May 27 in A.A. History

1917: Nellie “Nell” Wing [right, c. 1946] was born in Kendall, New York, the daughter of William Frank and Daisy Shepard Wing.
    She would serve as Bill W.’s secretary and administrative assistant at the Alcoholic Foundation (later the General Service Office) in New York City from March 1947 until Bill’s death in 1971. She then served as A.A.’s first official Archivist from early 1972 until her retirement in December 1982.

1961: James “J.D.” H., A.A. #8, died at the age of 66 from “coronary insufficiency” at his home at 657 Elma Street [left, in June 2011] in Akron, Ohio. He had gotten sober in Akron in September 1936.

Today in A.A. History—month & day unknown

1912: Construction began on Stan Hywet (pronounced “stan HEE'•wit”) [right: Manor House under construction], a name derived from Old English meaning “stone quarry” and reflecting the property’s most prominent natural feature. This 3,000-acre tract would become the home of Franklin “Frank” Seiberling and his family in 1915. By 2022, the estate property had dwindled to only 70 acres.

1913: [Summer] Bill W. and Lois Burnham first met at Emerald Lake [left], in Vermont, situated below and behind the Burnhams’ cottage there. Lois was vacationing with her family when her younger brother, Rogers, introduced her to Bill. Lois, who was more than four years Bill’s senior, initially viewed him simply as a friend of her brother.

1915: The French prayer, “Belle prière à faire pendant la messe” (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass), was sent to Pope Benedict XV [left] in 1915 by the French Marquis Stanislas de La Rochethulon [right]. Originally published in December 1912 in the Parisian magazine La Clochette (The Little Bell), the prayer came to be known as “The Prayer of St. Francis.”

Today in A.A. History—year, month & day unknown

~1911: Annie C., who would author “Annie the Cop Fighter” in the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, had her first drink at approximately age 31.

May 26 in A.A. History

1924: The U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce published “The Italian dyestuffs industry: production, export, and import statistics” [left: cover] written by Dr. Frederick E. Breithut [right, 1923], American Trade Commissioner to Germany, and J. Allen Palmer [far right, c. 1930], Assistant Trade Commissioner.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1902: The Principles of Jesus [far left: cover] by Robert E. Speer [near left, 1904], was published. On page 35 [right: with relevant passages highlighted], Speer identified the Four Absolutes that became central to Oxford Group practice.

1903: Rev. Purley Albert Baker [left], former superintendent of the Ohio Anti-Saloon League, was elected general superintendent of the National Anti-Saloon League. Under his leadership, a collection of organizations previously united in name only transformed into a cohesive federation with unified national leadership and goals.
    Meanwhile, Rev. Howard Hyde Russell [right], Baker's predecessor, shifted his focus to other endeavors. These included establishing the Lincoln-Lee Legion, a pledge program encouraging signers to abstain from alcoholic beverages [left: Lincoln-Lee Legion pledge card]. This program significantly expanded the League’s access to more churches.

1905: The Anti-Saloon League’s recovery from its financial and organizational difficulties culminated in its success in the Ohio governor's race. Incumbent Republican Governor Myron P. Herrick [left, c. 1912] had thwarted the League’s push for local option legislation, known as the Brannock Bill. Disagreeing with the bill’s scope, Herrick threatened a veto and worked to send it back to a conference committee for revision. Incensed by his actions, League leaders resolved to unseat him in his re-election bid.
    Recognizing Ohio as a Republican stronghold, the League initially sought a candidate to challenge Governor Herrick for his party’s nomination. When that effort failed, they turned to the Democrats. With the power and prestige of their organization at stake in this highly visible race, they threw their support behind Democrat John M. Pattison [right, before 1912]. Pattison won by a substantial margin, despite Republicans securing every other statewide office that election year—a clear testament to the League’s growing influence.

1908: Ernest Jacoby [left, 1913], a Boston, Massachusetts businessman originally from England, began working with the group at Emmanuel Church, bringing together leaders, including those who were struggling with alcoholism. It became known as the Jacoby Club of Boston.
    The Jacoby Club grew out of the Emmanuel movement, which was led by Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester [near right, c. 1915] of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church [far right, 1909] on Newbury Street. In addition to his pastoral duties, Worcester practiced a method of spiritual healing aimed at various neurotic disorders. He believed that alcoholics could find relief by redirecting their focus from their problems to a life centered on service and spirituality. His treatment approach emphasized key components such as prayer, group support, and self-help.

