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It was at a party given at the Academy that Dr. Bob first met Anne. A student at Wellesley, she was spending a holiday with a college chum. It was a small, reserved girl whom the tall, rangy Rob met that night. With an agile mind to match his own, Anne had a cheerfulness, sweetness and calm that was to re- main with her through the years. After high school at St. Johns- bury Academy came four years of college at Dartmouth. At long last the rebellious young colt was free of his parents’ restraining supervision. New experiences were to be explored and enjoyed without having to give an accounting.
Bill, Bob, and many early A.A.’s read Professor William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (cited by name in A.A.’s Big Book) and Dr. Carl Gustav Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Jung was later called a “founder” of A.A. as was William James.Dr. Bob was intensely interested in the efficacy of prayer, and his library bespeaks this interest. Among his many books about the subject of prayer were Glenn Clark’s The Soul’s Sincere Desire, Starr Daily’s Recovery, Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Charles and Cora Filmore’s Teach Us to Pray, Emmet Fox’s Getting Results by Prayer, Gerald Heard’s A Preface to Prayer, Frank Laubach’s Prayer (Mightiest Force in the World), Charles M. Layman’s A Primer of Prayer, William R. Parker’s Prayer Can Change Your Life, and F. L. Rawson’s The Nature of True Prayer. During the next few years, he developed two distinct phobias. One was the fear of not sleeping and the other was the fear of running out of liquor. So began the squirrel-cage existence. Staying sober to earn enough money to get drunk, getting drunk to go to sleep, using sedatives to quiet the jitters, staying sober, earning money, getting drunk, smuggling home a bottle, hiding the bottle from Anne who became an expert at detecting hiding places.
While Bob was pursuing his practice visits, Sue Ibbotson was setting up “Specialty Liaison Groups” for all the major cancers. For example, there were concerns about the breast service at the time in Fife. Sue set up a breast group and Bob, significantly a GP and not a breast surgeon himself, became the group’s Chair. He recalls how, at the first meeting, he discovered that the breast surgeons from the two Fife hospitals hadn’t even met before, so he was able to introduce them. Dr. Bob has never fully shown or revealed his face, but he appears to be a tall pale Caucasian male dressed in brown work pants and a red sweater with a white lab coat sporting a bright orange name tag with his name on it.
Dr. Bob’s Home
While Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith thoroughly appreciated the spirit of personal gratitude that usually prompted such superlatives, he never took them seriously as applicable to himself. He rose up to tell with all humility the simple story of an alcoholic’s return to sobriety. Dr. Bob seldom called upon his vast experience with others. He simply repeated in different ways the story of one man’s great return. And that was his own. What success attended his efforts, as well as the efforts of the sisters and all who worked with the many patients who passed through that ward, is now a matter of AA history. It will ever remain a monument to the memory of R. H. S., M. D. — and Dr. Bob, the man. Dr. Bobs is a retro-themed color-matchinggamecreatedin thespiritofanotherfamousvideogame doctor,but with an important, completely necessary feature: breast expansion! In about 1995, the Fife Health Board appointed another doctor, Sue Ibbotson, as a Consultant in Public Health. Bob describes Sue’s appointment as “a breath of fresh air”. This was the time of the Calman Hine report (on the future of cancer services in the UK), which recommended the appointment of a Lead Cancer Clinician in every area. Sue Ibbotson suggested that Fife create a Lead Team, and she and Bob worked with St John Hattersley of Macmillan Cancer Relief’s Office for Scotland and Northern Ireland (OSNI) to secure funding for it. Of the Oxford Group books and the Bible] . . . I had done an immense amount of reading they had recommended. I had refreshed my memory of the Good Book, and I had had excellent training in that as a youngster (The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 11-12).
In 1935 Dr. Bob met Bill Wilson, a New York businessman and entrepreneur who was struggling with his own alcoholism. The two immediately became close friends, with Bill showing Dr. Bob how he, with spiritual help, was finally able to recover from the effects of alcoholism. When he was about nine years old he began to show signs of liking to work, especially out of doors. That summer he was at a neighbor’s farm helping the men load hay. Perhaps he was resting, perhaps he was prowling around poking under bushes to see what he could see … he saw a jug… he pulled the cork and sniffed. It was a new odor to this son of strict New England parents. If the stuff in the jug smelled so good, it should taste good too. He liked the taste. He liked the way it made him feel. A little boy; a jug of hooch; the first securely welded link in the chain. After those long disastrous binges, when Dr. Bob was forced to face his father he had a deep feeling of guilt. His father always met the situation quietly, “Well, what did this one cost you?” he would ask. Oddly enough this feeling of guilt would come, not because he felt that he had hurt him in any way, but because his father seemed, somehow, to under- stand. It was this quiet, hopeless understanding that pained him. Asked how his personal experience of cancer and cancer treatment has influenced his work, Bob Grant explains that it has been the “little things” he experienced in hospital – the instances of less-than-excellent care – that particularly influenced him. But good experiences were also a major factor – for example, one doctor in Aberdeen was not only extremely good at caring but also kept in touch with Bob after he left that hospital. As a result, Bob thinks he pays more attention to his own patient care than he otherwise might have done – for example, asking patients “Now before you go, is there anything else I can help you with today?” at the end of each consultation.Anne and the children now lived in a shambles of broken promises, given in all sincerity. Unable to see her friends, Anne existed on the bare necessities. About all she had left was her faith that her prayers for her husband would somehow be answered. Robert Holbrook Smith (August 8, 1879 – November 16, 1950), also known as Dr. Bob, was an American physician and surgeon who founded Alcoholics Anonymous with Bill Wilson (more commonly known as Bill W.).
Bob frequently spoke of God as a God of love. He summarized A.A.’s ideas as being, in their essence, “love and service.” Smith was called the "Prince of Twelfth Steppers" by Wilson because he helped more than 5000 alcoholics before his death. He was able to stay sober from June 10, 1935, until his death in 1950 from colon cancer. He is buried at the Mount Peace Cemetery in Akron, Ohio. [3] See also [ edit ]
Timeline
If early AAs wanted to know God’s instructions on faith, believing, prayer, study of His Word, forgiveness, healing, deliverance, love, restitution, service, resentment, fear, selfishness, dishonesty, their literature was replete with road maps to pertinent sections of the Bible and teachings about these things. In Edinburgh, Bob was in a ward with other patients with advanced disease, and yet he was never told he had cancer – his mother was anxious to keep the knowledge from him. (Years later, Bob was to discover from reading his primary care notes that there was “no great expectation of survival” at the time.)
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