Happy Birthday Ebby

On April 29 1896 Ebby (Edwin) Thacher was born into a prominent and well-to-do family in Albany, New York. His grandfather was the main supplier of wheels for the New York Central Railroad and the Mayor of Albany. Two other members of Ebby’s family were Albany mayors, including his brother Jack. Ebby and his brothers all attended the Albany Academy, which is where evidence of his future role in American social and spiritual history would first appear. Twice he was suspended from the Academy for drinking and school records show that his struggle with alcohol began at a very early age.

In Alcoholics Anonymous we know Ebby as the man (described in “As Bill Sees It”) who carried the message of recovery to Bill Wilson. It was Ebby T.—whom Bill Wilson calls, “my old friend” who came that cold late night to his Brooklyn kitchen, his eyes shining, telling Bill he was no longer drinking. A month later Ebby visited Bill in Towns Hospital and took Bill through the Six Steps of the Oxford Group—which would, in Bill’s hands, become The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith are credited with the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous but it was Ebby Thacher, the man Bill called his sponsor who was the first to carry the message of the steps to another alcoholic laying to corner stone of what has been called “the most important social and spiritual transformation of the 20th century.”

Today millions of lives have been saved and changed through Alcoholics Anonymous and the other 12 step programs (NA, OA, Al-Anon, etc.) that built on the simple message that Ebby Thacher brought to Bill Wilson in 1934.

Ebby Thacher died sober in Ballston Spa, New York March 21st, 1966.

Happy Birthday Ebby and Thank you!