which the oldtimers considered “absolutely essential.” If and when AAs and others in the recovery world begin to hear and learn about these Good Book materials, they will come closer and closer to the “100% whole truth” about A.A.’s spiritual program of recovery.
And part of that “100% whole truth” concerns the things that A.A. Cofounders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob learned as youngsters in Vermont about the Good Book. Not surprisingly, therefore, when push came to shove in 1935, it was to that Good Book that they turned for their answers.
This is the second in a series on how the Bill Wilson story really began. What he heard and learned about the Good Book as a youngster in Vermont.
Historical Fragments in Other Sources
We will soon be talking about what my son Ken and I found when we spent a day at the Wilson House and particularly in the Griffith Library and the East Congregational Church next door. There are records aplenty. But the works of other historians and writers suggest that there may be still more to know about Bill Wilson, his church, his Sunday school, and his religious experiences as a youngster in East Dorset, Vermont.
And here are some of the challenging statements made by others including Bill Wilson himself:
My grandfather Wilson [Grandpa Willie] was a very serious case of alcoholism, and it no doubt hastened his death, although some years prior to this he had, to everyone’s great surprise, hit the sawdust trail, to speak figuratively, at a revival meeting in the Congregational Church and was never known to drink afterward.
I was born in the Green Mountains of Vermont, alongside of a towering peak called Mount Aeolus. I was raised in the parsonage there, although my parents were not in the business of being clergy.
No matter how late supper had been, there was always time for reading aloud, and then a time for Fayette [Grandpa Fayette Griffith] to be alone with his books, his Gibbon and his Blackstone.
With more free hours now, Fayette read more, even sending off to the city for special books. His beliefs were still there, but now they were no more than intellectual, all theory. . . . He went on, read his Bible, supported the church, but there was a verse from Matthew that would return torment him when he finished his reading: “If the sale have lost its savour. . .” Then Emily [Bill Wilson’s mother] brought her children and left them and moved on to take up her studies.
An avid reader himself, Fayette encouraged Will [Bill Wilson] to explore the world of books.
The more Bill read, the more he wanted to read. He had read about Horatio Alger and Thomas Edison. He read Heidi and the family encyclopedia and, of course, the Bible.
[Mark Whalon, Bill’s close boyhood friend, and Bill]. . . talked about the books they read; Mark Twain and Charles Dickens were a nice complement to the more serious readings in philosophy and law that Fayette Griffith liked to discuss.
Mark gave him [Bill Wilson] books, and he borrowed some from Rose Landon’s lending library, but he would read anything, even the big Griffith Dictionary from cover to cover.
Always, even as a small boy in Sunday school, he [Bill Wilson] had been taught that one must forgive, even try to love, the enemy, as one did unto the least of these—and this he had believed.
The old friends [Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson] talked for hours. Bill relaxed into childhood memories of starchy Sunday sermons and old-time temperance pledges (he never signed one).
Ebby was still telling Bill why he couldn’t have the drink Bill offered him when Lois came home from work. As Ebby related his experience with the Oxford Group, Bill was trying to listen, but he wasn’t exactly sold. He had seen people “witnessing” to such conversions at the tent revivals he attended as a boy, and he had his doubts about how genuine they were. Some of the people testifying only seemed to have religious impulses when the revivalists’ tents were up.
One weekend the County Temperance Institute held a two-day conference at the East Dorset Congregational Church in collaboration with the Dorset Board of Hope. Still reeling from his parents’ divorce, the explosion of his beloved family, and the dislocation of his life, the eleven-year old Bill Wilson went unquestioningly to the Congregational Sunday School across the green. All the Griffiths went to church. The day came during the visit from the Temperance Institute when all the children in East Dorset Sunday School were asked to sign a temperance pledge. . . . He wasn’t going to drink, but he wasn’t going to sign their pledge either. He refused in the stubbornness of the moment, but this refusal had an enormous effect on his future. He walked away from Sunday school and away from church.
Before we turn to what the East Dorset Congregational Church records actually show, the reader needs to remember several things. None of the foregoing commentators, except for Wilson himself, ever seems to have entered the doors of the church or the Sunday school. All seemed predisposed to believe that Wilson ended his church and Sunday school life with the refusal to sign a temperance pledge. None goes on to tell the details of what happened at Burr and Burton Academy where Bill went to daily chapel, heard Scripture read, participated in prayer, joined his girl friend Bertha in daily Chapel, was required to go to weekly church service at the Congregational Church in Manchester, and became president of the Burr and Burton YMCA
We believe it is far better to research what happened, than to reach conclusions about Bill’s religious ideas and activities without looking at the records. In fact, even the foregoing fragments show that the Griffiths attended church. The church records we will examine show how much the Wilson family was also involved in the same church.
[To be continued in Part Three Research inside the door of East Dorset Congregational Church, Vermont]
:1:
A.A.’s Cofounder and His Younger Days
Dick B.
© 2008 by Anonymous. All rights reserved.
Part Two
The Wilsons, the Griffiths, and East Dorset Congregational Church
The Story of Mrs. M. and the “100% Whole Truth”
Let me tell you the story of Mrs. K. M. of Hollywood. I was her attorney from 1955 to the date of her death a number of years later. Mrs. M. was forever involved in litigation. She was frequently called to the witness stand to testify.
Each time Mrs. M took the stand, the clerk would tell her to raise her right hand. Then the clerk would ask: “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Inevitably Mrs. M. would reply: “Only if I am allowed to tell the 100% whole truth.”
Mrs. M. had long seen the problems that arise from just “telling the truth.” She knew that if she were not allowed to tell the whole story, all the facts, the “100% whole truth,” her point would never get across to judge and jury.
Now let’s get to A.A. Cofounder Dr. Bob and the “100% whole truth.”
