October 31 in A.A. History

In 1939, John Henry Fitzhugh “Fitz” M. [near right] and Hardin C. [far right]—both previously designated as “loners”—started the Washington (DC) Group of A.A. at Hardin’s home. Within months, Ned F., Bill E., George S., and Steve M. joined them. [This date assumes the group began on a Tuesday, which became their regular meeting night; they may have met for the first time 1–3 days earlier.]

In 1945, Vernon F. had his last drink. Born 22 April 1895, he joined the Pasadena (California) Group and died on 18 June 1964, with 19 years of sobriety.

In 1951, the American Public Health Association presented the Lasker Award to A.A. at their Annual Meeting held at the San Francisco Opera House for “meritorious service in the public health.” Each recipient received a statuette of the Winged Victory [left]. Originally, the award was intended for Bill W., but he asked that it be given to the Fellowship instead. The Lasker Foundation agreed, and when the Alcoholic Foundation Board polled Conference delegates by mail, they also approved. The Foundation declined the accompanying $1,000 cash grant [~$12,500 in 2025].

In 1957, John Richard “Dick” S. [right] died in Stow, Ohio. He had gotten sober on 28 February 1937 and his story, “The Car Smasher,” appeared in the 1st edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. He later rewrote it as “He Had To Be Shown” for the 2nd and 3rd editions.

In 1958, Clancy I. [below left] got sober. “I had to just get out of the rain and find a little rest,” Clancy said. “Somebody told me about a place drunks could go,” so he walked 72 blocks to a small alcohol rehabilitation center.

    He would leave a lucrative career with a Beverly Hills marketing firm to become the managing director of the Midnight Mission in downtown’s Skid Row, returning as a transformative leader to an institution that had once expelled him for bad behavior. Under his leadership, the soup kitchen and housing facilities would expand to include programs that addressed the social needs of those on Skid Row.

In 1963, Rev. Dr. Samuel Shoemaker [right], 69, died at Burnside, the family home in Green Spring Valley, Maryland, located 10 miles [~16 km] north of Baltimore. In his February 1967 A.A. Grapevine tribute titled “I Stand by the Door,” Bill W. remarked:     Dr. Sam Shoemaker was one of A.A.’s indispensables. Had it not been for his ministry to us in our early time, our Fellowship would not be in existence today.

In 1974, Sylvia K. S., 68, the first woman to achieve permanent long-term sobriety and author of “Keys to the Kingdom” in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions of Alcoholics Anonymous, died in Sarasota, Florida, possibly from emphysema [left: obituary from the 1 Nov 1974 Sarasota (FL) Journal, p. 4-A]. She was 35 years sober at the time.

October 30 in A.A. History

In 1940, the first A.A. meeting in St. Louis—and in the state of Missouri—was held at the Gibson Hotel, 5883 Enright Avenue [right, c. 1940s].^* Father Ed had been contacted by F., who claimed that his son-in-law had a drinking problem. However, it turned out that F. himself was the one struggling and seeking help. With Father Ed’s support and encouragement, F. gathered four other individuals and met with them at the Gibson Hotel. In December, they would form the first A.A. group in St. Louis.

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^*Some have suggested that this occurred after Father Edward Dowling returned to St. Louis from New York City, where he had met Bill Wilson at the 24th Street Clubhouse. However, that meeting did not take place until November 16, more than two weeks later.

In 1940, Bill W. wrote to a member in Richmond, Virginia, saying in part,

    I am always glad to say privately that some of the Oxford Group presentation and emphasis upon the Christian message saved my life. Yet it is equally true that other attitudes of the O.G. nearly got me drunk again, and we long since discovered that if we were to approach alcoholics successfully, these would have to be abandoned.

    He listed eight criticisms, including one concerning the Four Absolutes:

	… when the word “absolute” was put in front of these attributes, they either turned people away by the hundreds or gave a temporary spiritual inflation resulting in collapse. The Four Absolutes were originally published in Robert E. Speers’ The Principles of Jesus (1902) [left: 5th ed. title page].

