EBBY THACHER – AN UNHAPPY LIFE by Bob K for AA Beyond Belief
Late November 1934 seemed to be the worst of times for Bill Wilson, an unemployed and completely discredited stockbroker living in Brooklyn, New York. He had fallen from a lofty place in life. Less than six years earlier, everything had been going his way: a luxury apartment, fat profits in a booming stock market, expensive vacations in resorts areas, and a host of superficial Wall Street friends who, as he later recalled, “spent in thousands and chattered in millions.”
But something else in Bill’s world had been soaring with the stock market—a savage drinking problem that was already well out of control even before the Great Crash of 1929 left him shocked and virtually penniless . . .he was now a broken man, totally dependent on his wife’s meager earnings as a department store clerk, and fearful that he would soon be locked up. Then he received a telephone call from an old friend—a call that would change his life and through an amazing chain process, the lives of millions of others . . .
The caller was Ebby Thacher, a friend from Bill’s childhood years.
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The Thachers of Albany, New York
The story of Ebby Thacher is one of large promise and poor performance.
Generations of Thachers had succeeded in business, and Ebby grew up in luxury in Albany, New York. The Thachers wanted for nothing—their expansive home was maintained by servants. The Thachers were respected for their activities in society, church, and politics. The already prominent family’s circumstances rose when Ebby’s paternal grandfather started a railroad wheel manufacturing company in 1852. A great fortune was rapidly amassed.
George Thacher Sr., the principal supplier of wheels for the New York Central Railroad, was elected mayor of Albany in the early 1860s.”The company continued to grow under the leadership of Ebby’s father, George H. Thacher Jr. (1851-1929). and his uncle John Boyd Thacher (1847-1909). Their company, The Thacher Car Wheel Works became known as George H. Thacher & Company until 1919 . . .” (Ebby, Mel B. p. 17)
Edward Throckmorton Thacher, Ebby, was born on April 29, 1896, making him about 5 months younger that his then future school chum, Bill Wilson. Ebby was the youngest of five brothers, and his sense of entitlement was most likely to have been shaped at an early age. His father and brothers seem to have had some issues of their own, but all fared better in education and in business. “Ebby’s father and three of his brothers became heavy drinkers, but none would hit the depths that Ebby did in later years.” (Ebby, Mel B., p. 21)
