Suzanne Smith Windows was born February 15, 1918 to a mother who gave her children to their grandmother; also unable to provide for the two, she placed them in a children's home. Carrying the infant as she walked down a railroad track toward the institution with three-year-old Sue, the grandmother provided the little girl with her earliest recollection of life. The next thing she remembers was cutting off the end of her finger in a door at the home, prompting a visit from Dr. Bob to care for the medical emergency. "That would have been when he first saw me, and it was the nicest day of my life. I was five."

Ironically, the first thing Smitty remembers is when Sue was adopted. They were both five at the time, Sue being three months older than her new brother. "She was adopted because mother had a miscarriage and couldn't have any more children. So they adopted Sue as a playmate for me."

Robert Ripley Smith was born June 5, 1918, acquiring the nickname "Smitty" shortly thereafter. He shared his father's fondness for automobiles; drinking, fast driving and a need for "action" characterized his teenage years. Although Smitty graduated from high school, his secret marriage to a pregnant girlfriend speaks of the extent of his love for a fast lifestyle. He never saw the daughter born to his young wife, nor did he ever live with the child's mother. He quietly obtained a divorce in 1939, ensuring his status as a social pariah because he twice flaunted the moral code of the times.

Both children note the profound influence their mother Anne had on each member of the family. Sue describes her early memories of Mrs. Smith as a "heavyset woman ... [who] wore her dark hair pulled back in a bun. She had the bluest eyes. She loved big, fancy hats and classical music. ... She had a nice disposition." Smitty remembers, "My mother was a very dignified lady. She was the type of lady that led a protected life. She was interested in the proper etiquette, and she was a little bit romantic." When Smitty was born, Anne was 38 and Dr. Bob was 40, extremely late in life for the early 1900s.

Smitty recalls, "When I was real little, I never detected any strain between my parents. They never had an open argument — never. Later on, as the alcoholism progressed during our teenage years, we saw that my mother was unhappy." Both children describe parents who believed a good paddling would work wonders with a disobedient child but who would also include the youngsters in the party when the parents entertained guests. Sue explains her relationship with Dr. Bob and Anne, "I feel kind of guilty in a way about my feelings about my mom because it seemed to me I always got along better with my dad than my mother. But the more I think about things, the more I see that she was there when I really needed her."

Dr. Bob was a towering giant of six feet, four inches, making him both a daunting authority and an imposing character to the young children. They idolized and adored their father, mentioning their most cherished times as those spent with him. Smitty says that both parents were very spiritual people, emphasizing that his dad read the Bible from cover to cover several times.

"I was about 13 or 14 when I first started to have trouble with Dad's drinking," says Sue. Dr. Bob had become a proctologist surgeon, and his caseload depended on referrals from other physicians who became increasingly hesitant to recommend Dr. Bob because of his drinking. The resultant plunge in income threw the family into poverty during the Great Depression, and the children began to notice their mother's angst and despondency over the situation. Smitty summed up the predicament by saying, "When you're raised in our kind of a home, the alcoholic is busy drinking and the spouse is busy trying to keep him from it. Both are full-time occupations. They don't have much time for you, so you just go on your merry way and survive any way you can." The teenaged siblings had an identical response to the problem in the household — rebellion and acting out. "I started drinking when I was about 16. I always had to be home by 1 a.m., and I had to pass Mother's inspection. I called it the sniffing committee," Smitty says, "She was so set against booze, you know. She made me promise never to take a drop. I broke that promise many times." On the other hand, Sue began smoking at age 12, hiding it as long as she could from her parents. At the same time, Sue sneaked visits with Ray Windows, of whom her father and mother disapproved.

Finally, the beginning of change took place as Sue recounts, "Henrietta Seiberling got Mom into the Oxford Group sometime in 1932." This association gave Anne a support group of friends from whom she gained encouragement and strength. "Later on, she did the same thing with the AA women. ... And I think that was the start of Al-Anon." The Oxford Group gave Anne the incentive to keep going, and sometime in 1933, Henrietta asked Anne to bring Dr. Bob to the meeting, after which the situation began to improve.