October 29 in A.A. History

In 1881, Rowland G. Hazard, Jr. [right] was born into a prominent and immensely wealthy Rhode Island industrial family residing in a colony of estates in Peace Dale (South Kingston), Rhode Island. He was the oldest of five children born to Rowland Gibson Hazard and Mary Bushnell Hazard. An unbroken line of Hazard men named Rowland dated back to 1763. His father, grandfather, and great-great-grandfather had shared the same name, prompting him to adopt the suffix “III” to distinguish himself from his namesakes. The Hazard family’s colonial roots trace back to 1635, with its members being large landowners, manufacturers, and individuals of note in science and literature. They were widely respected as achievers and philanthropists.
    In 1934, Rowland would play a prominent role in helping Edwin “Ebby” T. get sober in the Oxford Group.

	In 1929 [Black Tuesday] The U.S. stock market crashed, leaving Bill W. broke and $60,000 in debt [~$1,100,000 in 2025]. He and his benefactor, Frank Shaw, parted ways. Later—possibly in November—Bill’s friend Dick Johnson offered him a job in Montreal with the stock brokerage firm Greenshields & Co. [left: Greenshields & Co. legal notice, in Montreal’s The Gazette, p. 26; right: Aldred Building, Montreal, Quebec—home of Greenshields and Co., 1930].     By Christmas, the W―—s would be in Canada.

In 1941, Bill W. spoke in Evansville, Indiana, praising James D. “J.D.” H. as the founder of the first A.A. group in Indiana, established in Evansville on April 23, 1940, approximately eighteen months prior.

In 1943, Don F. traveled from Omaha, Nebraska, to make a 12th-Step call on Judge Ray H. at his Des Moines office [left: Des Moines, looking east down Walnut Street from 9th Street, c. 1940s?]. Also present were Bill A. and Herbert L. It turned out that the judge had been dry on his own for a month, while Don F. had only been sober for two weeks.
    An immediate stream of lively, witty, and engaging correspondence began between Ray H. and the staff of the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City. Within a month, the letters from Iowa were printed on stationery bearing an “Alcoholics Anonymous” letterhead. Ray adopted the pseudonym “Hildegarde” and began sending the Foundation “News Flashes” and "Bedtime Stories" about the happenings in Des Moines A.A. By its third meeting, the group had grown to 17 members and secured its own P.O. box.

October 28 in A.A. History

In 1918, Bill W. [right, 1919 in France] arrived in France with Battery C, 66th Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps (C.A.C.). They would remain there until the end of the Great War (World War I) just 14 days later, on November 11 at 11:11 a.m., but would not return home until May 1919.

	In 1919, the U.S. Senate voted 65–20 to override President Wilson’s veto of the Volstead (National Prohibition) Act the day before; the House had also voted to override on the same day. Sponsored by the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Representative Andrew Volstead [left] of Minnesota, the act implemented the 18th Amendment, which prohibited “intoxicating liquors” without providing a clear definition.

    Some members of Congress believed this referred only to hard liquor. However, Wayne Wheeler [right], the head of the Anti-Saloon League, who actually written the legislation, had crafted it to define intoxicating liquors as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol. The legislation made it illegal to “manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish, or possess” such beverages, though it did not prohibit their consumption.

In 1936, William “Bill” C. [left], 36, committed suicide at the home of Bill and Lois W., located at 182 Clinton St., Brooklyn, while the couple was in Maryland visiting Fitz M and his wife.
    Bill C. had been living with the W―—s for nearly a year and had been left in charge of the house. A brilliant lawyer from Canada, he worked for a prominent law firm by day and played bridge for money by night. The W―—s had rarely seen him and did not know him as well as they did most of their other house guests. His gambling appeared to be an even greater obsession than his drinking.

    Bill W. returned home first. Upon opening the front door, he smelled gas. In the kitchen upstairs, he found Bill’s body on the floor, with a tube from the stove’s gas jet in his mouth. He had been dead for several days. Lois arrived the following day to find that Bill had already taken care of every detail [right: Daily News article from 29 Oct].
    It took several months for the W―—s to realize that Bill had been selling their personal belongings and dress clothes, which were hung in a closet near the hallway bedroom he occupied. Among the missing items were Bill’s dress suit, his evening jacket, Lois’s black velvet evening wrap lined with white velvet, and several evening gowns. Suitcases were also missing. These were the remnants of the W―—s’ once affluent lifestyle. His remorse for these thefts may have contributed to Bill’s decision to take his own life.

