Archie Trowbridge author of Big book story"The man who mastered Fear"

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Archie Trowbridge "The Man Who Mastered Fear"
originally "The Fearful One"
Home town was Grosse Pointe, Mich.
Cleveland, OH DOS 11/38
5 Months sober when wrote story
Started AA in Detroit
Stories Appear Big Book editions:
OM P 72-73
1:01 P 332-335
2:01 P 275-286
3:01 P 275-286

Archibald L. Trowbridge 1900 - 1957
This information came from the Detroit Public Library,
Main Branch, in the Burton Archives room from the card catalog.

Arch L. Trowbridge January 23, 1957
Arch L. Trowbridge, widely known as an accountant in business circles and as a benefactor and counselor to hundreds of Detroit men and women in his personal life, died last night in Bon Secours Hospital. He was 57. Mr Trowbridge had been taken to the hospital on Monday from his home at 16908 Cranford Lane, Grosse Pointe. He had been in poor health for some time. Survivors include his wife, children, a brother Ed, and sister, Natalie. Funeral arrangements have not been completed. The remains will be at the William R. Hamilton Funeral Home.

From Pioneers of A.A. Part of Big Book

The Man Who Mastered Fear -- Archie Trowbridge, Grosse Point, Michigan.
(OM, p. 332 in 1st edition, p. 275 in 2nd and 3rd. Titled "The Fearful One,"
in the 1st edition. It was rewritten and renamed for the later editions.)
Biography written by Nancy O moderator of AAhistorybuffs

Heading: "He spent eighteen years in running away; and then found he didn't
have to run. So he started A.A. in Detroit."

Archie's date of sobriety was November 1938.

He came from a good upper middle class family in Grosse Point, Michigan. By
the time he was twenty-one he had lived in foreign countries for six years,
spoke three languages fluently, and had attended college for two years.

Then, family financial difficulties necessitated his going to work. He
entered the business world with every confidence that success lay ahead. He
had endless dates and went to countless dances, balls and dinner parties.

But this was suddenly shattered when he had a devastating nervous breakdown.
Doctors could find nothing physically wrong with him. Psychiatry might have
helped, but psychiatrists were little known in his town at that time.

Recovery from the nervous breakdown came very slowly. He ventured out of the
house for a walk, but became frightened by the time he reached the corner.
Gradually he was able to do more, and even to work at various jobs. He found
that alcohol helped relieve his many fears.

His parents both died when he was thirty, leaving him a sheltered and
somewhat immature man, on his own. He moved into a "bachelor hall," where
the men all drank on Saturday nights and enjoyed themselves. Archie drank
with them, but also drank himself to sleep every night.

With bravery born of desperation and abetted by alcohol, he married a young
and lovely girl. But the marriage lasted only four years, then she took
their baby boy and left. He locked himself in the house and stayed drunk for
a month.

The next two years he had less and less work and more and more whisky. He
ended up homeless, jobless, penniless and rudderless, the problem guest of a
close friend whose family was out of town. When the family returned his
friend turned Archie over to a couple, perhaps Oxford Group members, who knew
Dr. Bob, and who were willing to drive him to Akron. The only stipulation
they made was that he had to make the decision himself. What choice did he
have? Suicide or finding out whether this group of strangers could help him.

Dr. Bob put him in the hospital for a few days. He then stayed with Dr. Bob
and Anne for ten months. He was in bad shape physically, mentally, and
spiritually. At first Dr. Bob thought he was "kind of simple."

He was penniless, jobless, and too ill to get out during the day to look for
work. Anne nursed him back to health, and while in their home he got down on
his knees one day for the first time in thirty years. "God. For eighteen
years I have been unable to handle this problem. Please let me turn it over
to you." Immediately, a great feeling of peace descended on him,
intermingled with a feeling of being suffused with a quiet strength.

