Meanwhile, in the early 1990s Bob embarked on his first formal “influencing role”. He was appointed as a GP advisor to the Fife Health Board. In this capacity, he developed an interest in acute services and enjoyed undertaking a survey of GPs’ views of such services. Around that time there was agreement to re-jig the Scottish Cancer Group, and the Chairman’s position was advertised internally through the three Scottish Cancer Networks.” If early AAs wanted to know God’s instructions on faith, believing, prayer, study of His Word, forgiveness, healing, deliverance, love, restitution, service, resentment, fear, selfishness, dishonesty, their literature was replete with road maps to pertinent sections of the Bible and teachings about these things. I read everything I could find, and talked to everyone who I thought knew anything about it (DR. BOB, p. 56).

While the boy, Rob, was high- spirited, considered rebellious and wayward, he was also industrious and labored long and hard at anything he really wanted to do. He wanted, above all else, to become a medical doctor like his maternal grand- father. Some books and pamphlets were very frequently mentioned by A.A.’s pioneers. They were: the Bible, The Upper Room, My Utmost for His Highest, The Runner’s Bible, the Glenn Clark books, the E. Stanley Jones books, James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh, Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World, the Emmet Fox books, Harold Begbie’s books, two Lewis Browne books, William James, Carl Jung, the Oxford Group literature, and Sam Shoemaker’s books. Drs Stewart, Wallace – and later (in the final 2-3 years prior to my early retirement in 2002) Dr Lawrence – all gave me immense support and inevitably had to accept extra work during my absences. To have had unsupportive partners would have made life during those times much more difficult.”

His first discovery in his search for the facts of life on the campus was that joining the boys for a brew seemed to make up the greater part of after-class recreation. From Dr. Bob’s point of view it was the major extra-curricular activity. It had long been evident that whatever Rob did, he did well. He became a leader in the sport. He drank for the sheer fun of it and suffered little or no ill- effects. His years at Dartmouth were spent doing exactly what he wanted to do with little thought of the wishes or feelings of others—a state of mind which became more and more pre- dominant as the years passed. Rob graduated in 1902 …“summa cum laude” in the eyes of the drinking fraternity. The dean had a somewhat lower estimate. In 1935 Dr. Bob met Bill Wilson, a New York businessman and entrepreneur who was struggling with his own alcoholism. The two immediately became close friends, with Bill showing Dr. Bob how he, with spiritual help, was finally able to recover from the effects of alcoholism. While Bob was pursuing his practice visits, Sue Ibbotson was setting up “Specialty Liaison Groups” for all the major cancers. For example, there were concerns about the breast service at the time in Fife. Sue set up a breast group and Bob, significantly a GP and not a breast surgeon himself, became the group’s Chair. He recalls how, at the first meeting, he discovered that the breast surgeons from the two Fife hospitals hadn’t even met before, so he was able to introduce them. Bob comments particularly that the OSNI meetings, which brought the Scottish Macmillan GPs together once or twice a year, were very valuable for sharing ideas. Bob’s Macmillan funding gave him four sessions a week of protected time and he retained the Macmillan tag after the Macmillan funding ceased. His role as Lead GP for Cancer continued until he retired, while the administrator, nurse and lead clinician are all still there today.

The faculty had other ideas. After a long argument they allowed him to return to take his exams. He passed them creditably. After many more painful discussions, the faculty also gave him his credits. That Fall he entered Brush University as a junior. Here his drinking became so much worse that his fraternity brothers felt forced to send for his father. The Judge made the long journey in a vain effort to get him straightened out. In 1960, at the age of 14, Bob Grant started to find it difficult to walk to school and his mother noticed he had developed a limp. Bob was told by the GP, who saw him on more than one occasion, that it was just growing pains. But the pains got worse and eventually, early in 1961, another partner in the practice helped his mother get an emergency appointment at the hospital. At the time Bob was told the result of his x-rays was “not good”, but it was only much later that he found out that it was a bone tumour he had had – a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his thigh-bone (femur). SCP-056, known as "A Beautiful Person" cannot use its ability on Dr. Bob. it instead created a duplicate appearance as opposed to the "Better" form of its victim. AAs were told by Sam Shoemaker, by the Oxford Group, and by their own literature that they needed to find God and find Him now! Sam Shoemaker wrote on this topic a great deal. So did Leslie D. Weatherhead in books that Bill Wilson owned or may have owned. So did the other writers.The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, and The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence were all owned by Bob and were frequently quoted by the writers whose books Bob read. The first two years in Akron, as a young intern, were free of trouble. Hard work took the place of hard drinking simply because there wasn’t time for both. At one time during his internship he ran the hospital pharmacy by himself. This, added to other duties, took him all over the hospital, running up and down the stairs because the elevators were too slow, running here, rushing there as if the devil were after him. All this frenzied activity never failed to bring about an explosive, “Now where is that cadaverous young Yankee!” from one of the older doctors who became particularly fond of him.

