The Swedish Serenity group's spring convention in Stockholm, Sweden

Hi, my name is Gail L, and I'm an alcoholic.

And my sobriety dates May 13th of 1978.

And I have a home group, and I've got a sponsor.

I just want to thank everybody once again for the wonderful time I'm having here in Stockholm.

And for all the people that are in service to me, I feel like the queen or something.

I don't know.

And every now and then there's the changing of the guards, you know.

Somebody comes to...

walk me or throw me on the metro or whatever.

But we're doing it, sometimes one hour at a time, but we're getting there.

So here we are again, and I'm starting to feel very comfortable.

I'm starting to feel like this might be my home group.

I've showed up here now a couple times.

I'm going to keep coming back.

Some of you were here last night.

Some of you are new tonight.

So there may be some repetition for those of you who were here last night, but it helps to carry the story along.

So bear with me if it's some of the slides are similar to last night.

We're going to talk about something that doesn't get brought out too much because when AA was being born,

women, you know, really weren't very prominent.

You know, if you invented something, you couldn't get a patent, and women kind of stayed in the background.

So we want to bring them out a little bit tonight so we can study the history of women in AA.

Another title that I thought of using, you've heard of Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers.

Well, I thought I'd call this talk Dr. Bob and the Good Old Gals.

Dr. Bob called women frails.

So I thought we could call it tales of the frails.

And a lot of time we call it history.

Well, we could call it her story or her story.

And here comes Dr. Bob now, trailing behind these wonderful nurses here.

There he is on the right.

As a handsome young doctor, believe me, I've studied these slides a lot,

and sometimes I start to swoon just a little bit.

Back to Akron a little bit, want to just take you back to the start of this thing, which you know started in the mid-30s.

We talked last night about Jim Newton and how he helped Russell Bud Firestone get sober by introducing him to the Oxford group.

And that's how God prepared the soil in Akron for the birth of AA.

You can just see how God went before with this Oxford group.

And, but Jim Newton later ended up in Fort Myers, and he and his wife, Ellie, who I'm going to be getting a picture of, but I don't have her right now.

Her name's Eleanor Ford.

Because they didn't have conference-approved literature, she had written a beautiful pamphlet on guidance that they read.

And both of them, I think she lived almost be 100, and they practiced MRA up until the end.

And there's a new...

Foundation. He wrote a book called Uncommon Friends about his friends, and there's a new foundation that just started for both of them.

There's Harvey Firestone, who was so grateful for his son's recovery, and I mentioned last night, those of you that are familiar with the prodigal son.

The father is so grateful with the son's recovery, and his son has returned home.

He's no longer beating the wife.

He doesn't even look the same after making the surrender on the train with Sam's shoemaker,

that he throws a party in the newly opened Mayflower Hotel, inviting Frank Bukman,

who was the founder of the Oxford Group.

And by the way, I know that there's a lot of history here of Lutherans,

so you might want to know this was a Lutheran minister.

And you're going to have a hard time believing this, but this guy had resentments.

And while he was in a church in Kazakh, England, he had a spiritual experience, and he came back,

and he started the movement that was once known as a return to first century Christianity.

Today, the headquarters is in Co-Switzerland, and they've changed their name to initiatives of change.

But they actually are still around, doing some good work, by the way.

The first, that we're talking about women, so we want to talk about Henrietta Cyberling,

who's on the left, and Anne Smith, who first got involved in the Oxford group.

If it hadn't been for them, probably Dr. Bob would have never joined the Oxford group.

These women manipulated him a lot and kind of got their way with him,

and he ended up coming into the Oxford group.

This is Dr. Bob, and behind him...

was Anne Smith. Now, she was a lady in waiting. Dr. Bob courted her for 17 years. You might say he was a little

slow. We don't know why they waited so long to marry, but it was a very long courtship.

And she was a schoolteacher, and there she is as a darling young girl. Isn't that a sweet picture?

You know, some people don't have to work as hard as as alcoholics to get sweet. She was already sweet.

And you can see that there.

And here's another picture of the couple.

Um,

The woman on the right is Delphine Weber.

I mentioned last night that there was a woman who called Henrietta Cyberling and spoke to her

because Ann and Bob weren't sharing at the Oxford Group meetings.

Dr. Bob had been in the Oxford Group for two and a half years.

For those of you that weren't here last night, he had been reading the Bible.