In his last major address to AAs at Detroit, Michigan, in December, 1948, Dr. Bob stated:
In early A.A. days. . . our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of. When we started in on Bill D. [Bill Dotson was A.A. Number Three], we had no Twelve Steps, either; we had no Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book.
This simple, truthful statement about the A.A. answer is very clear. It is contained in A.A.’s own “Conference Approved” literature. It can be purchased through any A.A. meeting and read at any A.A. meeting. It does not mention the Washingtonians, the Oxford Group, Emmet Fox, Carl Jung, or William James. It speaks only of the Bible.
Dr. Bob simply pointed out that the pioneers didn’t rely on stories, steps, or traditions. They relied on the Bible, which they called the Good Book. Yet, in some seventy years of existence, AAs have heard varying amounts of truth about their roots, but almost always something less than the whole truth. They rarely if ever get to the good stuff—the good stuff in the Good Book—the materials in the Bible which the oldtimers considered “absolutely essential.” If and when AAs and others in the recovery world begin to hear and learn about these Good Book materials, they will come closer and closer to the “100% whole truth” about A.A.’s spiritual program of recovery.
And part of that “100% whole truth” concerns the things that A.A. Cofounders Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob learned as youngsters in Vermont about the Good Book. Not surprisingly, therefore, when push came to shove in 1935, it was to that Good Book that they turned for their answers.
This is the second in a series on how the Bill Wilson story really began. What he heard and learned about the Good Book as a youngster in Vermont.
Historical Fragments in Other Sources
We will soon be talking about what my son Ken and I found when we spent a day at the Wilson House and particularly in the Griffith Library and the East Congregational Church next door. There are records aplenty. But the works of other historians and writers suggest that there may be still more to know about Bill Wilson, his church, his Sunday school, and his religious experiences as a youngster in East Dorset, Vermont.
And here are some of the challenging statements made by others including Bill Wilson himself:
My grandfather Wilson [Grandpa Willie] was a very serious case of alcoholism, and it no doubt hastened his death, although some years prior to this he had, to everyone’s great surprise, hit the sawdust trail, to speak figuratively, at a revival meeting in the Congregational Church and was never known to drink afterward.
I was born in the Green Mountains of Vermont, alongside of a towering peak called Mount Aeolus. I was raised in the parsonage there, although my parents were not in the business of being clergy.
No matter how late supper had been, there was always time for reading aloud, and then a time for Fayette [Grandpa Fayette Griffith] to be alone with his books, his Gibbon and his Blackstone.
With more free hours now, Fayette read more, even sending off to the city for special books. His beliefs were still there, but now they were no more than intellectual, all theory. . . . He went on, read his Bible, supported the church, but there was a verse from Matthew that would return torment him when he finished his reading: “If the sale have lost its savour. . .” Then Emily [Bill Wilson’s mother] brought her children and left them and moved on to take up her studies.
An avid reader himself, Fayette encouraged Will [Bill Wilson] to explore the world of books.
The more Bill read, the more he wanted to read. He had read about Horatio Alger and Thomas Edison. He read Heidi and the family encyclopedia and, of course, the Bible.
[Mark Whalon, Bill’s close boyhood friend, and Bill]. . . talked about the books they read; Mark Twain and Charles Dickens were a nice complement to the more serious readings in philosophy and law that Fayette Griffith liked to discuss.
Mark gave him [Bill Wilson] books, and he borrowed some from Rose Landon’s lending library, but he would read anything, even the big Griffith Dictionary from cover to cover.
Always, even as a small boy in Sunday school, he [Bill Wilson] had been taught that one must forgive, even try to love, the enemy, as one did unto the least of these—and this he had believed.
The old friends [Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson] talked for hours. Bill relaxed into childhood memories of starchy Sunday sermons and old-time temperance pledges (he never signed one).
Ebby was still telling Bill why he couldn’t have the drink Bill offered him when Lois came home from work. As Ebby related his experience with the Oxford Group, Bill was trying to listen, but he wasn’t exactly sold. He had seen people “witnessing” to such conversions at the tent revivals he attended as a boy, and he had his doubts about how genuine they were. Some of the people testifying only seemed to have religious impulses when the revivalists’ tents were up.
One weekend the County Temperance Institute held a two-day conference at the East Dorset Congregational Church in collaboration with the Dorset Board of Hope. Still reeling from his parents’ divorce, the explosion of his beloved family, and the dislocation of his life, the eleven-year old Bill Wilson went unquestioningly to the Congregational Sunday School across the green. All the Griffiths went to church. The day came during the visit from the Temperance Institute when all the children in East Dorset Sunday School were asked to sign a temperance pledge. . . . He wasn’t going to drink, but he wasn’t going to sign their pledge either. He refused in the stubbornness of the moment, but this refusal had an enormous effect on his future. He walked away from Sunday school and away from church.
Before we turn to what the East Dorset Congregational Church records actually show, the reader needs to remember several things. None of the foregoing commentators, except for Wilson himself, ever seems to have entered the doors of the church or the Sunday school. All seemed predisposed to believe that Wilson ended his church and Sunday school life with the refusal to sign a temperance pledge. None goes on to tell the details of what happened at Burr and Burton Academy where Bill went to daily chapel, heard Scripture read, participated in prayer, joined his girl friend Bertha in daily Chapel, was required to go to weekly church service at the Congregational Church in Manchester, and became president of the Burr and Burton YMCA
We believe it is far better to research what happened, than to reach conclusions about Bill’s religious ideas and activities without looking at the records. In fact, even the foregoing fragments show that the Griffiths attended church. The church records we will examine show how much the Wilson family was also involved in the same church.
[To be continued in Part Three Research inside the door of East Dorset Congregational Church, Vermont]
:1: