Illustration · A railroad platform in Akron on a January morning in 1933, with a visiting team’s luggage waiting on a baggage cart. The Oxford Group’s people were met at the station by Mrs. Firestone and the Rev. Walter Tunks. Not drawn from a photograph.

Ten days in Akron

Grateful that the Oxford Group had sobered up his son, Harvey Firestone brought it to Akron for ten days, and it left behind the meetings where AA would begin.

“Out of the act of gratitude of this one father, this whole chain started.”

Henrietta Seiberling, in memoirs recorded in 1971 · quoted in Mary C. Darrah, Sister Ignatia: Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1992

A thank-you

Harvey S. Firestone, the tire maker, ran one of Akron’s big rubber companies. His second son, Russell, called Bud, was “a serious alcoholic,” in the words of Garth Lean’s biography of Frank Buchman, the Oxford Group’s founder, and hospitals hadn’t helped. In 1931 Jim Newton, the elder Firestone’s personal assistant and an Oxford Group man, took Bud to a drying-out clinic on the Hudson River. Then he took him to Denver, where the Episcopal Church held its convention that September and Sam Shoemaker, the rector of Calvary Church in New York, had brought a team of Groupers.

Bud gave his life to God; one AA history puts the moment on the train home, alone with Shoemaker in a private car. He stopped drinking. The family doctor, Lean writes, called it a “medical miracle.”

His father wanted to say thank you. In January 1933, with Bud still sober, he invited Buchman, then touring North America, to bring his team to Akron: about sixty people, by most counts, for ten days. The Akron Beacon Journal photographed Mrs. Firestone and the Rev. Walter Tunks, the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the Firestones’ minister, greeting Buchman at the station.

Postcard view of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio. — The Mayflower Hotel on South Main Street, Akron, on a postcard from about 1930 to 1945. Opened in 1931, it was the Group’s headquarters in January 1933.Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library

The Group’s way was to “change” the people a town looked up to, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers explains, so that others would follow, and to make sure the town heard about it. The team made the new Mayflower Hotel its headquarters and spoke there and in Akron’s churches. At the last meeting, Bud stood up and told how he had stopped drinking. By Good Oldtimers’ account, it all ended with a dinner for four hundred of the city’s leading citizens.

When the team moved on, it left small groups behind, meeting every week in homes and at the Mayflower, never in a church. Among those it drew in, Arthur S.’s timeline says, were Henrietta Seiberling, T. Henry and Clarace Williams, and Anne S., who soon talked her husband, Dr. Bob, into coming. (Secret drinker, in I Just Work Here, tells his two and a half years there.)

Bud didn’t stay sober, and Good Oldtimers counts his drinking again among the reasons the Group’s influence in Akron faded. The groups in the living rooms went on, though. And when a stranded New Yorker went looking for another alcoholic in the Mayflower’s lobby in May 1935, the minister who had met the Group’s train was in the church directory.

Listen Ten days in Akron About 1 minute

Follow the chain

One father’s thank-you

Henrietta Seiberling traced AA’s start back to one father’s gratitude. These are the links she meant, from 1931 to the gate lodge in 1935.

Each link names its sources. Where the accounts disagree on a number, Go deeper has them side by side.

Link 1

1931 · New York

A clinic on the Hudson

Jim Newton, Harvey Firestone’s assistant, takes Firestone’s son Bud, who drinks too much, to a drying-out clinic.

Lean, Frank Buchman: A Life, ch. 14

Link 2

September 1931 · Denver

The convention

Newton takes him on to Denver, where Sam Shoemaker has brought a team of Groupers to the Episcopal Church’s convention. Bud gives his life to God, by one telling on the train home.

Lean, ch. 14; The Witness, October 1, 1931; Ray R.

Link 3

January 1933 · Akron’s station

The train

With Bud still sober, his father brings Frank Buchman and his team to town. Mrs. Firestone and the Rev. Walter Tunks, the family’s minister, meet them.

Lean, ch. 14; the Akron Beacon Journal’s photograph, at Dr. Bob’s Home

Link 4

January 1933 · The Mayflower Hotel

Ten days

Meetings at the hotel and in the churches. At the last one, Bud tells how he stopped drinking. It ends with a dinner for four hundred.

Good Oldtimers, ch. V; Dr. Bob’s Home

Link 5

1933 · Akron’s living rooms

Small groups

The team moves on and leaves weekly groups behind. Henrietta Seiberling, T. Henry and Clarace Williams, and Anne S. come in.

Good Oldtimers, ch. V; Lean, ch. 14; Arthur S.

Link 6

1933–1935 · West Hill

Every Thursday

Anne brings Dr. Bob. For two and a half years he goes every week, reads and prays, and gets drunk every night.