He did not want to go back to Michigan, preferring to go someplace where he
could make a fresh start. But Detroit was where he had to return, not only
because he must face the mess he had made there, but also because it was
where he could be of the most service to A.A. In the spring of 1939, Bill
Wilson stopped off in Akron on his way to Detroit on business. He invited
Archie to accompany him to Detroit. They spent two days there together
before Bill returned to New York.

He made amends where he could, and delivered dry cleaning out of a broken
down jalopy to his one-time fashionable friends in Grosse Point. With a
nonalcoholic friend, Sarah Klein, he started an A.A. group in Detroit.

The date of his death is unknown.
Biographies written by Nancy O., Moderator, AA History Buffs.

ARCHIE TROEBRIDGE., EARLY AA MEMBER

Archie Troebridge was brought to Akron for help 
from Dr. Bob in September of 1938.

Dorothy Snyder, Clarence Snyder*s wife, told how while she was spending some 
time with Anne Smith, Anne announced that she would not go on the picnic 
planned the next day because she had a sense that she would be needed at home.

Early Sunday morning there was a call from Detroit about a man they wanted to 
bring to Akron.  The man was Archie Troebridge.  

Archie was in bad shape and unable to look for work after he sobered up, so 
he stayed with the Smith*s for almost a year.  Dr. Bob said *He was so 
run-down, there wasn't much left. ... We thought he was kind of simple. *

In later years, Archie said "I had been taken in off the streets and nursed 
back to life by Anne Smith.  I was not only penniless and jobless, but too 
ill to get out of the house during the day and hunt for work.  So great was 
Anne*s love and so endless her patience with me, so understanding her 
handling of me, that ten months later, I left a new man, perhaps imbued with 
just a few grains of that love."

Archie, still sick, frail, and frightened, returned to Detroit, where his 
personal reputation and financial credit still stood at zero.  He made amends 
everywhere he could.  He delivered dry cleaning out of a broken-down jalopy 
to the back doors of his one-time fashionable friends in Grosse Pointe.  
Helped by a dedicated nonalcoholic, Sarah Klein, he started a group in 
Detroit.

Archie felt enormous gratitude to Anne Smith, and for years found it very 
difficult even to tell the story to anyone.  But on his tenth anniversary, in 
1948, at a meeting in Detroit, he introduced Anne to 1,500 people, and shared 
the story of her help.  His 10th anniversary was also the occasion of Dr. 
Bob*s last major talk.

<
Sources:

Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age
The Man Who Mastered Fear, Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd edition.
The Fearful One, Alcoholics Anonymous, 1st edition

ARCHIE TROEBRIDGE'S FIRST EDITION STORY -- THE FEARFUL ONE

This is Archie*s story as it appeared in the first edition of the Big Book, 
page 332.  His story was rewritten and renamed.  It appears on page 275 of 
the 3rd edition as "The Mann Who Mastered Fear", page 275.

THE FEARFUL ONE

When I was 21, I was taken suddenly and violently ill and was ill for seven 
years.  As a result of this illness I was left with a poorish nervous system 
and a curious phobia.  As this has a large place in my story, I will try to 
explain it clearly.  After I had been ill some months, I grew strong enough 
to get out of doors a little each day, but found I couldn't get farther than 
the nearest corner without becoming totally panic stricken.  As soon as I 
turned back home the panic would vanish.  I gradually overcame this 
particular phase of the trouble by setting myself longer distances to walk 
each day.  Similarly I learned later to take short street car rides, then 
longer ones, and so forth, until I appeared to be doing most of the things 
other people do daily.  But the things I did not have to do each day, or at 
least frequently, remained unconquered and a source of great but secret 
embarrassment to me.

So I went on for years, planning always to sidestep the things I was afraid 
of, but concealing my fear from everyone.  Those years of illness were not 
all total invalidism.  I made a good living part of the time, but was 
continually falling down and having to get up and start over again.  The 
whole process gave me a licked feeling, especially when, towards the end of 
my twenties, I had to give up the presidency of a small company which was 
just turning the corner to real success.  Shortly after this I was 
successfully operated on and became a physically well man.  But the surgeon 
did not remove the phobia, that remained with me.