In 1940, Doherty “Dohr” S. [left], a retired local businessman, Irish Catholic, and devoutly religious, founded the first A.A. group in Indianapolis, Indiana. Desperate to stop drinking, Dohr had reached out to the Cleveland group for help. In response, Clarence S. had sent Irwin M. to make a 12th-step call on Dohr and guide him in starting an A.A. group.

In 1988, sociologist Milton A. Maxwell [right], PhD, 81, died. He had served as a Class A (non-alcoholic) Trustee on the General Service Board from 1971 to 1982, including the last four years as Chairman. Also, he had been an original member of the Trustees’ Archives Committee.

Today in A.A. History—October 27-31

In 2024, the 28th biennial World Service Meeting was held at the Westin at Times Square Hotel in New York City [left: Final Report cover]. The meeting’s theme was “The Three Legacies in the Digital Era: Our Great Responsibility to the Alcoholic Being Born Today.” Seventy-four delegates from forty-nine General Service structures were represented:

Argentina	Australia	Belgium (Dutch-Speaking)	Bolivia	Bulgaria	Brazil	Central America/Southern Zone
Chile	Colombia	Czech Republic	Denmark	Dominican Republic	Ecuador	Finland
French-Speaking Europe	German-Speaking Europe	Great Britain	Greece	Guatemala	Honduras	Hong Kong
Hungary	Iceland	India	Iran	Ireland	Italy	Japan
Latvia	Lithuania	Mexico	Netherlands	New Zealand	Norway	Paraguay
Peru	Poland	Portugal	Romania	Russia	Slovakia	Slovenia
South Africa	Spain	Sweden	Turkey	U.S./Canada	Uruguay	Venezuela

October 26 in A.A. History

In 1937, Dr. Leonard V. Strong [near right], brother-in-law of Bill W. [middle right], married to Bill’s sister Dorothy, wrote him a letter introducing Bill to Rev. Williard S. Richardson [far right]:

Dear Mr. Richardson,
    This will serve to introduce my brother-in-law, Mr. William W—–, of whom I spoke in our telephone conversation yesterday.
    His work with alcoholics appears very effective and I think merits your interest and possibly that of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Your courtesy in seeing him is greatly appreciated by me, and I regret my inability to be present.

    Bill would meet Richardson shortly afterward in his 56th-floor office in the RCA building. Richardson was warmly cordial; Bill described him as “an elderly gentleman who had twinkling eyes set in one of the finest faces I have ever seen.” He showed deep interest as Bill shared his own story and that of the struggling Fellowship.

In 1939 , the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the final article [left] in Elrick B. Davis’s five-part series titled “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here.” It read, in part,

    It is hard for the skeptical to believe that no one yet has found a way to muscle into Alcoholics Anonymous, the informal society of ex-drunks that exists only to cure each other, and make a money-making scheme of it. Or that someone will not. 
    The complete informality of the society seems to be what has saved it from that. Members pay no dues. The society has no paid staff. Parties are “Dutch.” Meetings are held at the homes of members who have houses large enough for such gatherings, or in homes of persons who may not be alcoholics but are sympathetic with the movement.

			In 1939, the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City, presumably Ruth Hock [far left], wrote a letter to John “Fitz” M. [middle left], a “loner” living in Washington, DC. The letter referred another Washington “loner,” Hardin C. [near left?], to Fitz. Within days, the Washington Group of A.A., the first in that city, will be established out of the contact between these two men.