Secret drinker, in I Just Work Here

Good Oldtimers, ch. V

Link 7

May 11, 1935 · The Mayflower’s lobby

The church directory

Bill W., stranded in Akron and afraid he’ll drink, picks a minister’s name from the directory: Walter Tunks. “And that was no coincidence,” Henrietta said.

AA Comes of Age; Henrietta Seiberling, 1971, in Darrah

Link 8

May 12, 1935 · The gate lodge

Henrietta’s

Tunks’s list of names leads to Henrietta, and Henrietta to Dr. Bob. He says he can stay about fifteen minutes. They talk for hours.

The gate lodge, in I Just Work Here

AA Comes of Age

No coincidence

Every link from the clinic to the gate lodge ran through the Oxford Group in Akron, and the Group was in Akron because a father wanted to say thank you.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How many came, and for how long; what became of the son; and the Group’s habit of famous names.

Sixty or thirty?

The accounts agree that Harvey Firestone brought the Group to Akron in January 1933, out of thanks for his son. They don’t agree on how many came or how long they stayed. In the order they were set down:

1971. Sixty people, for ten days. Henrietta Seiberling, in memoirs recorded for AA’s archives.
1979. An Oxford Group team brought over from England to help one of his family. Lois W., in Lois Remembers.
1980. Some sixty leaders and team members, for a ten-day “house party” that ended with a dinner for four hundred. Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers.
1985. “A team of sixty to conduct a ten-day campaign.” Garth Lean, Buchman’s biographer.
1995. Thirty men and women, for ten days. Ray R.’s history, posted online that year.
2009. About thirty, for a conference weekend. Arthur S.’s timeline.
Today. A week of meetings. Dr. Bob’s Home, the museum in his old house.

The larger number has a witness from the time: TIME counted 59 workers with Buchman for his American tour that month, though it didn’t mention Akron.

The son

Three older men in overcoats and hats standing together outdoors. — Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, in a photograph copyrighted in 1931.Library of Congress

Russell Firestone was Harvey Firestone’s second son, born in 1901, and a Princeton graduate. Jim Newton, who took him to Denver, had come to work for his father in the late 1920s.

The Episcopal Church’s convention met in Denver in the second half of September 1931, and The Witness, an Episcopal weekly, reported that a team it called the Buchmanites had arrived there under Shoemaker’s leadership. That puts Bud’s change in the autumn of 1931. One AA timeline dates it to December.

Henry Ford, Lean writes, ran across Firestone’s son on business, noticed the change in him and kept him talking in his office for two hours. Henrietta remembered that he had quit “for a year and a half or so.” He drank again; none of the accounts says when.

Famous names

Changing a town’s leaders first, and letting the town hear about it, was how the Group worked. In Akron it had one of the city’s biggest employers behind it, and his son told his story at the last meeting.

In 1957 Bill W. listed what AA had dropped from the Oxford Group. One item was its use of prominent names. Most alcoholics wanted to be anonymous, he wrote, and a member who broke his anonymity and then got drunk in public could “destroy confidence in us.”

First names only, in Keep Coming Back, tells how AA’s anonymity grew.

Sources

Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. AA World Services, 1980. Chapter V, “The alcoholic in the Oxford Group” (the house party and the dinner, the Group’s way with leaders, the small groups, the heir drinking again, the West Hill group).
Mary C. Darrah, Sister Ignatia: Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous. Loyola University Press, 1992. Chapter 1, “The Legend” (Henrietta Seiberling’s memoirs, recorded in 1971, in AA’s archives). Quotations are from the scanned text, checked against the page image.
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Recovery: The First Legacy” (the Mayflower’s lobby and Walter Tunks; the gate lodge; what AA dropped from the Oxford Group, including prominent names).
Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Groups, 1979 (the team from England).
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. AA Grapevine and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1953. Tradition Eleven, for the note on what AA kept.
Garth Lean, Frank Buchman: A Life. Constable, 1985. Chapter 14 (Newton, Firestone’s son and the Akron campaign) and chapter 18 (Henry Ford; the North American tour), free to read at frankbuchman.info.
W. B. Spofford, “Brief Paragraphs from Denver and the Convention,” The Witness, October 1, 1931 (Shoemaker’s team at the convention).
“Religion: It Works,” TIME, January 23, 1933 (Buchman’s 59 workers).
Ray R., “The Oxford Group Connection,” dated 1959 and posted in 1995, at silkworth.net. It draws its Firestone story from Dick B.’s The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous (the train home; thirty for ten days).
Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009 (January 1933: about thirty, for a weekend; who it drew in).
“The Mayflower Hotel,” Dr. Bob’s Home (the Akron Beacon Journal’s photograph at the station, January 1933; Bud at the last meeting; a week of meetings).
Find a Grave, Russell Allen Firestone, reprinting his obituary of 1951 (his birth year and Princeton).
The Mayflower Hotel, Akron, Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library. No known copyright restrictions.
Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, c. 1931, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.