We will cover our bibliographies in a moment. But here there should be a list of some particularly popular spiritual books early AAs read and which were read by Dr. Bob as well: James Allen’s As A Man Thinketh; Glenn Clark’s Fishers of Men, Two or Three Gathered Together, How to Find Health Through Prayer, and Touchdowns for the Each individual brought distinct skills to the team. For example, Murdina was an important member from Bob’s point of view, since as a GP: “There was no way I could get into the nursing situation. We talked every week.” Though they may not realize it today, AAs received a rich body of instruction concerning the body of Christ, from the Book of Acts and the many Christian materials they read. They learned the intended meaning of the fellowship of the Spirit, and how God worked with His children where two or three were gathered together. Dr. Bob’s interest in Jesus’ sermon was exemplified not only by the many times he studied and quoted it, but also by the foregoing books as well as the following specific studies of the Sermon on the Mount: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Oswald Chambers, The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones, The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox, and The Soul’s Sincere Desire and I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes by Glenn Clark.Shoemaker said you could understand and know God by following Jesus Christ’s suggestion in John 7:17 by conducting an “experiment of faith.” Once AAs abandoned the Bible, the discussions of the Creator, and their reliance on coming to God through His Son, they began to lose understanding of God. They began talking of a higher power which could be a group, a lightbulb, a door knob, a chair, and nonsense which could not be found in early A.A. nor in the literature early AAs read. Though the two years as intern at City were hectic, Dr. Bob had time to learn much from the older men who were glad to share their knowledge with him. He began to perfect his own skills so that he might be- come a specialist, a surgeon. When his two years of internship were over he opened an office in The Second National Bank Building, in Akron. This was in 1912. His offices were in the same building until he retired from practice in 1948. In Edinburgh, Bob was in a ward with other patients with advanced disease, and yet he was never told he had cancer – his mother was anxious to keep the knowledge from him. (Years later, Bob was to discover from reading his primary care notes that there was “no great expectation of survival” at the time.)

Many of the core ideas that AAs adopted were ideas that were covered in depth by many different books and materials they read. Dr. Bob recalled, bottom 96- PG97 from DR bob and good old timers—said that many early ideas A.A.’s fundamental ideas came from the study of the Bible and that he personally did not write or have anything to do with the later writing of the 12 Steps. In Dr. Bob’s mind, the Steps in their deepest essence simply mean “love and service.” After those long disastrous binges, when Dr. Bob was forced to face his father he had a deep feeling of guilt. His father always met the situation quietly, “Well, what did this one cost you?” he would ask. Oddly enough this feeling of guilt would come, not because he felt that he had hurt him in any way, but because his father seemed, somehow, to under- stand. It was this quiet, hopeless understanding that pained him. Dr. Bob has never fully shown or revealed his face, but he appears to be a tall pale Caucasian male dressed in brown work pants and a red sweater with a white lab coat sporting a bright orange name tag with his name on it. All through this period he was drinking as much as purse allowed, still without getting into any serious trouble. But he wasn’t making any headway either. He still wanted to be a doctor. It was time he was about it. He quit his job at the store and that Fall entered the University of Michigan as a pre-medical student. Again he was free of all restraint. Earnestly, he got down to the serious business of drinking as much as he could and still make it to class in the morning. His famous capacity for beer followed him to the Michigan campus. He was elected to member- ship in the drinking fraternity. Once again he displayed the wonders of his “patent throat” before his gaping brothers.

Macmillan has been absolutely crucial in Scotland in the whole development of the Lead Cancer role and in keeping the GPs together. The support I have received – from the Scottish end and also the London office – has been incredible. Whichever way I turned there was support – financial and moral, as well as the fundraising support for the coastal walk.”