During the period of my illness I was not especially interested in liquor.  I 
was not a teetotaler, but I was just a *social drinker.* However, when I was 
about thirty, my mother died.  I went to pieces as I had become very 
dependent on my parents through my illness.  When I began to get on my feet 
again I discovered that whiskey was a fine relief from the terrific nervous 
headaches I had developed.  Long after the headaches were gone, however, I 
kept discovering other difficulties for which whiskey was a grand cure.  
During the ensuing ten years I once, by sheer will power, remained dry for 
five weeks.

I had many business opportunities during those ten years which, although I 
tried to keep them in my grasp, slipped through my fingers.  A lovely wife 
came and went.  She tried her best and our baby*s birth put me on my mettle 
for all of six months, but after that, worse and more of it. When my wife 
finally took the baby and left, did I square my shoulders and go to work to 
prove to her and to the world that I was a man?  I did not.  I stayed drunk 
for a solid month.

The next two months were simply a drawn-out process of less and less work and 
more and more liquor. They ended eventually at the home of a very dear friend 
whose family were out of town. I had been politely but firmly kicked out of 
the house where I had been boarding, and although I seemed to be able to find 
money to buy drinks with, I couldn't find enough to pay advance room rent 
anywhere.

One night, sure my number was up, I chucked my *pride* and told this friend a 
good deal of my situation.  He was a man of considerable means and he might 
have done what many men would have in such a case.  He might have handed me 
fifty dollars and said that I ought to pull myself together and make a new 
start.  I have thanked God more than once that that was just what he did not 
do.

Instead, he took me out, bought me three more drinks, put me to bed and 
yanked me bodily out of town the next noon to a city 200 miles away and into 
the arms of one of the most extraordinary bunch of men in the United States.  
Here, while in the hospital, men with clear eyes and happy faces came to see 
me and told me the story of their lives.  Some of them were hard to believe, 
but it didn't take a lot of brain work to see they had something I could use. 
 And it was so simple.  The sum and substance of it seemed to be that if I 
would turn to God, it was very probably that He could do a better job with my 
life than I had.  

When I got out of the hospital, I was invited to stay in the home of one of 
the fellows.  Here I found myself suddenly and uncontrollably seized with the 
old panic.  I was in a strange house, in a strange city, and fear gripped me. 
 I shut myself up in my room.  I couldn't sit down, I couldn't stand up, I 
couldn't lie down, couldn't leave because I had nowhere to go and no money to 
take me.  Any attempt at reasoning accomplished nothing.

Suddenly in this maelstrom I grasped at a straw.  Maybe God would help 
me-just maybe, mind you.  I was willing to give Him a chance, but with 
considerable doubt.  I got down on my knees -- something I hadn't done in 
thirty years.  I asked Him if He would let me hand over all these fears and 
this panic to Him.  I lay down on the bed and went to sleep like a baby.  An 
hour later I awoke to a new world.  I could scarcely credit my senses, but 
that terrible phobia which had wrecked my life for eighteen years, was gone.  
Utterly gone.  And in its place was a power and fearlessness which is a bit 
hard to get accustomed to.

All that happened nearly eight years ago.  In those six months a new life has 
opened before me.  It isn't that I have been cured of an ordinarily incurable 
disease.  I have found a joy in living that has nothing to do with money or 
material success.  I know that incomparable happiness that comes from helping 
some other fellow get straightened out.  Don*t get me wrong.  We are not a 
bunch of angels.  None of us has any notion of becoming such.  But we know 
that we can never go completely back to old ways because we are traveling 
upward through service to others and in trying to be honest, decent, and
loving toward the world, instead of sliding and slipping around in a life of 
drinking, cheating, lying and doing what we like.

Transcript of Archie T.'s talk on the history of AA in Detroit

The talk was recorded by Tom H. of Lake Orion.

