EBBY: THE MAN WHO SPONSORED BILL W.
Mel B.
...learning from the past without living in it, is healthy.
page xi, paragraph 1, lines 2 & 3
...People help themselves by trying to help others, and this is the process that helps alcoholics get sober and stay that way.
Love and tolerance of others, as stated on page 84 of the text of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the "code" of living that is suggested to AA members. Those in recovery make progress by learning to practice love and tolerance for themselves and especially for other people.
page xi, paragraph 1, lines 8-10 & paragraph 1, lines 1-5
Although no AA Tradition governs anonymity after death, a developing custom is to respect the wishes of the surviving family members.
page xiii, paragraph 2, lines 1-3
According to Bill, Ebby then explained how the Oxford Group members had offered him a program involving personal moral inventory, admission to another person of wrongs done, making amends and restitution, and an effort to be of real service to others. Beyond that, the Oxford Groupers had also suggested that Ebby needed to call on God, as he understood God, to help Ebby with his problem. It was apparently working, for he had been sober now for two months.
These were the ideas that Bill would later formulate as the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
page 6, paragraph 1&2, lines 1&2
...Shep C., one of the three men who had intervened for him with the judge in Vermont. Though Bill had known Shep C. in Manchester, Vermont, since 1919...
page 7, paragraph 1, lines 1-4
Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson both grew up in the early part of the 1990s in the eastern United States. They first knew each other as teenagers in Manchester, Vermont. Bill was only five months older than Ebby, and for a year they were in high school together.
page 15, paragraph 1, lines 1-5
Bill Wilson and Ebby Thacher met around 1911 in Manchester, Vermont...
page 23, paragraph 1, lines 1&2
Bill took his first drink during World War I while serving as an army lieutenant at Fort Rodman in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
page 35, paragraph 1, lines 1-3
...Despite their early friendship and occasional contacts, Bill and Ebby had not drunk together. Bill seems to have believed that they did and even mentioned it in his personal accounts, but Ebby was always quite clear on that point. It may be that Bill had confused certain social occasions, such as those in Manchester, with "drinking together." Bill may also have remembered drinking with Ebby's brother Ken, and in time remembered it as drinking with
Ebby. But on this matter, we can probably believe Ebby: They really shared only one drinking bout.
page 37, paragraph 3, lines 11-20
Three members of the Oxford Group were instrumental in bringing Ebby into the Oxford Group: Cebra, G., Shep C., and Rowland H.
page 49, paragraph 3, lines 1-3
Cebra also just happened to be the son of a prominent judge in Bennington, Vermont
While Cebra, Shep, and Rowland all had a role in bringing Ebby into the Oxford Group, it was Rowland who gave Ebby more personal assistance and actually provided what AA members would call sponsorship.
page 49, paragraph 3, lines 5&6 & paragraph 4, lines 1-4
Rowland appears in the chapter titled "There Is a Solution" in Alcoholics Anonymous as the American businessman who went to Europe in 1931 to seek treatment from the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung.
page 50, paragraph 1, lines 5-9
...Ebby's Miracle." His recollection is emphasized here because it was the key to the events of the next few months that would lead him to Bill:
So down I went, and I reached for a bottle of ale, and I couldn't take it. I has said I would be there sober, and this wouldn't exactly be sobriety. I went upstairs and this voice said, "Oh, don't be silly. Go down and get that ale. My God, you're shaking. Go on down and get it." Well, I couldn't do it. It wasn't playing the game square, the way I looked at it. And when I finally made the decision not to touch it and took it over to a friend of mine, three or four houses away, I felt right then a great release from the whole thing. And that lasted for me for over two years. That was the start of the whole release from he problem for the time being.
Ebby would always describe that moment as a victory, something like a weight being lifted from his shoulders. "I've often though about it, for many years, when I started drinking again, why I couldn't recapture that feeling I had then," he would say in 1961. He would even use "pink cloud" to describe the wonderful feeling he had following the victory in the cellar. He would also think of it as a "more nature outlook."
page 58, paragraph 1, lines 4-18 & paragraph
...four principles of the Oxford Group, which were Absolute Honesty,Absolute Purity, Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute Love.
page 61, paragraph 2, lines 12-14
Since Oxford Groupers actively sought individuals who needed their help, it was not surprising that Ebby recalled his old Manchester friend...
page 66, paragraph 1, lines 1-3
Ebby did, however, bring Bill a book that offered further explanations for Bill's enlightenment. It was The Varieties of Religious Experiences. Ebby had not read the book himself, but Oxford Group members had recommended it. Ebby said that some of his Oxford Group friends though the book to be a fine explanation of religious conversions.
In the case histories the book cited, Bill would find three common denominators. As related in Bill's biography, Pass It On, these three common points were (a) calamity, or complete defeat in some vital area of life, (b) admission of defeat, and (c) appeal to a Higher Power for help.
page 70, paragraphs 1&2
He would eventually live with the Wilsons for about three years when all of his stays with them were totaled up.
page 72, paragraph 2, lines 5&6
.."being on the wagon," an expression that would not be used in AA because it implies as a temporary venture into dry living that will eventually be replaced by drinking.
page 78, paragraph 3, lines 2-5
...no alcoholic may be helped who will not help him or her self.
page 90, paragraph 1, lines 10&11
It was well understood in he fellowship that patching up a person's difficulties while he is still drinking might only delay his eventual recovery.
page 96, paragraph 1, lines 5-7
..."tough love" that alcoholics sometimes need if they are to recover from their disease.
page 103, paragraph 1, lines 3&4
...alcoholics can never return to controlled drinking.
page 117, paragraph 4, lines 5&6
...The July 1955 convention in St. Louis was a watershed event in AA, because it included, on July 3, turning over AA's Three Legacies--Recovery, Unity, and Service--to the movement.
page 121, note, paragraph 2, lines 1-4
...Ebby died sober...
page 125, paragraph 1, line 18
...Ebby was sober about 2 1/2 years when he died.
page 141, paragraph 1, lines 8&9
The cause of death was listed as cerebral thrombosis (stroke).
page 144, paragraph 1, lines 4&5
...alcoholics can stay sober even while going through periods of depression and disappointment.
page 150, paragraph 1, lines 10-12
It is all right to applaud long-term sobriety, but we should give special applause to the person who trouble and is making it back into the world of sobriety.
page 153, paragraph 1, lines 7-10