February 6 in A.A. History

In 1887, James “Jim” S. [left] was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. His family soon moved to Scotland and in 1907 Jim came to the U.S. He worked for newspapers in cities like Pittsburgh and Akron. His alcoholism caused significant problems in both his professional and personal life, leading him to travel the U.S. from job to job for much of the ’20s and ’30s.
    He returned to Akron—where he had previously been a reporter/editor for Goodyear Tire's Wingfoot Clan—and in July 1937 became the first Australian to get sober in A.A. Fellow members remembered him as “tall and skinny, and a real lone wolf.” In 1939, at Dr. Bob’s request, he became solicitor, editor, and often writer of the Akron stories in the 1st edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Jim's 1st edition story is “Traveler, Editor, Scholar,” retitled “The News Hawk” in the 2nd and 3rd editions. In the early ’40s he managed the Middlebury Book Shop in Akron and served on the Summit County War Finance Committee during World War II. Jim was head librarian of the Akron Beacon Journal from 1947 until his death in 1950.

In 1939, Janet Blair of Peeksill, New York, one of the two non-alcoholic editors, wrote to Hank P. about the enclosed changes she had made to the first two chapters of the Big Book manuscript [right]:

    … may I say a word about the continuity? It bothers me a little. Chapter 1, is Bill’s story. Right? Bill’s story includes a description of the terrible dilemma in which he was when his friend came to him; it includes what the doctors thought; it includes a brief account of the fellowship. It tells of the solution.
    When I started Chapter 2, I thought from the first line I was beginning the story of another man, as the first page is just that. On page 2, you leave him, and go on to tell of the fellowship and alcoholics in general. On page 8, you return to the man, and for about a page tell us more about him; the rest of the chapter is general. In Chapter 2, you never mention Bill or his friend, although the ‘solution,’ as you call Chapter 2, is given in Chapter 1.
    I’m not suggesting a change. Maybe I am the one who is befogged; but I am supposed to represent a reader, and I felt I should tell you this. At this moment, it seems to me it would have been smoother, to start Chapter 2 on page 2, “We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, know one hundred men who were once just as hopeless as Bill,” and so on.

Blair’s work earned her a letter of thanks from Bill Wilson himself, as well as a signed copy of a 1st edition, 1st printing of Alcoholics Anonymous from Hank P., which he inscribed on the front flyleaf. The inscription reads:

To Janet Blair / Whose work / and editing on this / book was so / eminently helpful [sic] / Henry G. P[—–]

In 1954, R. Brinkley S. sobered up for good at Towns Hospital after his 50th detox [reportedly].

In 1961, Bill W. wrote to Harold E. about the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

    As time passes, our book literature has a tendency to get more and more frozen—a tendency for conversion into something like dogma. This is a trait of human nature which I’m afraid we can do little about. We may as well face the fact that A.A. will always have its fundamentalists, its absolutists, and its relativists.