This is a broadcast (transcript) of the AA Meeting held at the Maccabees Building on December
25th, 1948. The speaker whose talk we are about to hear was Arch T. , looked upon by the AA
Member of Detroit as the founder of AA in this city.

Introduction by Mike B:

Ladies and gentlemen, in the words of that great Galilean who lived almost two thousand years
ago and who's birth we are commemorating this Christmas Day, "when you are well, you need not
a physician. I come here to heal the sick..." And of the channels at his command, He chose as His
instruments one alcoholic helping another. And tonight's speaker, ladies and gentlemen is one of
those instruments that has carried the message of AA to all; the alcoholics in Michigan. So it's
your privilege and both my pleasure to turn this meeting over to Archie Trowbridge, our founder.

Archie T:

Thank you. This is a wonderful place to be on Christmas night. I can think of a lot of places that
all of us were on other Christmas nights that didn't turn out as well as this occupation of ours
tonight will turn out for us. In fact, I only have to think back to eleven years ago this Christmas
night to think of things that were not fitting and proper for Christmas. I remember distinctly that I
was very drunk and was not doing any of the things I'd been asked to do.

However, I won't go into that or very much of my drinking career because I've been asked to
speak particularly tonight on the history of AA in Detroit - the early history. In order to do that
adequately, I'll have to skim over my own story down to a point where I approach the necessary
conditions to join AA. In my case that meant because I was a stubborn and headstrong and
conceited sort of a guy. That meant getting myself completely down and out before it occurred to
me even vaguely that anything might be wrong with me. Before I launch into that part of the story,
I'd like to say that your chairman used an expression which I hope you will bear in mind when I'm
talking about my story and what little part I Played in the development of AA locally. He used the
expression "the Instrument of God". And I wish you to remember that I am very well aware in
speaking of anything that I have done that it was done as the privileged "Instrument of God" and
not because I was any world beater. Necessarily I have to talk about myself, but I want to
approach that talk in the Spirit I just outlined to you.

Eleven years ago last Summer I was winding up an eighteen year career of drinking. I was 39
years old and I had started drinking heavily at 21. My drinking between 21 and 30 was what
most of us feel was social drinking. Of course, once were in AA were not so sure that it was so
social. Because I was the guy that always got drunk, especially if the whiskey was free. I think I
used to really, sincerely feel that it was my mountain duty to take all I could consume in the way of
free whiskey because it was free and I'm half Scotch by parentage. From the age of 30 to the age
of 39, the latter half of those eighteen years, I was definately an alcoholic. I marked that division
of time because of my changed attitude toward drinking. I looked from the death of my mother
and father, when I was 30 years old, I began to look on alcohol as a crutch, as a solution for
every problem. It proved to be such a wonderful solution that at the age of 39 I had reached a
point of, and a common one for all of you, or almost all of you, of no job. I hadn't been fired, I
just quit. I didn't even quit, I just walked off the job.

No money. No place to live. No help. No morale left. No will to live left. That was my condition
in the Summer of 1938. It caused me to park myself on an unsuspecting friend whose family were
out of town and who didn't know much about my career for the past, or previous, several years
and he unwittingly invited me to stay in his home because I was homeless. He had me on his hands
for 19 days. Every one of those days I was drunk, continuously. I would come home and sleep
off the effects of several hours of drinking, crawl out of bed and go back to the saloon and get
drunk again. I managed in that cagey way that alcoholics have, of avoiding him pretty well. Or at
least I thought I did. In fact, I was quite sure in my alcoholic way that he didn't even know I
drank.

