March 28 in A.A. History

1945: Variety published “Alcoholics Anonymous Doing Great Job in Its New Times Square Clubhouse” [right: highlighted story on pp. 1, 19], which began:

    Alcoholics Anonymous has come to Broadway. The organization that has helped life 12,000 drunks onto the water wagon, many of them straight from the gutter, is now established in a new clubhouse on West 41st street, a few minutes from Times Sq.

The Catholic Digest later condensed and republished this article (Vol. 9, No. 7, May 1945, pp. 79-80).

1946: In a letter to the Alcoholic Foundation’s General Service Office (GSO) in New York City, John “Captain Jack” Bolton Soggett [left: as a young man], a newly sober skipper of a Socony-Vacuum oil tanker [right: such a tanker from Captain Jack’s era], requested information on Alcoholics Anonymous contacts. He explained that, after ten years of service, he was “… still at sea on oil tankers, on which I have served for ten years. I have few contacts ashore with A.A., and have to rely on the Book and the guy upstairs.”
    In response, a G.S.O. staff member provided Captain Jack with the names of A.A. contacts in port cities and encouraged him to reach out to other seagoing members, which he did. This outreach marked the beginning of The Internationalists in A.A.