September 15 in A.A. History

In 1855, the future Dr. Clark Burnham was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a middle child among ten of Rev. Dr. Nathan Clark Burnham, Jr. [right, c. 1888] and Mary Arrison Burnham. His father practiced law, medicine, and religion, serving as an ordained minister in the Swedenborgian Church. Lois Burnham, who would become Mrs. Bill W. in 1918, would be Clark’s eldest child.

In 1940, a sober Cmdr. Junius Lee C. [left] arrived at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Jacksonville, Florida, to organize the first Aviation Training Schools there. The NAS was set to be commissioned on October 15. Cmdr. C. would become a key player in the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous in Florida.

In 1978, Father Mychal Fallon J. (born Robert Emmett J. on 11 May 1933) [right] got sober. He would die in the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 Sep 2001, while serving as a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. Although he was not the first to die, he would officially be designated as Victim 0001 because his body was the first to be recovered and taken to the medical examiner.

In 2001, on the 23rd anniversary of his sobriety, a funeral Mass for Father Mychal Fallon Judge, born Robert Emmett Judge on 11 May 1933, was celebrated by Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop of New York, at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Manhattan. Father Mychal had died in the World Trade Center attack just four days earlier. The Mass was attended by 3,000 people, including former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. President Clinton said that Judge’s death was a “special loss” and urged, “We should lift his life up as an example of what has to prevail. We have to be more like Father Mike than the people who killed him” [left: FDNY Memorial to Judge at Engine 1, Ladder 24 in Manhattan].