How wrong I was about that. I would like to say that I went to him after I returned to Detroit a
long time afterwards and was sober and was in AA and said: "Ralph, I had an idea that I was
keeping my drink pretty carefully concealed from you, didn't I, outside of the time I slept on the
back stairs because I couldn't find the room. Did you have any idea how bad I was?" And he
said: " Did I! I carried you up from the front doorstep twice and put you to bed. And you'd pass
out at the keyhole." I didn't even know it. I give you these few details merely to qualify myself as a
legitimate member of AA. Something went wrong with my drinking schedule on the 3rd of
September, on a Friday night. Instead of getting drunk in the morning and being asleep in the
afternoon and being out and getting drunk in the evening and coming home after Ralph went to
bed, I got tangled up somewhere and found myself at home in bed at at ten o'clock at night and he
was home too. The time was drawing near when his family were returning from their vacation and
I was going to have to get out of there and incapable of finding myself a room because I couldn't
stay sober long enough to face a perspective landlady and I had no money with which to pay
room rent although in that marvelous alcoholic way, I always had money to drink with. Now don't
ask me to explain that. I lay in bed thinking about approaching him, and thought "no, he's been
very good to me, he's done a great deal for me in the past. I dont want to bother him. I don't want
to bother anybody anymore.

If I cant find a solution to this problem by next Monday, this was Labor Day weekend, I'll put an
end to everything. But, I finally concluded that before I did anything like that I'd better go in and
talk to him. I went in with nothing on my mind for the solutions to my problems except to ask him
if he would lend me $50. He got out of bed, where he'd been reading, and walked up and down
the floor and said: "You don't need $50, you need a great deal more than that." Well, I agreed
with him on that. But he said "You need a new lease on life, a new interest. I can't give you those
things, but I know someone who might. He asked me if I'd be willing to go and talk to this
woman. I knew her very slightly, and i said "yes". Because I would have said yes to anything or
anybody who might have some answers for me because I no longer had answers for anything. So
he grabbed the telephone and started to make a date for me for the next day and I started to back
water. But it was too late and he made an appointment for me to see this woman the next day.

At four o'clock in the afternoon! He took me out, bought me some drinks, brought me home, and
put me to bed. And I lay there somewhat quieted by the drinks and I wondered how I was going
to keep an appointment at four o'clock in the afternoon. And be reasonably sober! And I finally
hit on a marvelous solution. I would get up a little earlier than usual and make an effort to get
drunk faster. So that I would come home knowing my own habits and sleep off the first of the
days drinks and then go straight over and see her to keep this appointment. I did these things and
they worked out that way.

I don't know when I had my last drink. It was on Saturday morning on the third of September
before Labor Day in 1938. What time of day it was in the morning I don't know. I blanked out. I
got in this car 25 minutes after six. At about half past seven is the latest my memory serves me.
What time I left there and went home and passed out I don't know. I saw this woman, and to be
brief, she offered me a chance to go down to Akron and to meet some men who had found a
solution to their problem which was my problem. She offered to take me, she and her husband
offered to take me there, and to do it the next day if I were willing to go. She however insisted
that I make up my own mind about it, perfectly freely and without any pressure from her. This
took me quite a while. I spent a long time in her house sitting there thinking about it.

I finally made the decision. I left her house with the full intention of hurrying as fast as my car
would take me to the nearest saloon in getting a drink. Half way to the saloon something stopped
me. I can't tell you what it was. I know what I think it was. Today I'm sure of what it was. I'm
sure that her prayers, which were all that were left to her, to do after she let go of me, that her
prayers did that. However, I went home and went to bed after 18 days of continuous drinking I
went home and went to bed and sweated it out all night. I don't need to describe that part of it to
you. It makes me shutter to think of it and it would make all you to shutter, but I was on deck the
next day, pretty much of a wreck, but I was there to start to Akron.

In Akron I was turned over to Dr. Bob and his wife. And put in the hospital. At that time the City
Hospital of Akron was where we put the occasional prospect who was interested in AA and I say
occasional because we only had a prospect once in a while.

I spent Labor Day in the hospital reading Emmet Fox's Sermon on the Mount. It changed my
entire outlook on life. It changed my direction. I was visited both in the hospital and in one of the
homes of one of the members of AA by 15 or 20 men who came to me with their stories, each
one as different as could be from the next. Every one of those men were clear eyed, neat,
purposeful looking, full of confidence, not cocky. And they impressed me because they had all the
things that I lacked. And I knew that whatever it was that they had, I wanted some of it. And
whatever they could tell me that would help me gain the same sort of look they had, I was going
to try those things that they told me.