October 25 in A.A. History

In 1939, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the fourth article [right] in Elrick B. Davis’s five-part series titled “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here.” It read, in part,

    What gets the pathological drinker who finally has reached such state that he is willing to listen to a cured rummy member of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that the retrieved alcoholic not only understands what only another alcoholic can understand, but a great deal that the unreformed drunk thinks no one else could know because he has never told anyone, and his difficulties or escapades must be private to his own history.
    Fact is the history of all alcoholics is the same; some have been addicts longer than others, and some have painted brighter red patches around the town — that is all. What they have heard in the “cure” hospitals they have frequented, or from the psychoanalysts they have consulted, or the physicians who have tapered them off one bender or another at home, has 
has convinced them that alcoholism is a disease. But they are sure (a) that their version of the disease differs from everyone else’s and (b) that in them it hasn’t reached the incurable stage anyway.…
    He presents his excuses to the retrieved alcoholic who has come to talk. Can’t sleep without liquor. Worry. Business troubles. Debt. Alimentary pains. Overwork. Nerves too high strung. Grief. Disappointment. Deep dark phobic fears. Fatigue. Family difficulties. Loneliness.
    The catalog has got no farther than that when the member of Alcoholics Anonymous begins rattling off an additional list.
    “Hogwash,” he says. “Don’t try those alibis on me. I have used them all myself.”

October 24 in A.A. History

In 1939, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the third article [right] in Elrick B. Davis's five-part series, “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here.” It read, in part,

    The ex-drunks cured of their medically incurable alcoholism by membership in Alcoholic Anonymous, know that the way to keep themselves from backsliding is to find another pathological alcoholic to help. Or to start a new man toward cure. That is the way that the Akron chapter of the society, and from that, the Cleveland fellowship was begun.
    One of the earliest of the cured rummies had talked a New York securities house into taking a chance that he was really through with liquor. He was commissioned to do a stock promotion chore in Akron. If he should succeed, his economic troubles also would be cured. Years of alcoholism had left him bankrupt as well as a physical and social wreck before Alcoholics Anonymous had saved him.
    His Akron project failed. Here he was on a Saturday afternoon in a strange hotel in a town where he did not know a soul, business hopes blasted, and with scarcely money enough to get him back to New York with a report that would leave him without the last job he knew of for him in the world. If ever disappointment deserved drowning, that seemed the time. 

	In 1943, Bill and Lois W. [left] left home for their first major A.A. tour. Bill called it their “trip to the coast” and they stopped in at least three places: Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon, where they “looked in on Doc H., an Oregon chiropractor who was struggling with the alkies in Portland;” and Seattle, Washington, where they “first met businessman Dale A. [right], who with real valor was trying hard to hold a small band together.”

    Bill and Lois returned home 87 days later, on January 19.

In 1973, the newly created Trustee’s Archives Committee held its first meeting. The committee consisted of alcoholic (Class B) General Service Trustee George G. as chair, two non-alcoholic (Class A) Trustees—Rev. Lee Archer Belford and Dr. Milton A. Maxwell—and Archivist Nell Wing, who had been appointed A.A.’s first Archivist in the year before.

October 23 in A.A. History

In 1939, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the second article [right] in Elrick B. Davis’s series of five, titled “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here.” It read, in part,

    There is no blinking the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous, the amazing society of ex-drunks who have cured each other of an incurable disease, is religious. Its members have cured each other frankly with the help of God. Every cured member of the Cleveland Fellowship of the society, like every cured member of the other chapters now established in Akron, New York, and elsewhere in the country, is cured with the admission that he submitted his plight wholeheartedly to a Power Greater than Himself.

In 1940, Dr. Gilbert “Gib” K., a dentist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reached out to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City for help, becoming the first alcoholic contact in that city.
Gentlemen,

    Recently there has been called to my attention an article which appeared in the May 17, 1940 issue of the “Green Sheet” of the Milwaukee Journal that interests me very much. Several lengthy columns are there devoted to a general description of your unique attack, or rather approach, in the direction: “alcoholism.” Since the common sense method employed by your “Foundation” seems more nearly to solve my own personal problem than any other I have heard of, I am moved to write you for a little further information. Is there an active group or “chapter” located here in Milwaukee whom I might contact? If not, any other details you may wish to offer me will be greatly appreciated.