A.A. History—year, month & day unknown

1905–15: Initially struggling with organizational and financial difficulties since its founding in 1895, the National Anti-Saloon League dramatically turned its fortunes around. By 1908, the League had not only doubled the number of churches cooperating with it but also established state leagues in all but four states.

May 25 in A.A. History

1925: Bill and Lois W. were five and a half weeks into a motorcycle trip investigating publicly held companies across the eastern U.S. They were staying at “The Camp,” as the Burnham family called it, located at Lake Emerald outside North Dorset, Vermont [left: Lois's father sitting on steps at "The Camp"]. In her Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos, Lois recorded how “Two tragedies occurred in the insect and bird life today.” She watched with “astonishment” as a dragonfly emerged from the “ugly brown beetle shell” she had found. As it flew away, a phoebe bird “darted down and gobbled it up!” Lois “sat down and cried. Later [that] afternoon, one of the babies of the same phoebe bird fell out of its nest and was killed instantly” [right: phoebe eating a dragonfly].

1962: The three-day Central New York Area Conference began at the Watson Homestead Conference and Retreat Center [left: with commemorative conference coin] in Painted Post, New York.

1989: The four-day 32nd International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) opened at the Salt Lake City Marriott and Salt Palace [right: aerial view of Salt Palace (left) and Marriott (right)] in Utah, drawing an attendance of 4,000. The theme of the conference was “Carry the Message.”

A.A. History—month and day unknown

1893: An unidentified temperance organization, similar to the Ohio Anti-Saloon League, was established in Washington, D.C. It would join the Ohio Anti-Saloon League to form the nucleus of the National Anti-Saloon League.

1902: Howard Alfred “Al” S. [left] was born in Charleston, Pennsylvania, the son of Emmett Fox’s secretary. After working in advertising and film, he would join A.A. in 1944. Within the Fellowship, he would serve as Director of the New York Intergroup Association, Grapevine Editor (1948–?), a Grapevine Director, and a Class B (alcoholic) Trustee from 1958 to 1961. He would author the Responsibility Pledge, which would be introduced to the Fellowship at the 1965 International Convention in Toronto, Ontario. He would also write the biographical book Bert D.: Hardhat, Inebriate, Scholar, published by Harbor House in the 1960s.

A.A. History—year, month and day unknown

1890s: The National Anti-Saloon League faced significant organizational and financial difficulties. Its founder, Howard Hyde Russell [right], and other leaders were forced to personally solicit funds to support themselves.

1898–99: One Charles Henry S. was born to Jarius A. S. and Jennie D. Horton in New York, the 2nd of four children. [This may or may not be the Charlie Simonson who got sober in Akron, Ohio in May 1937.]

May 24 in A.A. History

1893: Founded in Oberlin, Ohio, by a group of ministers and professors, the Anti-Saloon League became a key component of the Progressive Era. Its primary aim was to promote temperance and influence state government. The League garnered strong support in the South and rural North, particularly from Protestant ministers and their congregations, including Methodists, Baptists, Disciples, and Congregationalists. Focusing on legislation, it was concerned with how legislators voted, not whether they drank. Its motto was “The saloon must go” [right: Anti-Saloon League poster].
    Initially established as a state society in Ohio, the League’s influence quickly expanded, becoming a national organization in 1895. It rapidly emerged as the most powerful prohibition lobby in the United States, surpassing both the older Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party. The League’s ultimate success culminated in nationwide prohibition, enshrined in the Constitution through the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919.

1949: Bill W. [left: at a podium] delivered a talk titled “The Society of Alcoholics Anonymous” at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, held at the Windsor Hotel [right, c. 1949] in Montreal, Quebec. His presentation took place on the second day of the event, which ran from Monday, May 23, through Friday, May 27.
    During his presentation, Bill referenced an original six-step program—the earliest known mention of such a program. This was a significant detail, as it had been ten and a half years since he drafted the more widely known Twelve Steps for the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in December 1938. He stated categorically that these six steps had not evolved over time but had been explicitly given to him by Ebby T. in November 1934:

    My former schoolmate [Ebby] did, however, ascribe his new sobriety to certain ideas that this alcoholic [Rowland Hazard] and other Oxford people had given him. The particular practices my friend had selected for himself were simple:

1. He admitted he was powerless to solve his own problem.
2. He got honest with himself as never before; made an examination of conscience.
3. He made a rigorous confession of his personal defects.
4. He surveyed his distorted relations with people, visiting them to make restitution.
5. He resolved to devote himself to helping others in need, without the usual demand for personal prestige or material gain.
6. By meditation he sought God’s direction for his life and help to practice these principles at all times.