My health was found to be practically, well, I dont't know how to tell you about my health, Dr.
Bob said there wasn't much left of it. At any rate, it was ten and a half months later before I could
go to work. And I lived with Dr. Bob and his wife during those ten and a half months. Many times
during those months I felt that it was very wrong for me to impose on them. They were poor. All
members of AA in those days were poor by the way. In the 30's you didn't go out and get a job
just because you were willing to and were going to reform. But I had to learn to accept their
goodness in the spirit that it was given to me. But I often rebelled in my own mind about having to
impose on them.

Looking back, however, in later years I've seen that time and time again as an example of how
much better plans our Higher Power has for us than we make for ourselves. Because what I
thought was wrong, that is to say my being delayed in Akron and left on the Smith's hands, was
part of a plan under which I absorbed AA from one of it's 2 oldest members where I learned to
stand on my own feet and where I gained the strength and spiritual courage to go out alone. I
don't think I could have done these things that I had to do later without those ten and one-half
months.

In March, 1939, Bill Wilson was in Akron. He frequently stopped there whenever he could get
some business excuse to come with, and he was sitting in the Smith's kitchen with me drinking
coffee and he was on his way to Detroit. And I said "I certainly would like to go up there and see
what the lay of the land is and look around and see whether I could take hold yet or not". And he
says "why don't you?" I said, "well, why don't I?". Bill said-"let's go now". This was Sunday
morning. We were going to start right away. Well, we decided to wait until Monday morning. We
went up to Cleveland and came up to Detroit on the Mercury. Bill spent Monday and Tuesday
here with me. We stayed at a hotel. We visited some of my old friends and told them my story.
Bill tended to his business. And friends of mine asked me to stay on here for a while. Bill went
back to New York. I stayed here and worked entirely on trying to make some AA contacts that
would later on produce prospects.

In order to get this picture you've got to realize that at the time alcoholism was with the exception
of a few advanced men who had spent time and study on it such as Dr. Silkworth in New York.
Alcoholism was unknown as a disease. The alcoholic in the public mind was an "ornery cuss",
who didn't want to stop drinking and had no will power. However, by talking to people on street
corners and anybody who would listen to me and by talking to personnel men in factories and to
ministers and to those doctors that I could get hold of I got a seed planted amongst a number of
people, not themselves alcoholic prospects, but people who were likely to come in contact with
the problem of alcoholism. I should explain that my disposition was such that I couldn't and would
have been no good at running in and out of bars and trying to sell this business cold turkey to
some drunk. I had to go about it in a round a bout way of getting prospects where they were most
likely to crop up.

However, I did get that Spring in March my first prospect, and he was a lulu. I was staying with a
doctor, one of my closest friends, and he came home for supper one night and said " I've got a
man for you. He's down on Park Avenue in a dollar a day hotel. He's tried to commit suicide
twice this week". Does he want to stop drinking? "I don't know". Has he ever heard of us? "No".
It's my duty to go and see him. I took a bus from the Eastside Downtown and went through a lot
of torture for a half hour on the bus. What was I giong to say to this fellow? Every time I got all
wrought up about it I finally said to myself "wait a minute". Your job is get in the same room with
the man and see what happens next. This wasn't a 24 hour program, this got down to be a 5 or
10 minute program. I got in the room with him. And he certainly was a cold potato. I found out
afterward from him that he thought I was a detective trying to find out whether he was drinking or
not.

But as everyone of you know, there's something about being an alcoholic that will win over
another alcoholic if you've got 10 minutes with him. And in 10 minutes I had that fellow asking me
if he could produce his bottle and go to work on it. And I said certainly, and then he felt easier
about it. Fifty minutes later I had his consent to go to Akron. Twenty-four hours later I had raised
the money amongst his former friends to send him to Akron. I'm afraid that most of them gave me
donations of five and ten dollars with the thought that it would be fine to get him out of town. They
didn't understand what I was talking about, but they were right to contribute one last five dollar bill
or ten dollar bill towards after they had already thrown a lot of money down the sewer helping
him.