Oxford Group had a lot of books. They read a lot of books.

And Dr. Bob was quite a reader, and he read a lot of books.

And he went back to church, something he swore he would never do.

He wanted to get sober so bad that he would do everything that they told him to do, but he could not get sober.

In fact, he told Henrietta once, you know, maybe I'm just a want-a- wannabe.

You know how hard it is when we can't get sober and we keep failing and we keep failing.

So it was Delphine who tipped Henrietta off.

Henrietta went into her quiet time.

For those of you who may not have heard of that or morning guidance, it probably has a lot to do with why we have an 11th step in our program today.

They used to consider the morning quiet time maybe more important in meetings.

And what that consisted of was getting up in the morning and opening your Bible or something that you were reading that was inspirational.

And after you were finished, you would stop and you would get out a pencil and a paper and you would listen and you would put down what you thought God was saying to you.

The next thing you did was something called checking.

You would call someone and run it by the four absolutes to see if it passed that test

or if it was coming from your ego.

Now, you might find this surprising, but the alcoholics didn't like checking too much.

Okay.

But I will tell you this, that because of the guidance, I believe that's how the program got formed,

that God was able to speak to people, that it's such a miraculous program.

We talked about all the slender threads and coincidences and serendipity that's in the program.

I think that comes because they were actually listening, trying to do God's will.

So she asked, what are we going to do about Dr. Bob, and you know that it was Henrietta who, through her guidance...

Got a hold of these two people, T. Henry and Clarice Williams, and they held the meeting on Monday that was a set-up meeting, and she said, come prepared to mean business. There'll be no pussy footing around. And that's where we get that word leader for leading a meeting. And Wednesday, they had that meeting, and we know that it was successful intervention.

that Dr. Bob thanked them, and at the risk of his profession, he said to them that he was a secret drinker and could not stop.

And that was the beginning of Bob and Anne sharing, and they got down on their knees, and they said a prayer for him.

And then I mentioned to you that they would continue to meet in that home,

but what I forgot to tell you is that group number one,

the alcoholic squad that would start there,

would move out after the big book is published.

The big book would be published in April of 1939.

We just celebrated 70 years.

In May, Cleveland will break away.

And the gentleman will start it, will be Clarence Snyder,

and he'll be the first one to call it AA.

Okay.

Now, he liked to be considered the founder of AA because he was the first one to take the name from the book.

There's a lot of controversy around old Clarence.

Yeah, really.

But I want you to kind of know that the prayer that was said here on Wednesday at 8 o'clock that that meeting is still meeting.

Because that meeting moved out at the end of the year and moved into Dr. Bob's home.

And then by January of 1940, it became King's School.

It's in your big book.

And that is the mother group, and all groups came from that group.

So you might want to consider the prayer that was said that all groups can trace their group back to that prayer.

Now, that's the living room where they met, and I told you that Dr. Bob got the surrenders.

Bill couldn't sober anybody up, but Dr. Bob was the prince of 12-stepers.

Now...

Henrietta, after that intervention, began to pray for Dr. Bob every morning.

And in her guidance, she said, this is what she says to God.

But I told Bob that I was sure if he lived this way of life, he could quit drinking.

Now, I need your help, God.

This is what God says to Henrietta.

Bob must not touch one drop of alcohol.

So she calls Bob up, and she talked to Anne first, and she goes,

Anne, Anne, I got guidance for Bob. I got guidance for Bob.

Oh, Bob gets in his car and he races down to the gate lodge.

It wasn't too far.

Can you imagine his disappointment when she said to him, don't touch.

He really was disappointed.

He kind of thought maybe a mountain would move or something.

I don't know.

But she continued to pray, and it's through her prayer that those two men got together.

It's through her prayer that when Bill comes...

A proper lady, a lady who was very raised in high society and a cyberling.

That was like our royalty.

And she's going to get a call from this bum, a total stranger that says, I'm a rum hound from New York.

How many of us would say, yeah, come on over?

But she thinks mana from heaven.

She knows that's the answer to her prayer.

I mean, such faith.

She had tremendous faith in God and his guidance.

Okay.

So behind Bill, we have Lois.

How many of you have seen the play?

Have anybody seen the play that was off Broadway called Bob and Bill where the story actually gets acted out in drama?

You've seen it.

You can feel what these women went through from that play.

It's different than reading it.

