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AA Number 77 Rollie Hemsley
Paperback
Historical FiguresAddiction & Recovery
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 6 2026
Pages: 48
Weight: 0.17
Height: 0.10 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Between 1935 and 1939 AA was very small. There were only two groups, Akron and New York. During that time Br Bob's wife, Anne Smith kept a list of the first 100 AAs.
Rollie Hemsley is number 77.
Rollie Hemsley's Sobriety Date is April 16, 1939
at 23rd Anniversary of the Cosmopolitan Group, Washington, DCA brief history of the Cosmopolitan Group is read by a member and then Rollie Hemsley tells his story.
How and when he began alcoholic drinking, some adventures as an alcoholic playing professional baseball and the attention newspaper photographers payed to them, and how he got sober.
Aversion Therapy, one of the baseball teams Rollie played in paid for 'a cure' and Rollie gives a firsthand account of how Aversion Therapy worked.
During 1939, the Cleveland AAs were still commuting to Akron for their meetings. Two of them, Lloyd Tate and Bill Jones brought Rollie to Akron City Hospital, where he met Dr Bob and Rollie got sober.
From the text:So, I went into the hospital and met Dr. Bob and he said,
Rollie, What the hell are you doing here?
And I said, well, I don't know, but these two fellas here says that you can help me with my alcohol problem.
Well, he said, I believe I can because I'm one of 'em.
So they put me in bed and he asked me if I wanted to drink and I said, no.
I said, I came here to stop.
And I says, I don't want any.
He said, well, if you can stand it, why more power to you?
And I said, I'll stand it.
So anyway, he'd come in and he'd sit there and talk to me and told me some of the things that he did when he was drinking.
From the text:
So, after listening to the stories for about four days of these people and reading the red book (First Edition Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous).
The Alcoholic Anonymous stories in it,
I said to myself, well, if they could quit drinking, I can quit drinking.
So, I went back the next day or four days later, went back and joined the ball club, and I had a pretty good year that year.
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