    Most A.A. historians who have researched the subject believe that no formalized six-step program existed during the so-called ‘Flying Blind’ period, even though these six steps likely sum up and summarize the practices of that era.

1950: James “Jim” S. [far left], 63, chief librarian of the Akron Beacon Journal, died at his home in Akron, Ohio [near left: obituary]. He was the first Australian to achieve sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, doing so in Akron in June 1937. Scott solicited, edited, and sometimes wrote several stories from Akron members that were included in the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. His own story appeared in that edition as “Traveler, Editor, Scholar” and in the second and third editions as “The News Hawk."

A.A. History—month and day unknown

1880: Annie C. was born. She would join Alcoholics Anonymous in April 1947. Her story, “Annie the Cop Fighter” appeared in the second edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

May 23 in A.A. History

1888: Dr. Nathan Clark Burnham and Matilda Hoyt Spelman [left, respectively, c. 1888] were married in Brooklyn, New York, likely at the local Swedenborgian Church [right: Clark St. & Monroe Place, 1922]. Their first child was Lois, who would marry Bill W.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1966: The AA Exchange Bulletin, later renamed Box 4-5-9, in a short item named “AA on TV,” announced [left] the creation of four 60-second A.A. television spots. Public Information Committees, Groups, and Central Offices could purchase these spots for $20 each [~$206 in 2026].
    These spots featured real A.A. members, whose faces were not visible, but who represented a diverse cross-section of society: a truck driver, a housewife, a switchboard operator, and a business executive. Each concluded with an appearance by Dr. John “Jack” L. Norris, the Class A (non-alcoholic) chairman of the General Service Board [right, 1967]. He affirmed that while A.A. did not solicit members, it stood ready to assist anyone struggling with their drinking.
    These spots were intended for local television stations to air as Public Service Announcements (PSAs). Stations broadcast PSAs at no charge, fulfilling their legal requirement to provide free airtime for a certain number of them.

A.A. History—year, month & day unknown

Early 1860s: After five years in Sing Sing prison [left], Jeremiah “Jerry” McAuley [near right] was moved to tears at a Sunday chapel service. The cause: Hezekiah Orville “Awful” Gardner [far right], a man with whom Jerry had collaborated on many corrupt enterprises, was testifying to his Christian conversion. Jerry immediately recognized Orville’s sincerity.
    Orville’s powerful testimony ignited Jerry’s own search for answers in the Bible. Night after night, he read, fueling a burning desire to experience the same transformation he had witnessed in Orville. A still, small voice within him urged, “Pray,” but Jerry felt utterly unable to. The inner voice then reminded him of the publican’s prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Still, he couldn’t bring himself to pray, and the struggle continued.
    “It was as if God were fighting the devil for me,” Jerry later recalled. “To every thought that came up, there came a verse of Scripture.”
    For three or four weeks, this internal battle persisted. Many times, he would drop to his knees, only to quickly jump up again, prayer eluding him. One day, a female missionary visited the prison. Her fervent prayers, as she literally cried out to the Lord, moved Jerry deeply and intensified his already profound struggle. That night, he resolved to remain on his knees until he found forgiveness. As he later recounted in his autobiography, Transformed:; or, The History of a River Thief, Briefly Told [right: 1st edition title page]:

    All at once it seemed as if something supernatural was in my room. I was afraid to open my eyes. I was in an agony and the tears rolled off my face in great drops. How I longed for Gods [sic] mercy! Just then, in the very height of my distress, it seemed as if a hand was laid upon my head and these words came to me: “My son, thy sins which are many are forgiven.” I do not know if I heard a voice, yet the words were distinctly spoken in my soul. I jumped from my knees. I paced up and down my cell. A heavenly light seemed to fill it. A softness and a perfume like the fragrance of flowers. I did not know if I was living or not. I clapped my hands and shouted, “Praise God! Praise God!”