I remember seeing it a couple times, and I just wanted those women to leave those guys.

You know, why are you taking so much from these birds?

And she certainly did.

Okay.

Some of you might know that she tried to get Bill to sober up by taking him out into these motorcycle rides where they went around the country.

And a lot of people think that, you know, they had that Harley with a sidecar.

And they thought Bill drove it.

Lois drove it.

Bill was in the sidecar.

You know, I don't think if it was for Lois and Ann, those guys would have made it.

I really don't think they would have ever gotten to the point where God could have helped sober him up.

I want to read to you.

Well, I'm going to take this so I can read because I can't read it from this far.

This is out of the family Bible of Bill's Family Bible.

And those of you that have made pledges to get sober to your loved ones might relate to this because I'll read the dates.

To my beloved wife that has endured so much, let this stand as evidence of my pledge to you that I have finished with drink forever, Bill, October 20th, 1928.

Thanksgiving Day, 1928, my strength is renewed a thousandfold in my love for you.

One more, to tell you once more that I am finished with it.

I love you, January 12, 1929.

Finally, and for a lifetime, thank God for your love, September 3rd, 1930.

I've seen many an alcoholic shed a tear when they read that.

because I think many of us can relate to those broken promises.

We meant well, didn't we?

So when Bill gets sober, he's in Towns Hospital,

and he's had this spiritual experience,

and he sees how his experience can benefit others.

And the next thing Bill wants to do is save the world.

He's going to become a missionary,

and he begins running around Towns Hospital and Oxford Group,

looking for a drunk, because he's going to pass this on.

And what does he do?

He brings them home to Lois.

She's the one working.

They fill that house for the next six months is full of drunks.

Lois is cooking.

Lois is working.

None of the drunks are paying.

They didn't charge them anything.

And Bill's being a missionary.

So you can imagine what that was like.

But when Bill gets depressed because he couldn't sober up anybody, in fact, you know, in the day that we're talking about back in the 30s and the 40s, a woman's place was in the home. She was in charge of the home. And Lois gave permission for all those drunks to come into her home.

One of them, I mean, there was a lot of stories.

I think one was running around naked one time, and another time they were out of town,

and this guy sold all their clothes, and they came home, and he had gassed himself in the house.

Now, most women wouldn't put up with that, but Lois stood by her husband.

After this, Lois is going to say something to Bill, because he's going to get kind of depressed.

People are killing themselves.

Nobody's getting sober.

He's working and trying to get him sober, and, you know, he's sitting in a chair, kind of got the blues.

And Lois said, but you're sober, Bill.

It was Lois that told Bill that.

Thank God.

Because he's going to need that.

He's going to come to Akron by train, and he's going to take over this National Rubber machinery shop.

That's what's left of it.

And he's going to find himself in the Mayflower lobby.

He's going to hear the tinkling of the glasses.

And because of what Lois said to him, he's going to go to that directory.

And instead of going into the bar, he's going to try to find another alcoholic.

He's going to pick Reverend Tunx's name.

That's Reverend Tunx's home.

The call is going to come in to the left of the door.

I've been in the home.

There's a little kind of phone right on the inside.

It's a rainy Mother's Day weekend when he gets the call.

He's going to give ten names to Bill.

Bill's going to call all those people.

Nobody is willing to help Bill and tell somebody finally gives him Henrietta's number.

And we know that Henrietta has been praying for him.

Now, last night I mentioned that he walks away when the voice says to him,

you better call that lady.

He doesn't want to call her because look where he thinks she's living.

That's the house behind the gate lodge.

You have your palaces here and your kingdom, and this was the Cyberling estate.

And right at the gate there is the little gate lodge, very tiny little house.

Kind of a humble little place for a birth of A.A.

I think God might have had something to do with that.

She's separated from her husband, and she's living in this house, and he doesn't know that.

So thank God he did call her.

And rather than say, I'm not talking to strangers, click, I'm a cyberling.

She thinks, Mana from heaven, you come over here right now, because she'd been praying for Dr. Bob every day.

And Bill does come over.

You know, Bob doesn't make it.

And I think you mentioned about Dr. Bob, and I think there was something that you compared to,

because Bill doesn't want to talk to Bob.

He wants to give him 15 minutes.

You know that they settle back in the library, which is that little gable there,

and they go late into the night, and Bill is not going to leave Akron.

