Illustration · An imagined teacher’s desk at the end of a school day, with a letter from far away and a bundle of older ones tied with a ribbon. Not drawn from a photograph.

Oak Park and St. Johnsbury · 1898–1915

On a scholarship

She met Dr. Bob at a dance when she was a college girl, and waited seventeen years to marry him.

“She was small and reserved but had a cheerfulness, sweetness, and calm that were to remain with her throughout the years.”

AA’s history of Akron, describing her as she was when they met · Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, 1980

The girl from Oak Park

Dr. Bob S. was a senior at St. Johnsbury Academy, in Vermont, when he met Anne Robinson Ripley at a dance in the school gym. She came from Oak Park, Illinois, and was a Wellesley College student, visiting a college friend over a holiday. (His side of these years is in Summa cum laude, in I Just Work Here.)

She came from a family of railroad people, AA’s history of Akron says, and grew up sheltered, without much money. She went to Wellesley on a scholarship, and all her life she made a point of saying so: her family could never have paid. She disliked show and pretense. Years later her son said she “just would not spend any money on herself,” so that the family could have what it needed.

The courtship lasted seventeen years. Bob went to Dartmouth, spent three years in business, then studied medicine, first in Michigan and then in Chicago. He drank nearly the whole way through, and had to stay dry for two extra quarters to get his degree. Anne taught school, and they saw each other and wrote to each other regularly.

A Dartmouth classmate saw Bob now and then on his trips to Chicago for Fairbanks Morse, the scale makers. Good Oldtimers guesses the trips were partly a chance to see Anne, then a teacher in Oak Park, just outside the city. “Bob wasn’t interested in business,” the classmate said. “In fact, every weekend he usually went on a bit of a binge.”

By 1914 Bob was a doctor in Akron, Ohio, and drinking so hard that his father sent a doctor from Vermont to bring him home. He came back to Akron four months later, sober, and was still sober when the new year came. “Perhaps he believed he was that way for good,” AA’s history of Akron says, “and perhaps Anne Ripley believed this, too.” On January 25, 1915, they were married in her mother’s house in Chicago.

Listen On a scholarship About 1 minute

Side by side

Seventeen years

From the dance to the wedding, the books follow Bob from school to school and city to city. Here is his lane beside hers.

Each year gets a row, so a long stretch takes more room. Both lanes are drawn from Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (1980), AA’s history of Dr. Bob and the Akron pioneers. Quotations are short excerpts.

1897–98
They meet at a dance in the gym at St. Johnsbury Academy, in Vermont. He is a senior. She is a Wellesley student, there on a holiday with a college friend.
1898
Anne:1898
A student at Wellesley College, on a scholarship. The books don’t give her years there.
Bob:1898–1902
Dartmouth College. He drinks beer, plays billiards, probably learns cards, and graduates in 1902.
1902
Anne:1902–1904
Teaching school in Oak Park, outside Chicago, while Bob’s business trips probably brought him to see her.
Bob:1902–1905
Three years in business, in Boston, Chicago and Montreal. A classmate who saw him now and then remembered weekend binges.
1905
Anne:1905–1915
Teaching school, and writing to Bob. For these ten years the books record nothing more.
Bob:1905–1907
The University of Michigan, as a premedical student (Pass It On calls it medical school). He drinks, passes his exams, and is asked to leave.
1907
Bob:1907–1910
Rush Medical College, Chicago. He hands in three blank exam books, stays two extra quarters, dry, and becomes a doctor.
1910
Bob:1910–1912
An intern at City Hospital in Akron, Ohio, too busy to get into trouble.
1912
Bob:1912–1914
His own office in Akron. He drinks, and dries out in local sanitariums at least a dozen times.
1914
Bob:1914
His father has him brought home to Vermont. Two months in bed, two more before he goes back.
1915
Bob:1914–15
Back in Akron, sober, and still sober at the new year.
January 25, 1915
They marry in her mother’s house in Chicago, “at half after eight o’clock,” as the invitation read.

The empty lane

The books follow Bob through four schools, three cities in business and at least a dozen stays in drying-out places. Of Anne in the same seventeen years they record a scholarship, a classroom and the letters. Nearly everything known about her has come down the same way, through what other people wrote.

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The mother-in-law Anne blamed, why the courtship took so long, and the wedding.

His mother

A bird’s-eye view of a Vermont town in a river valley, with church steeples, mills and rows of houses. — St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in 1884: a bird’s-eye view by George E. Norris. Anne came to the town as a college student, on a holiday with a friend.Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Bob’s mother was, in Good Oldtimers’ words, “a stern, tight-lipped, churchgoing lady,” busy with the social and religious life of St. Johnsbury’s North Congregational Church. She believed in strict supervision, plain schooling and regular devotion. As a boy, Bob said, he was “more or less forced to go to church, Sunday school and evening service,” and sometimes to prayer meeting.

Anne held her responsible. “Mom blamed her for Dad’s drinking,” their daughter, Sue, said. “She felt the stern upbringing nearly ruined him. When he got the chance, he just broke loose.”

She lived to see her son get sober. Drunk or sober, he made the trip home to Vermont every year.

“Whirlwind”

Pass It On, AA’s biography of Bill W., calls it a “whirlwind” seventeen-year courtship, the quotation marks its own.

“No one today can be absolutely certain of the reason for the delay,” Good Oldtimers says. Bob had years of school, work and internship ahead of him. Anne may also have been afraid of marrying a drinking man, the book suggests, and waited until he had been sober a while before she agreed.

If she ever said which it was, nobody wrote it down.

Half after eight

They were married in Chicago, at the house of her mother, Mrs. Joseph Pierce Ripley, on January 25, 1915, “at half after eight o’clock,” as the invitation read.

Then Bob took Anne home to Akron, to a new corner house at 855 Ardmore Avenue, as Good Oldtimers tells it. (Dr. Bob’s Home, the museum the house is now, says he brought his bride there in 1916.) Anne lived there for the rest of her life.

Their son remembered the kitchen as long and narrow, with Bob’s chair in the way of the refrigerator. “That was his seat,” Smitty said. “Every time someone wanted something from the refrigerator, he would have to stand up. But he wouldn’t change.”

Sources

Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. AA World Services, 1980. Chapter I, “Childhood and college years” (his mother; Sue on what Anne thought of her; the dance; Anne’s family and scholarship; the courtship), chapter II, “Postgraduate work: M.D. and alcoholic” (Fairbanks Morse and the Dartmouth classmate; medical school; Vermont, 1914; the wedding; 855 Ardmore), and chapter III, “Husband, father, and drunk” (Smitty on his mother and money).
History, Dr. Bob’s Home (the house at 855 Ardmore Avenue, now a museum).
Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter Seven (the “whirlwind” courtship).
St. Johnsbury, Vt. 1884 (bird’s-eye view), Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.