December 6 in A.A. History

In 1934, Ebby T. visited Bill W. [near right: Bill & Ebby] for the second time, this time accompanied by his Oxford Group (OG) friend, Sheppard “Shep” Cornell [left] . They came to discuss the OG with Bill. Although Bill was unimpressed by Shep, his curiosity prompted him to ask Ebby to take him to the Calvary Rescue Mission, where regular OG meetings were held and where Ebby was staying. Lois W. later noted that Ebby visited several times.

In 1939, Herbert “Bert” T. [right], who owned a fashionable clothing business on 5th Avenue in New York City, loaned Works Publishing, Inc. $1,000 [~ $23,300 in 2025]. 
    In 1954, Bill W. described what had happened:

    … We learned [that Bert’s shop] was mostly on mortgage, [Bert] having drunk nearly all of it up.… 
    I went up to Bert one day and I said “Bert, there is a promise of an article in Liberty magazine.… It won’t come out until next September.… Bert, when that piece is printed, these books will go out in carload lots [i.e. railroad cars]. We need $1,000 bucks to get us through the summer.” 
    Bert asked, “Well, are you sure that the article is going to be printed?” “Oh yes,” I said, “that’s final.” He said, “O.K., I haven’t got the dough but there’s this man down in Baltimore, Mr. Cochran, he’s a customer of mine, he buys his pants in here. Let me call him up.’’
    Bert calls Mr. Cochran long-distance, explains the situation, and asks, “If you’ll just buy a couple of thousand of those books and put them in the large libraries, of course we would sell them for that purpose at a considerable discount.… Would you loan the Works Publishing Company this [$1,000]?”
    Mr. Cochran asked about the company balance sheet, and after he learned, he said “No thanks.”
    So Bert then said, “Now Mr. Cochran, you know me. Would you loan the money to me on the credit of my business?” “Why certainly,” Mr. Cochran said, “send me down your note.”
    So Bert hocked the business that a year or two later was to go broke anyway and saved the book Alcoholics Anonymous. The thousand dollars lasted until the Liberty article came out. 800 inquiries came in as a result of that, we moved a few books and we barely squeaked through the year 1939.

In 1940, Dr. Gilbert “Gib” K. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, wrote to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City a second time, requesting contact information for the nearest A.A. groups—in Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois—and enclosing $3.50 [~$79 in 2025] for a copy of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. More than six weeks earlier, on October 23, he had contacted the Foundation for help. The reply, dated December 3, informed him of the book’s cost and offered, if he requested it, contact information for the two nearest A.A. groups.

In 1979, Henrietta Buckler Seiberling [left], 91, a key figure in the founding and development of Alcoholics Anonymous, died at her home in New York City. In 1935, she had opened her home, Stan Hywet’s Gate Lodge in Akron, Ohio, to two alcoholics, Bill W. and Dr. Bob S. This meeting had marked the beginning of the worldwide A.A. movement, in which she would remain involved until the end of her life, even though she was not an alcoholic.