Henrietta was instrumental in setting up a meeting between Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson; this association grew into the birthing of AA. After a disastrous trip to Atlantic City where he got terribly drunk, Bob Smith had to be sobered up by his wife and Bill. After two or three days, he took one last drink to steady his hands enough to perform surgery, and then he and Bill got serious about organizing their thoughts to come up with a plan to help themselves and others. Smitty remembers how hard it was, commenting, "AA endured a terrible struggle when it started. It was looked down on as a cult of undesirables — untouchables in our society." Furthermore, their penury added to the jeers of polite society; Smitty doubts that the two men could have raised $50 between them. "As far as I was concerned, my attitude the first day they stopped drinking was "so what" because you figured they were going to start again. But I gradually saw that the drunks would come in, they'd start to brighten up, and pretty soon you'd have a real person."

The Big Book came just as Smitty got his divorce, and Dr. Bob began regaining his clientele in the medical practice. Smitty finished college and went straight to the Quartermaster Corps in Georgia. Just as he had fulfilled his "one-year deal," Pearl Harbor derailed his plans. He went to flight school and became a pilot, leading to his being shipped overseas. After the war, Smitty was stationed in Clovis, New Mexico, where he met Betty, whose father was an alcoholic, unknown to Smitty. After the couple married, Smitty became a company pilot for an oil company, but after a time Betty could not abide his long absences. He changed careers again, eventually going into business for himself.

In the meantime, Sue had married Ernie W. Galbraith, a divorced man 14 years her senior with an adolescent son from an earlier marriage. Sue remembers that Dr. Bob encouraged Ernie to take an interest in her, mostly as a ploy to get her away from Ray Windows. They had a son, Mickey and a daughter, Bonna Lee. Although Ernie was included as one of the original AA starters, his recovery was shaky, and he relapsed into active progressive drinking, causing him to be removed from the Big Book in the second edition. Ernie's alcohol addiction and infidelity finally pushed Sue to separate and then divorce him in 1965.

"It's funny how memories come back to you. Like how Mom always used to say when we dug up the garden, "If it's worth anything, it'll come back up!" One October evening in 1975, for example, ... the phone rang, and it was Ray Windows, asking me if I wanted a cup of coffee. After 38 years." Sue and Ray were married in December 1975, and according to Sue, they probably needed each other more then than they did as teenagers. "Ray didn't know much about AA, so when I got calls from the AAs, he wondered about it. At first, he didn't want any part of it," Sue muses, but "now he's as involved as I am. ... I try to live by the Twelve Steps."

When their parents died, the children were overcome with grief, at first finding it difficult to carry on with their lives. Smitty and Betty experienced a terrible year in 1965 when he twice experienced lung collapse; then at age 44, nineteen years after their last child was born, Betty had premature twins, one of whom did not survive. When their older children were grown, Betty wasn't working, so she had plenty of time on her hands, which she spent drinking increasing amounts of alcohol. "We liked to drink, and we liked to party," says Smitty, but the fun began to wear thin. "It got to the point where we were having blackouts and hangovers together and hiding our booze from each other. It was absolute despair," admits Smitty, but "we didn't recognize alcoholism in our home, believe it or not." "We didn't want to change our lifestyles. We didn't like what was happening, but we had become accustomed to it. It's the change that we feared."

Betty was trying desperately to quit drinking, but Smitty wasn't done partying yet. When a former drinking buddy called Betty and invited her to a group meeting, Smitty began to see a change in her. "I began wanting some of the things she was getting." Shortly afterward, he began driving 40 miles to Twelve-Step meetings.

"At first I didn't really know why I was there. Then it was explained to me that it was a program of recovery for the family, and that — whether they realized it or not — the family had been seriously affected by the disease. Smitty is grateful that his spouse was one who sought help and eventually brought him to see the value in group meetings and sobriety. "My dad was sober 15 years. In five of those years he was ill. In the other 10, he personally treated more than 5,000 people for alcoholism — medically — at no charge. ... He learned to love his fellow man."

Sue still lives in Akron, but Ray died August 3, 1989. She remembers his comment, "I used to think AA didn't work for me, but it was me that was not working the program. The Twelve Steps don't fail, people do. I keep trying. AA is a great gift."

Excerpted from Children of the Healer published by Hazelden Pittman Archives Press. For Information call 800/257-7800.