He's the Henrietta once again is...

Oh, by the way, since we're talking about women, I think it's important to remember that God chose the day, Mother's Day, to bring these two men together.

What a greater gift could he give us than on Mother's Day to have the spark struck at the gate lodge that would eventually become A.A.

One drunk, talking to another drunk, to stay sober.

Henrietta will then put Bill up.

Now, I don't know how this happened.

This is our Portage Country Club, okay?

This is the finest country club in Akron.

I've only been there one time for a Sweet 16 party.

How does Bill end up with $10 to his name at the lobby of the Mayflower

and the next day end up at the Portage Country Club?

This is Bill, right?

Okay.

You know, one minute he's down and out, the next minute he's in Rockefeller's office.

Now he's at the Mayflower, his whole deal falls through.

He doesn't have a dime to his name, and now he ends up to Portage Country Club.

I put him on the golf course because I think he liked to golf quite a bit.

He'll be there two weeks, and then Anne Smith will open the Smith home.

Again, once again, remember that it was women's domain in the home.

She wants her husband to get sober, so they're going to invite Bill into the home.

Here's another picture of Henrietta.

I've been able to go to the estate and they've given me some pictures that most people,

they're not in print, a lot of these.

Here she is, she had her baby John in the tower.

He later became a congressman.

It's a beautiful woman.

A little society clip there, a little thing on the gardens.

Henrietta was kind of a tough lady.

I think she actually was the first terrorist.

When her husband was messing around, she scared the Cyberling family half to death.

I've read a couple letters where they were so scared that she was going to take the children and go back to Texas.

And they don't know what to do.

They felt that it was this dark cloud hanging over the castle there, you know.

And I thought, God, Henrietta, she was something else.

She wasn't one to keep her mouth shut.

So I want you to hear something she said.

when we were trying to tone down the God thing a little bit.

There's a little controversy about talking about too much about God.

Listen to what she had to say.

Oh, come on, Henrietta.

Let me get her back.

She's a little shy today.

Here we go.

I have to use the mouse to do it.

All right.

We are not out to please the alcoholic.

They've been pleasing themselves all these years.

We are out to please God.

And if you don't,

talk about what God does and your faith and your guidance.

You might as well be the rotary glove or something

because that's your only source of power.

Okay.

So you can see that when she later moves to New York,

by the way, when we separate from the Oxford group,

Henrietta comes with us.

One of the things I want you to know about the women is that they were part of AA.

The wives were part of AA.

Henrietta wasn't an alcoholic, but in the very early days, she was a part of AA too.

There wasn't a separation at all.

In fact, Dr. Bob felt that families had been separated too long.

He wanted them all together.

Here she's returned to the Gate Lodge after moving to New York.

When she moves to New York, this is a later picture of her,

she's going to chase Bill around with the Bible.

She doesn't give Bill a break.

Because, you know, there was more agnostics in New York,

and in Akron, we were pretty, you know, we were pretty Bible-oriented.

But in New York, there was these agnostic, so Bill got caught up in between,

and she just, she really hounded that guy.

Yeah.

You're probably familiar with this quote.

Our co-founders believe that for some reason, we alcoholics seem to have the gift of picking out the world's finest women.

Girls, you might want to remind your boyfriends of that or your husband's.

I think it's true.

So Anne's going to invite Bill to stay.

Lois wasn't, if you're in the play, it shows that Lois got a little agitated to this.

Her husband never came home.

Okay.

And they began sitting around the tables and talking this program up.

A lot of times I think it was the kitchen.

In some of the old pamphlets in AA, they called the kitchen, the AA church.

And here are the Smith children in the living room of the home.

Dr. Bob and Anne had two children.

Sue was adopted, so they were both the same age.

And that's Smitty and Sue.

Sue lived in Akron and Smitty lived in Texas.

And here they are sitting between the Bible.

Now, Anne would get up in the morning.

It would be Bill that would put on the coffee early in the morning.

And Anne would read the Bible to the new people.

She called it spiritual pablum.

She read from the book of James.

And she'd usually conclude what faith without works is dead or God is love.

So she kind of sponsored the guys, you know.

And here's the Smith kids.

They posed because they were always fighting.

They didn't get along at all.

And that's a whole other story.

But that was kind of a cute picture.

Now, I told you about Lois giving up her home

and having someone come home and have your clothes gone

and a dead body in your house.