    In December, the Foundation replied that there was “no A.A. Fellowship in Milwaukee or its immediate vicinity; the closest to you being located at Madison, Wisconsin or Chicago, Illinois.” They invited him to write again if he wanted contact information.

October 22 in A.A. History

In 1939, the first public meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in New Jersey took place at the South Orange Community Center [right]. Gordon MacD., a newcomer with only five months of sobriety, along with Herb D., had arranged for the meeting space to accommodate the growing New Jersey Group, which then had between twenty-five and thirty members attending its meetings. The meeting was held on a Sunday evening at 5:30 PM and marked the beginning of regular Sunday night meetings at the Community Center. This group, the New Jersey Group, would eventually become the “mother group” for all of New Jersey and later be known as the South Orange Sunday Night Group.

In 1963, alcoholism educator and friend of Alcoholics Anonymous, Elvin Morton “Bunky” Jellinek [left], better known as E. M. Jellinek, died of a heart attack at his desk at Stanford University at the age of 72. Jellinek coined the phrase “disease concept of alcoholism” and significantly advanced the movement towards the medicalization of drunkenness and alcohol habituation. His initial study in 1946 was funded by A.A. members Marty M. and R. Brinkley S.

    According to a 1998 study by Mariana Valverde [right], Jellinek’s study was based on a narrow, selective study of a hand-picked group of AA members who had returned a self-reporting questionnaire. Valverde noted that the study’s findings were only relevant to “the experience of white, male, middle-class alcoholics in the 1940s.” Valverde also opined that a biostatistician of Jellinek’s eminence would have been well aware of the “unscientific status” of the “dubiously scientific data that had been collected by A.A. members.”

October 21 in A.A. History

	In 1862, Bill W.’s maternal grandfather, Gardner Fayette Griffith [left], enlisted in Brattleboro, Vermont, for nine months with his military unit, Vermont’s Company B, 14th Regiment [right: a Company B sergeant, c. 1863], under Colonel William T. Nichols. The unit spent most of those nine months—until July 3, 1863—stationed near Fairfax Court House, Virginia, where they frequently encountered guerrillas and Mosby’s rebel cavalry. They played a crucial role in defeating the Confederate Army at the Battle of Gettysburg.

    When Bill was 16, Griffith would take him to a large 50th anniversary reunion in Gettysburg.

In 1939, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio) published the first [right] in a series of five articles by Elrick B. Davis, titled “Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here”:

    By now it is a rare Clevelander who does not know, or know of, at least one man or woman of high talent whose drinking had become a public scandal, and who suddenly has straightened out “over night,” as the saying goes—the liquor habit licked. Men who have lost $15,000 [~$350,000 in 2025] a year jobs have them back again. Drunks who have taken every “cure” available to the most lavish purse, only to take them over again with equally spectacular lack of success, suddenly have become total abstainers, apparently without anything to account for their reform. Yet something must account for the seeming miracle. Something does.
    Alcoholics Anonymous has reached the town.

    The publication of this series attracted a surge of newcomers, and soon Cleveland A.A. had more members than both Akron, Ohio, and New York City. Bill W. would later write,

    The Cleveland pioneers had proved… the tremendous fact that A.A., when the word really got around, could now soundly grow to great size.

In 1985, the 8th World Service Meeting (WSM) took place in New York City with the theme “The World Service Meeting Takes Its Inventory.” Thirty-eight delegates attended. Two recommendations for future WSMs were made: 

1. to hold a similar sharing session between WSM delegates and the trustees of the U.S./Canada General Service Board at the Tenth WSM in New York; and 
2. to include a Delegates Only Meeting on the agenda for the Ninth WSM, scheduled for Guatemala in 1986. 

A third recommendation was discussed and forwarded to A.A.W.S. for implementation: that…

    A.A.W.S. prepare a booklet briefly highlighting the purpose and history of the World Service Meeting and include recommendations from 1969 to the present. Recommendations will be updated as practicable, and information about interim meetings will also be included.

October 20 in A.A. History

In 1928, Bill W. wrote and signed a pledge [right] in the family Bible: “To my beloved wife that has endured so much, let this stand as evidence to you that I have finished with drink forever.” This would be the first of four such pledges.

