We Began to Count Noses - Silkworth.net

We have long pondered the question, who was the handful of people that
Bill and Bob counted up on that fall afternoon in 1937 Who were “The First
Forty” To the best of our knowledge and belief, no written list was produced
that afternoon as Bill and Bob, with Anne listening in, counted names. We will
now attempt to answer the question of who these men and women were using
those documents and historical facts that have already been revealed and that
which we will reveal now.*
Many of us are familiar with the events following the “counting of noses.”
Bill was introduced to Willard Richardson, one of John D. Rockefeller’s closest
associates, by his brother-in-law Dr. Leonard Strong. After several meetings with
Rockefeller’s advisors, Frank Amos made a visit to Akron in mid February of
1938 to get a first hand look at Dr. Bob and the group of recovered drunks. His
account of that visit, which was titled “THE NOTES ON AKRON, OHIO SURVEY by
FRANK AMOS” is well documented in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers and to a lesser
extent in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age and Pass It On.
The account of Amos’s Akron visit given in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers,
as well as the other publications, omits one very important detail, that a list of
the early Akron members was attached to The Amos Report. The likely reason
for this key omission is because the list was not attached or included with The
Amos Report filed in the GSO archives.
This list of the pioneering Akron members, which we have dubbed “The
Amos Roster”, is described below in an excerpt from a copy of The Amos Report.
It may prove to be the first written list of members ever produced by one of our
co-founders and will support our work as we attempt to document “The First
Forty.”
Alcoholic Group
There are now some fifty men, and, I believe, two women former alcoholics, all
considered practically incurable by physicians, who have been reformed and so far have
remained teetotalers. A list of some of them is attached giving their business, the length
in months they have been “dry”, the period in years they were drinking, and their present
age.
*SOB (i.e. sober date or as calculated by length of dry time)
“The Amos Roster”, which is a major source of information for this chapter, interestingly enough does not always
conform to today’s commonly applied concept of “continuous sobriety” as the basis for dry time. Dr. Bob, Ernie
Galbraith, Walter Bray, Phil Smith, Tom Lucas, J.D. Holmes and several others had documented slips during the
“flying blind” period which was not always factored in to the overall length of time recorded on the roster for each
member. A similar method of documenting “dry time” is found in a survey completed on January 1, 1940 of the
New Jersey Group in preparation for the Rockefeller Dinner held in February of that year. Dr Bob did seem to factor
in the “slip time” for a few of the pioneers. His reasons for doing so are not clear. Since the Amos Roster was
written by Dr. Bob and he was obviously the architect of this methodology for documenting the “SOB” we will
follow his lead in this regard. The Amos Roster was attached to the document “NOTES ON AKRON, OHIO SURVEY”
by FRANK AMOS and is included as Appendix I in the back of this book.