And that would be awful.

Let me tell you what happened to Ann.

I mean, these are kind of heroic women in my mind.

The first guy, before Bill D.,

the first guy they pulled in was Eddie R.,

And N.E.R. was kind of a nut case.

In fact, he one time slid down the drain pipe and was going to throw himself in Lake Erie,

and Bob and Ann had to go get him.

And another time, his wife disclosed her discursions to him like you were supposed to do in the Oxford group,

and he beat her up.

And that's where we get when to do so would injure them or others.

Well, this particular time, Anne was feeding him a tuna fish sandwich,

and he went nuts.

And he started chasing her around all the way upstairs with the butcher knife.

And Bill came in just in the nick of time and took that knife from him.

So you can see that, you know, I don't know if I would like that too much.

So that was, oh, by the way, Eddie R.

They let him go because we learned you don't wet nurse or drunk.

Eddie R. will show up at Dr. Bob's funeral, 1950, with almost a year of sobriety.

He died with 17 years.

I love those stories.

A little happy ending there for Eddie.

Well, they let Eddie go and they go and get Bill D.

Well, behind Bill D is a great lady.

Her name's Henrietta, another Henrietta.

Now, she had been praying for her husband,

and she had fired their minister because he wasn't helping him.

This is a great guy when he was sober.

He was a great guy when he drank.

He was crazy.

And this is the guy that, you know, she said, if you're not reaching him, I'm going to find someone who can if I have to see everyone in Akron.

And she prayed with the pastor of another church that someone her husband could understand would visit him in city hospital.

Well, Dr. Bob was working at City Hospital, and he had sobered up, and he hadn't been sober hardly at all.

And he called, and the nurse answered, and he said, this is Dr. Bob, and I found a cure for alcoholism.

And the nurse said, well, Bob, have you tried it on yourself?

They had this guy strapped to the bed.

And, but one of the things they did in the early days, this is before Al-Anon and before we were organized, they seemed to intuitively know that you go to the wife first.

So they went to Henrietta first, and Dr. Bob said the little lady at home would like to see you.

So...

She walks up to the Dr. Smith, and she knocks on the door, and Anne opens the door, and she said,

Hello, Mrs. Smith.

And Anne said, it's Anne to you, my dear.

And that made all the difference to her, that Anne was so humble and informal.

And then she mentioned to Henrietta, let's just you and me stay in the background.

So one of the things that Anne Smith did was every morning she would call Henrietta to check and see what her guidance was.

And Anne would do that with a lot of people.

By the way, Henrietta was the first woman to take AA into a treatment center.

She worked at a woman's correctional house, and there was a nurse in there that was having trouble with alcoholism.

So she was the first one to take that in.

And here we have the famous man on the bed.

But, you know, for a very long time, I always thought we should have the woman on the bed.

So here you go.

I don't know if you recognize it or not, but I was kind of smiling.

I mean, how would you feel if you were being 12-step by Bob and Bill?

Actually, there was a movie being done, and they used the bedroom in my home

because it looked just like it.

The director saw it.

And so the actor, I said, I'll let you use the bedroom for the scene for the movie,

but you've got to let me put on that white beater shirt and pose for that.

But I just, I'm going to have to Photoshop that smile

because it just doesn't look like I'm bottomed yet.

Now, I will tell you, do you have 13 steps here?

You don't have them in Sweden, do you?

Well, let me tell you about the first 13th step.

A gal came in by the name of Lil.

She was the first woman to come in.

And she started to do the, this is Dr. Bob's office in Akron.

And she was up there in his office with a former mayor,

and they were doing the wild thing on Dr. Bob's operating table.

And it was time to go home, and they couldn't get her to go home.

And they sent the fourth man in, Ernie G. to get her.

And when he came up, she ran and got some pills out of Dr. Bob's cabinet,

swallowed them, and then tried to jump out the window.

They rescued her, and they took her back to Dr. Bob's house.

And they cleaned her up and called her family.

But gals, she set us back quite a bit because after that, Dr. Bob didn't want to work with women.

It was kind of a scandal that all that happened.

And so he was finished working with women at that time.

We call Anne Smith, the mother of A.A., she really was.

She was one of the kindest women.

She never forgot anyone's name.

If she saw, you need it, you know, this is depression times.

She'd sew collars on coats so people could wear them in the winter

or she'd take them off in the summer.

