school, two blocks from the Smiths’ house in St. Johnsbury. By the Passumpsic River in northeastern Vermont, St. Johnsbury was, and is, a typical New England village with about 7,000 people then and only about 8,400 by the 1970’s. It is approximately 100 miles northeast of East Dorset, Vermont, where Bill Wilson—Dr. Bob’s partner-to-be in founding A.A.—was born, grew up, and is now buried.
Dr. Bob described the general moral standard of St. Johnsbury as “far above the average.” And the consumption of alcohol was considered a question of morality. No beer or liquor was legally sold except at the state liquor agency. And the only way you could purchase a pint or so was to convince the agent that you really needed it.
“Without this proof,” Dr. Bob said, “the expectant purchaser would be forced to depart empty-handed, with none of what I later came to believe was the great panacea for all human ills.”
What about those who sought to circumvent the spirit, if not the letter, of the law? “Men who had liquor shipped in from Boston or New York by express were looked upon with great distrust and disfavor by most of the good townspeople,” Dr. Bob said.
But some of the townspeople had local sources of supply. Young Bob had his first drink one summer day when he was just turning nine years old. He was at a neighbor’s farm, helping the men bale hay. Wandering off, he found a jug of hard cider hidden by one of the farmhands in a corner of the barn.
He pulled the cork and sniffed. He gasped, and his eyes watered. Powerful! Still, he took a drink—probably, more because it was forbidden than for any other reason.
He liked the taste, but he was evidently able to “take it or leave it” at the time, for his reminiscences included no mention of further drinking until some ten years after that first drink.
As a youngster, Bob had other ways of escaping discipline. From his earliest years, he loved the outdoors, a refuge from the stuffy schoolhouse he was forced to attend each day—until summer. Freedom from some of the musts came with vacations. Bob was released then to wander the hills, to fish and hunt and swim.
Close as he was (and remained throughout his life) to his foster sister, it was chiefly during these vacations that he could spend time with Amanda. In the summer, they picnicked, hiked, and swam together. They also spent many hours building and sailing their own boat at the Smith summer cottage on Lake Champlain, on the Vermont-New York border. After one of these visits with the Smiths, Amanda, who later became a history professor at Hunter College in New York City, received from ten-year-old Bob the following note on lined paper:
St. Johnsbury Vt
May 4 1890
Dear Miss Northrup
I have been meaning to write you every day but have been putting it off till now. I thank you very much for sending me the pictures and book. I have enjoyed the book very much and hope you will read it when you come up here again. I went over to Mr Harrington and played with Rover the dog. They have a bull calf and he said he would sell it to me for a dollar. Mama says if theres anything we need it is a bull. I went fishing Wednesday and caught about ten fish and a lizard. I have got the lizard in a pan of water and I expect to put him in alcohol. Pa got me a new bridle and saddle blanket and I ride every day. I enjoy it very much. Come up here as soon as you can.
With much love
Robert H Smith
(Even in adulthood, Dr. Bob never developed into much of a correspondent. His letters to Bill Wilson were one-pagers, short and to the point, with the words scrawled across the sheet.)
During these summers, young Bob became an expert swimmer and at one time saved a girl from drowning. (This convinced him that children should learn to swim at an early age. He taught Smitty and Sue to swim when they were five years old. The three of them would set out every vacation morning to swim the channel near their summer cottage at West Reservoir, Akron, Ohio. Misled by the sight on one occasion, an alarmed neighbor called Anne Smith to tell her that her children had fallen out of a boat in the middle of the channel.)
As the boy grew older, he wandered farther afield. Once, he and some friends went to Canada on a hunting trip. Game was so scarce that they lived on eels, blueberries, and cream-of-tartar biscuits for three weeks. Finally, they flushed a particularly large woodchuck. When they had him within range, they started blazing away.
After being shot at for some time, the woodchuck disappeared into its burrow. This episode later caused Judge Smith to remark that the woodchuck probably went in to get away from the noise.
Another time, the boys were wandering in the woods. As they sauntered along, kicking at stones, laughing and joking, they suddenly came upon a huge bear. The bear, probably more frightened than the boys, lumbered deeper into the forest. The young hunters were hard on its heels, yelling and shouting encouragement to one another. Still, the bear got away. “However, I don’t believe we ran after him as fast as we might have,” Dr. Bob used to say.
Vacation time shrank as childhood faded. In his teens, Bob began to spend summers either working on a Vermont farm or juggling trays and carrying suitcases as a bellhop at a summer hotel in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
In 1894, the 15-year-old entered St. Johnsbury Academy. Now an impressive, ten-building complex, the academy was established with the philanthropic aid of Fairbanks Morse Company as an independent secondary school “for the intellectual, moral, and religious training of boys and girls in northeastern Vermont.” One of its alumni was Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States.
Bob was to become an avid reader in later years, but he rarely cracked a book throughout his scholastic career. There were repercussions and accusations of “waywardness” from parents and teachers. Nonetheless, he managed to maintain passing, even creditable grades.
Although his scholastic neglect may have disgraced him with his elders, Bob was popular with his schoolmates. Perhaps his sometimes adventurous revolts against authority gave him a glamorous aura. Maybe his contemporaries sensed some special traits of character obscure to adults. Or maybe he was just a likable fellow. Whatever the attraction, he had many friends, then and throughout his life.
It was in his senior year at St. Johnsbury, at a dance in the academy gym, that Dr. Bob first met Anne Robinson Ripley of Oak Park, Illinois. A student at Wellesley, Anne was spending a holiday with a college friend.
She was small and reserved but had a cheerfulness, sweetness, and calm that were to remain with her throughout the years. She had been reared within a family of railroad people. It was a very sheltered atmosphere, although there wasn’t much money at that time. Anne, who abhorred ostentation and pretense, always pointed out that she attended Wellesley on a scholarship, because her family couldn’t have afforded to send her there otherwise.
Bob’s meeting with Anne was the beginning of what could hardly be described as a whirlwind courtship; it was to culminate in marriage after 17 years. No one today can be absolutely certain of the reason for the delay. There were years of schooling, work, and internship ahead for Bob. There was also the possibility that Anne had a healthy fear of entering the state of holy matrimony with a drinking man. Perhaps she waited until Bob gave evidence of being sober for a time before she agreed to marry him. However, they saw each other and corresponded regularly during this period, while Anne taught school.
After his graduation from St. Johnsbury Academy, in 1898, young Bob set off for four years at Dartmouth College, sixty miles south at Hanover, New Hampshire.
The photograph in his college yearbook shows a young man with strong, classic features, who