May 22 in A.A. History

1940: Works Publishing, Inc. was legally established as the publishing arm of the Alcoholic Foundation. Bill W. [near right] and Hank P. [far right] had been asked to surrender their stock [left: one share]. As a condition of this surrender, Dr. Bob and Anne S. would receive 10% royalties for life on sales of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous (35¢ per book [~$8.33 in 2026]), royalties that would normally have gone to Bill as the author. Hank had been persuaded to give up his shares in exchange for a $200 payment [~$4,760 in 2026] for office furniture he asserted was his even though he had likely already sold it to them once.

1943:  Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland, Ohio celebrated its 4th anniversary. The June 1943 Central Bulletin reported [right] on the event:

FOUNDERS’ ANNIVERSARY PARTY

    Over 300 [?] persons jammed Masonic Hall in Cleveland Heights when the originators of the AA movement in Cleveland helped sponsor the Fourth Anniversary party, Saturday evening, May 22, in conjunction with the Lee Mayfield Group. After an excellent dinner, where the choice was steak or chicken, various speakers arose and spoke on the progress of the AA movement in Cleveland. These speakers included the first Clevelander in AA and the several others who were convinced by him as well as well-known Akronites.
    Excellent entertainment was also supplied and with the singing of Old [sic] Lang Syne, the crowd disbanded united in praise for the committee who arranged this inspiring evening.

1948: New Jersey’s Atlantic City Group [left: brochure for this group] celebrated its second anniversary. The event featured talks by several A.A. members and Dr. C. Nelson Davis, the non-alcoholic co-founder of the Saul Clinic. Dr. Davis established the clinic—the first private treatment center for alcoholism in the U.S.—in 1946 with C. Dudley Saul at St. Luke’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1986: The 29th International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) convened at the Hyatt Regency in Miami, Florida [near right: registration form; far right: press release].

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1956: The first issue of the A.A. Exchange Bulletin—Volume 1, Number 1 [left: page 1]—was published. This publication consolidated several existing newsletters, among them The General Service Bulletin. The General Service Bulletin had previously been known as The Group Secretary, and was originally called The A.A. Bulletin. It described itself this way:

    This new General Service Headquarters publication, which will be distributed to all groups and to lone members and Internationalists throughout the world, replaces the single-sheet “General Service Bulletin” which, in one form at or another, carried Headquarters news to the movement for more than a decade.
    The “Exchange Bulletin” was created to fill many requests for a concise, movement-wide publication that would combine Headquarters news, basic information on A.A. as a whole and brief accounts indicating how particular problems are being met by groups throughout the world. It is also designed to give loners, Internationalists (seamen) and groups in prisons and hospitals a monthly forum through which they can keep in touch with developments in their areas of A.A. activity.
    The “Exchange Bulletin” is not a substitute for “The A.A. Grapevine” which, because of its greater size and different editorial approach, will continue to be the movement’s international interpretive journal.

    In December 1966, the A.A. Exchange Bulletin would be renamed Box 4-5-9.

May 21 in A.A. History

1945: The New Republic published “Blueplate Gospel,” a review by Dr. Leslie H. Farber [left, c. 1981] of September Remember [right: cover], a novel by Eliot Taintor.^* A chapter from the book had been serialized in the March and April 1945 issues of the A.A. Grapevine. The review stated, in part,

    The advantage of the present 300-page pamphlet (disguised as a pulp-style novel) over the shorter booklets distributed by AA, lies in its detailed revelations of group ac­tivity. While the formal weekly meetings are devoted to inspirational talks by ex-alcoholics, coffee is drunk in no blue-nose spirit; good fellowship abounds (“You can get that sense of abandon without liquor”). AA members feel a natural solidarity: the way they would “get up and talk at meetings, really let their hair down, made other contacts seem thin and superficial. Other people shadowy.”

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^*“Eliot Taintor” was the pseudonym used by the married couple Ruth F. and Gregory M., one of whom was an A.A. member.

1960: The Saturday Evening Post [right: cover] published “I Always Have Help” anonymously. An introductory note read:

    A man who has had more than his share of trouble—alcoholism, shattered marriage, tragic losses—tells anonymously how he manages to face life, one day at a time.