She would go around to everybody that was new.

Make sure she greeted them somewhat like we do today.

And she would always, even when she went blind later on,

she would always remember the people and ask questions about them.

A very, very special woman, and she does deserve the title, Mother of AA.

Okay.

In fact, she'd say, do you guys say keep coming back?

Because I think that comes from Anne Smith.

There's the replica coffee pot.

The original is at Brown University, but that is a replica there in the window.

One of her favorite books was Kagawa, The Law of Love.

And then there's a, her journal.

She kept a journal, and that's been reproduced as well.

It's beautiful.

And also, I'll tell you a little bit, do we have any Methodists here?

If you know of a Methodist, there's a little book that came out, and you'll see that book there.

It comes out coincidentally in the spring of 1935, and that becomes our first meditation book.

It's called The Upper Room.

Oh, let me go back for just a minute.

This isn't particularly a profound soundbite, but it's the only one we have of Anne Smith.

And if you'd like to hear her voice, I'll play it for you.

It was taken off a wire recording.

Last night you saw a video of her.

She'll refer to that in this soundbite, but you'll actually hear the voice of Anne Smith.

No, you won't.

Wait a minute.

I'm on technology.

Okay.

Here we go.

Robert wants me to start first. He's afraid.

So I...

We've got Betty and Smitty here with us and George Hood.

We're all up in my bedroom where we entertain now.

Very formal entertaining, as you can imagine.

It was very nice of you to invite both Bob and myself down to Bedford Hills and we'd love to come.

But at present, we... I imagine we're...

will have to stay put at 855 hour more.

This is a new experience for me.

I had a moving picture taken to myself,

and now I'm recording.

So you see, even with a bum eye, I'm still alive and kicking.

Here's the robber.

That was to Bill and Lois.

Both couples traveled back and forth to visit one another.

They were pretty close.

And that's kind of sweet.

Well...

One more thing the Smith did.

You see, as the word of the cure got out, people started coming to Akron.

I know some of you might have seen the movie.

My name is Bill W.

I was a little disappointed in that movie because about 15 minutes before the movie's over with, Bill's not even sober yet.

I was freaking when I saw it the first time I'm going, because I knew what happened in Akron.

They didn't come close to tell them the story.

Not only did, you know, Anne Smith, of course, opened her home.

And Archie Tobridge came.

And he stayed with the Smiths in November of 1938.

His story is in the first edition.

It was called The Fearful One.

Later became known as the man who mastered fear.

And he was so sickly.

And now, they didn't have hardly enough food to go around in the family at all.

But they took him in and they cared for him for one year.

And he stated this, that I've been taken off the streets and nurtured back to health by the love of Anne Smith.

And then he went back and he started AA in Detroit.

Now this was pretty common.

There were other families that opened their homes.

People would come in and they would get sober.

The women would care for them.

They would teach them how to meditate and work this program.

And then they would go back and start AA in their city.

That's how Earl Treats started AA in Chicago.

And...

was pretty common. Now the fourth man in after Bill D was Ernie G. There's two Ernie G's,

but this is number four Ernie G. And, um,

he would end up marrying Dr. Bob's daughter.

And it's a great story because she wanted to marry Ray Windows,

who she had a, oh, if you read Children of the Healer,

a book that the Smith children wrote,

she was always running away from Bob and Ann,

who didn't like Ray, didn't want her to marry him.

So she was always sneaking around,

so she lost a lot of history running away from what was going on in the house.

And so Dr. Bob intervened, this is Priyalanon, and he gave Ernie some money to take her out and have a hamburger.

Well, he was sorry about that later because they hooked up and got married.

He wasn't too happy.

These are the gall breasts.

Now, again, this is Ernie's family.

Okay.

The family was a part of AA as well.

And Mama Galbraith, she would go around and pick up the upper rooms and drop them off in the houses for meditation.

And I told you the alcoholics didn't like checking.

Well, they would go into your bathroom and see if you had it open to the right day.

They would actually check to see if you were reading the book.

Well, this is Susie.

By the way, she is A.A.'s first Allotene.

You know, the Smith children gave up their bedrooms so that they could bring in the drunks.

They would detox them in the house, and the kids would have to leave their own bedrooms.

So she calls herself A.A.'s first alitine.

Now, after Ernie dies, she later, Ray's wife dies, and the two lovebirds get back together.