I shipped that man out of the Union Depot the next afternoon on the 5:30 Red Arrow to Akron all
dressed up looking pretty well with a pint of Seagram's in his pocket. I gave it to him to keep him
happy.

Dr. Bob was waiting on the platform at the other end to take him off the train. But the point is I
walked out of that station on a cloud. My feet weren't touching the ground. I'd done the first
twelve step work all by myself and under pretty difficult conditions. And I just was up in the
clouds somewhere.

After three weeks in Detroit, I found that it was impossible for me to stay here and work and find
a job because my health was not good enough yet and I returned very exhausted to Akron. And I
stayed there until July. And on the 10th of July, 1939, I came back here to start life over again. I
had no place to live when I came here. I had no plans. I had no job. My health was still very
poor, so much so that during those first few months that I had to spend as much as three days out
of seven in bed. But I came back full of a new attitude toward life and a tremendous desire to live
differently than I'd ever lived before. I made my living, the first six months, selling hosiery and
men's made to order shirts. I did this partly because it was very difficult to get a job and I had to
have a job that I could go to work at right away and bring home the bacon every night in order to
pay the room rent and partly because it left me the freedom to do the AA work I wanted to do.

In the Fall of 1939 Liberty Magazine published the first national article on AA that had been
published. And it furnished me with new prospects. During the Summer I had some other
prospects as a result of the calls I had made in Spring. Thanksgiving rolled around and I went
back to Akron to visit the Smiths. And I was very ashamed because I had nothing to show of AA
groups or AA activities. There were 5 people who had gone through my hands between the
Spring and Thanksgiving. Four of them were sober. Period. Of the four who were sober, one had
no interest whatsoever in talking to me. He just was sober and had gone his own way. Another
one was living in a different city although he had hailed from Detroit. The third one was going very
nicely and the fourth one also. Both were going fine as far as staying sober was concerned, but
they were not going to commit themselves to anything as definate as starting an AA group and
being involved in anything that might keep them sober too long. One of those two men was Mike
Eschelman. And I have Mike's own statement today and I've heard him make it in talks that was
the catch. He thought that being sober was fine, but if he got tangled up with anything like starting
meetings with me and doing AA work that the following Summer when he went fishing and was
away from home and he wanted to pitch one and maybe this thing would stop him from doing it.

How difficult that picture was. You can imagine that Mike got sober about the middle of
September and it was at least the middle of December before he finally agreed to start having a
meeting of some kind with me so that we could work on prospects together and have a regular
weekly meeting.

He and this one other member and I finally in December, and I can't tell you the date, I was too
busy to keep a diary, sat down at our first meeting, together with one non-AA member, Sarah
Klein, who was our moral support. I had an idea that until we had such a meeting every week that
we would never have a nucleus from which to grow and the point a center toward which people
would gravitate. And it worked out that way.

We no sooner began to sit down once a week together that we began to get prospects. And we
held the meeting in my bedroom in a rooming house on Merrick Avenue, near the public library.

By February our meetings were so big that my bedroom was crowded. We were borrowing all
the chairs from the third floor. At this time the Bensons, a very wonderful couple, offered us the
use of their recreation room out on Tayloe Avenue for our meetings. And we in February of
1940, we moved in there for our first meeting. All six of us. Huddled down in a little circle at one
end of the recreation room. That was a wonderful year.

By Fall we had, counting wives and friends and non-alcoholic members who were interested with
us, we were able to muster a party for Dr. Bob and his wife who came here to visit us, of 25
people. By February or March of 1941, February I believe, we had grown to the point where we
were packed in tight in that recreation room and were sitting on the basement stairs and in the
furnace room. And we moved for a moment or two to Doty Hall and found it unsatisfactory, and
then located what for a number of years was a very popular meeting place of ours, 4242 Cass.

