could call on friends and colleagues to bail him out one more time. They rescued him, covered for him, smoothed things over for him.
After a month on the farm, the fog began to clear, and Bob realized that he might have acted hastily in leaving school. He decided to return and continue his work. The faculty had other ideas, however. They felt that the University of Michigan might survive, even prosper, without the presence of Robert Holbrook Smith. After long discussions, with promises and protests on one side, threats and admonitions on the other, Bob was allowed to return and take his exams.
That he did well might be considered a sign of natural ability and intelligence. It might also be considered a mark of the determination some alcoholics have to work harder, longer, and better than everyone else—for a while.
Following the exams, there were further painful discussions in the dean’s office. Despite his good last-minute showing, Bob was asked to leave. But he was given his credits, so that he was able to transfer as a junior in the fall of 1907 to Rush University, near Chicago.
There, his drinking became so much worse that fraternity brothers sent for his father. The judge made the long journey in a vain effort to get him straightened out. In later years, Dr. Bob recalled that his father always met these situations quietly, with an attempt at understanding. “Well, what did this one cost you?” he would ask. And that would only heighten Bob’s feelings of remorse.
He kept drinking, with hard liquor replacing the beer. He went on longer and longer binges, waking up with even more intense shakes. Just before final exams, Bob went on a particularly rough drunk. When he came in to take his tests, his hand trembled so badly that he could not hold a pencil. As a result, he handed in three absolutely blank examination booklets.
He was, of course, called on the carpet once again. More promises and protestations. The dean of this medical school decided that if Bob wished to graduate, he must come back for two more quarters, remaining completely dry.
This he was able to do, and as a result, he was given his medical degree in 1910, when he was 31 years old. In fact, his scholarship and deportment were both considered so meritorious that he was able to secure a highly coveted two-year internship at City Hospital, Akron, Ohio.
The two years as an intern were problem-free. Hard work took the place of hard drinking, simply because there wasn’t time for both. “I was kept so busy that I hardly left the hospital at all. Consequently, I could not get into any trouble,” Dr. Bob said.
At one time during his internship, Bob ran the hospital pharmacy. This, added to other duties, took him all over the building. Because the elevators were too slow, he was in the habit of running up and down the stairs, rushing as if the devil were after him. This frenzied activity often brought about an explosive “Now where is that cadaverous young Yankee!” from one of the older doctors, who became particularly fond of him.
In 1912, when his two years of internship were completed, the 33-year-old M.D. opened an office in the Second National Bank Building, Akron, where he was to remain until he retired from practice in 1948.
Perhaps as a result of the irregular hours and tense work of a new general practitioner, Dr. Bob developed considerable stomach trouble. “I soon discovered that a couple of drinks would alleviate my gastric distress, at least for a few hours at a time,” he said. It didn’t take him long to return to the old drinking habits.
Almost immediately, he began to “pay very dearly physically,” to know the real horror and suffering of alcoholism. “I was between Scylla and Charybdis now,” he wrote. “If I did not drink, my stomach tortured me, and if I did, my nerves did the same thing.” (Smitty noted, incidentally, that the stomach trouble disappeared after his father stopped drinking—although there was then a bit of insomnia, which led to his reading a lot at night.)
When things got too bad and Bob was unable to function, he put himself into one of the local drying-out spots—not once, but at least a dozen times.
After three years of this nightmare existence, the young doctor ended up in one of the smaller local hospitals, which, like other drying-out places and sanitaria in the vicinity, catered to patients with such socially unacceptable ailments as alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness.
The hospital staff did its best, but Bob couldn’t or wouldn’t allow himself to be helped. He persuaded well-meaning friends to smuggle in whiskey by the quart. When that source of supply failed, it wasn’t difficult for a man who knew his way around a hospital to steal medicinal alcohol. He got rapidly worse.
Early in 1914, Judge Smith dispatched a doctor from St. Johnsbury with instructions to bring Bob home. (In a way, St. Johnsbury was always home for Dr. Bob. Although he lived and worked in Akron for the rest of his life, he continued to go back to Vermont every year, drunk or sober.)
Somehow, the Vermont doctor managed to get Bob back to the house on Summer Street where he was born. There, he remained in bed for two months before he dared venture out. He was utterly demoralized. Then, it was two more months before he returned to Akron to resume his practice. “I think I must have been thoroughly scared by what had happened, or by the doctor, or probably both,” Dr. Bob said.
He was still sober at the beginning of the following year. Perhaps he believed he was that way for good, and perhaps Anne Ripley believed this, too. He went to Chicago to marry her. The ceremony took place in the home of her mother, Mrs. Joseph Pierce Ripley, “at half after eight o’clock” (as the wedding invitation read) on January 25, 1915.
Dr. Bob brought his bride back to Akron and a house on a corner at 855 Ardmore Avenue, a tree-lined street in the fashionable west end of town. The $4,000 house was new then, a two-story clapboard structure with large, airy rooms.
The kitchen was modern and fitted with all the latest conveniences, but Smitty remembered it as being long and narrow. “Dad had one particular chair he sat in. He never varied. That was his seat. Every time someone wanted something from the refrigerator, he would have to stand up. But he wouldn’t change.
“Mom was a good cook,” he said, “but she didn’t care for it. She always wanted to dine by candlelight, and Dad wanted to see what he was eating. We practically had a spotlight overhead.
“He was no help around the house—worse than that. Once, Mother prevailed on him to take the wallpaper off the living-room wall. He stuck a garden hose in the window and turned it on. The house was carpeted. Mother almost fainted. And he had the worst mechanical ability in the world. I did all the fixing.”
The first three years of the Smiths’ married life were ideal, free from any of the unhappiness that was to come later. Dr. Bob continued to stay sober, and any lingering doubts Anne might have had were stilled. They were then, as always, an extremely devoted couple. (“Mother was always deeply in love with Dad,” Smitty recalled. “I never heard them have an argument.” Sue concurred, but did admit to overhearing what might be called “discussions.”)
Dr. Bob’s professional life was going smoothly, too; he was developing a reputation as a physician, work he loved. He inspired confidence in his patients. A bit authoritative and difficult to approach, he was sympathetic and understanding once you started talking. And he had a way of looking at you over the top of his glasses. “He was a great one for that,” said Emma K. (close to the Smiths in their final years). “Just how you expect a doctor to be.”
As Dr. Bob’s practice grew, the Smiths made many friends and became respected members of the community. And in 1918, they became parents.
But the year of Smitty’s birth was also the year of a national event that had a very