The anonymous author wrote,

    As I write this I’m in as warty a financial pickle as a small businessman could contrive—broke, no property, heavy family responsibili­ties, head of a small concern which is also broke, with creditors expecting in a few months to be paid $20,000 [about $225,000 in 2026] it hasn’t got. Less than this has driven highly strung people to break­down and even suicide, and I confess I am a little uneasy. But because of a limited grasp of a philosophy which members of a celebrated secret society call The 24-Hour Plan, I’m fairly confident of pulling through.… I took up with some people who were supposed to know how to lay hold of a situation of this kind. They gave me a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, and my eye fell on a remarkable passage. Be­fore I tell you what it said, let me assure the reader that he doesn’t have to be an alcoholic to proceed with this article; everyone concerned with open-minded living may find something of interest.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1954: The A.A. Grapevine [left: cover] published a brief item titled “Calling All AA ‘Hams’: A Meeting in the Ether,” stating:

    Several AAs around the country who are amateur radio operators would like to contact each other via the air waves. Send us your signal, if you’re a “ham,” and we’ll print it.

1954: [Early; Pass It On wrongly says 1956] Bill W. received a letter from the notorious robber, kidnapper, and rapist Caryl Chessman [right, 1953], popularly known as “The Red Light Bandit.” In May 1948, Chessman was convicted on 17 of 18 counts for crimes committed during the first three weeks of January 1948. He was sentenced to death under California’s “Little Lindbergh Law”^* and, at the time he wrote to Bill, Chessman was on death row at San Quentin Prison [left: inside view, c. 1950s], awaiting execution on May 14. (He was granted a stay. Over nearly twelve years on death row, Chessman filed dozens of appeals, acting as his own attorney. He avoided eight execution dates, often by only a few hours.)
    Later, in 1954, Prentice-Hall published Chessman’s autobiography, Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man’s Own Story [right: cover].^† In it, Chessman drew a comparison between psychopaths and alcoholics. This prompted Jack Alexander, who likely saw a prepublication copy, to encourage him to write to Bill. Alexander wondered whether criminals could “recover” through a surrender similar to that of A.A. members, writing to Bill:

    There is a close resemblance between the criminal psychopath and the alcoholic mind. Both are grandiose, resentful, defiant, and hating of authority; both unconsciously destroy themselves trying to destroy others.

On 9 February 1954, Chessman wrote to Bill, saying in part:

I woke up to the fact I’d been nothing more than a cynically clever, aggressively destructive and sometimes violent damn fool. The question of guilt or innocence aside, it dawned on me that my condemnation was a public proclamation of spectacular failure. As I saw it then, two courses were open to me. I could spend my time figuratively or literally whining and indulging in a narrow self-pity or I could see—perhaps a more appropriate word is envision—myself and all that a death sentence implied in terms larger than my own predicament.… I could tell my story and plead, not my personal cause, but society’s cause and the cause of those who—in my opinion, needlessly—are criminally damned and doomed.… I am most hopeful it will make a very useful contribution to a most vexing social problem.

    On 31 March, Bill replied, including a copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. On 25 May, he wrote to Father Ed Dowling, enclosing copies of Chessman’s letter to him, his own reply to Chessman, and his reply to Jack Alexander’s letter noted above. A postscript added,

P.S. Brother Chessman got another stay—maybe 60 days. Have a most interesting letter from him in response to my last. Will send it on.

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^*This law had been repealed by the time Chessman’s trial began but was in effect at the time of his crimes, and the repeal was not retroactive.

^†Chessman began writing this memoir after San Quentin Prison Warden Harley Teets encouraged him to do something with his life. With Teets’s support, he chronicled his descent into what he called criminally insane behavior. When the book was published, it became a bestseller and was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1955. Its success led Teets to try to prevent Chessman from writing any more; however, three additional books by Chessman were later smuggled out of prison and published. In 1957, Teets died while serving as warden.
    Clinton T. Duffy, the first warden to introduce the A.A. program into prisons and a prominent opponent of the death penalty, was warden when Chessman first arrived. Duffy described him as one of the most dangerous men he had ever met: tough, mean, contemptuous, arrogant, deviant, a troublemaker, and a constant threat—“Chessman represented nothing.”