In the first week in March, 1941, just as we were settling on Cass Avenue, the Saturday
Evening Post published Jack Alexander's article. And we began to grow in leaps and bounds.
Luckily we'd had a small growth up until then that enabled us to have the people on hand to cope
with the growth that suddenly came on. That growth was relatively so great that by the fall of
1941, we split our one Detroit group into three groups- the Northwest Group, the Eastside
Group, and one group, the Central or Downtown Group remaining at 4242 Cass. We were so
loathe to leave each other, however, that we set aside one week each month when we'd have no
meetings of our own in our own group but would have a general meeting back at the old home
stand on Cass Avenue.

Out of those three groups, which I might say were very, very small, have grown all our present
groups in the greater Detroit area and have grown into Windsor and through this part, the near
part of Ontario. So much for the statistical data on what happened in the early formation of AA in
Detroit. My dates are not very sure on a lot of these things except approximately.

But the thing I would like to point out to every one of you who are members of AA and who
sometimes become discouraged with the behavior of your prospects, your babies, just remember
that I had half a dozen of them before I got one that stayed continuously sober. And that there are
only a handful of those who came to us in the Benson's Basement days who are still with us. It
took a lot of work and a lot of prospects to produce some permanent members in those days.
That was particularly true because of the lack of acceptance of AA by the public and by the
alcoholic who needed help. Today we're almost a household word. It's hard for those of you
who've come into AA more recently to conceive of the conditions that I've tried to picture. I gave
a talk at the Rotary Club when I was first back here, and when I got all through I thought I'd
explained alcoholism and our work in AA. And one of the members of the Rotary Club came up
and said, "yeah, that just proves what I've always thought, you gotta have will power". And that
was just what you were up against all the time.

It has been a very great experience and a great privilege for me to be part of this story. It has
meant more to me than anything ever meant in my life and I hope it will always mean more right
down to the last day of my life. In AA I have found the things not only that have enabled me to
stop drinking but I have found the things that enabled me to meet the problems of life instead of
running away from them. AA offered me a chance to give myself to other people in order that I
might save myself.

And I want to mention one thing. In that connection. When I came back here I thought once for a
while, I struggled with this for a while, I began to find that people wouldn't accept what I was
telling them and I began to wonder what they were going to think of me. And I began to wonder
how that was going to impair my chances of getting a good job one of these days. And I felt why
can't I go ahead and do AA work when the opportunity comes but just keep my trap closed and
get a decent job? Why advertise myself as an alcoholic? I don't know how long I toyed with that,
whether it was an hour or a day.

But I finally was forced with the decision that if I wanted to stay sober I was going to have to put
AA up at the top of the list and that I was going to do these things that I had been doing and keep
doing them if I wanted happiness and sobriety. Never once in these past ten years have I
regretted that decision. I not only got sobriety from it but I got a degree of content, happiness, and
joy which is essentially impossible to describe.

I couldn't begin to tell you what AA has meant to me and what the privilege of belonging to AA
has meant. I came into it an unwilling prospect who had no place else to go. And at the risk of
telling something of you newer members may doubt and may wonder about I'd like to say that if I
could drink today I wouldn't want a drink if I had to forfeit my membership in AA because it's the
grandest thing that I know of. Thank you.

End of transcript.

Fellowship & Program

The Fellowship is being here.

The Program is doing.

Step 1
(feel the true problem) not a doing, but a thinking
Step 2
(start seeing the solution) not a doing, again a
thinking
Step 3
in the mind - decide
Step 4
Act on the decision made in the 3rd Step

each step now, from the 4th through the 9th, is an action that
builds on the actions of the previous step
Step 10
Continue 4 to 9 on a daily basis so bad experiences
do not accumulate
Step 11
Continue growing
Step 12
Show how to work steps, show the results of working
steps

-Archie Trowbridge
(Founder of A.A. in Detroit)