	In 1945, Dr. William Silkworth [left] was appointed as the director of the 19-bed alcoholics’ ward at Knickerbocker Hospital [right] in New York City. This facility was the first general hospital in the city to establish such a unit, having opened it on Easter Sunday, April 1.

    The opening of this ward is significant because, at that time, many general hospitals refused to admit alcoholics directly; their doctors often had to use false diagnoses for admission. Silkworth likely had been involved with the Knickerbocker ward from its inception and would go on to dedicate the rest of his life to treating an estimated 7,000 alcoholics at both Knickerbocker and Towns Hospitals.

	In 1963, Ethelred Frances Folsom [left], better known to A.A. members as Sister Francis—having renamed herself after her favorite saint—died in Litchfield County, Connecticut. In 1926, she had purchased farmland in Kent, Connecticut, and named it Joy Farm. She had later renamed it High Watch Farm [right: part of High Watch Farm], which some claim was the world’s first 12-step treatment center.

October 19 in A.A. History

	1948, Paul H. [left, 1956], a practicing attorney and Rhodes Scholar, wrote to Bill W. [right, 1956], asking him to confirm the details of a story Bill had recounted, which Paul had documented in a memo dated October 12, titled “BILL’S STORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE ‘TWELVE STEPS.’”

    On January 31, Paul and Eileen B.,^* had accompanied Bill and his wife, Lois, on a train ride from New York City to Washington, DC. The following night, Bill, Lois, and Paul had attended an A.A. banquet where Paul had spoken about the late Fitz M. [right]. During the train ride, Bill shared a verbal account of his writing of the Twelve Steps. In his letter, Paul reminded Bill,

    I said that this was the first time I had ever heard the story and that I believe it was of sufficient importance to commit to writing. I am still of that opinion.

    Paul enclosed two copies of the memo, stating that if it “needs amplification or clarification, please let me know.” If not, he asked Bill to initial one copy and return it. Paul concluded his letter by saying,

    As soon as we reached Washington… I dictated my version of Bill’s story to Eileen Barrett who agreed with my version as outlined. This memorandum has been compiled from the original draft, which is now before me, and also from a subsequent conversation with Bill.

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^*Ms. B. may have been Paul’s secretary, as he “dictated” the story to her; little else is known about her, although it does seem she was well-known in A.A. circles.

October 18 in A.A. History

		In 1952, The Saturday Evening Post [far left: cover] published an anonymous article titled “I’m a nurse in an Alcoholic Ward” [near left]. The author was Theresa “Teddy” R., a nurse at Knickerbocker Hospital [near right, c. 1940; far right: Knickerbocker ambulance at Knickerbocker entrance] in New York City. Dr. William Silkworth, a colleague, referred to her as a “red-headed powerhouse.” The teaser for the article read,

    The author—a onetime alcoholic—has nursed 5,000 drunks through the fading hours of their most spectacular sprees. Here is what she has faced in salvaging doctors, lawyers, ministers, priests, housewives, and stenographers from drink and the devil.

    In the article, Teddy explained her motivation: 

    After a month of daily increasing happiness I was struck with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. 
    I was grateful to that lonely handful of men who formulated the AA principles of recovery and set them down; grateful to the thousands of alcoholics who, in the face of every conceivable difficulty and temptation, had picked up these tenets and doggedly clung to them, fighting to hang on to their sobriety so it could be passed on to me. I felt I must do something in return.
    When I learned about the A.A. ward at Knickerbocker I knew what that something would have to be. I was a trained nurse. During all the years I had frittered away, that training had seemed meaningless. Now it made sense—I was meant to work in that ward. I bombarded the supervising nurse with telephone calls by day, and prayers to God at night, and three months later I got the job.
    These five years have brought deep satisfactions. I can’t convey how much it means to see the transformation in people. They come to us physical, mental and moral wrecks. They leave encouraged but still uncertain. Then, months later, they come back–bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, eager to help; job back, family back, going concerns again, ready to pass on, with dividends, what’s been given to them. To know that I had some small part in this rebirth is a blessing far beyond what I deserve.