November 5 in A.A. History

1962: The CBS radio program Dimensions of a Woman’s World, hosted by Betty Furness [right, 5 Mar 1962], featured an episode about “International A.A.” Furness began by saying, “I’ve just discovered some of the international aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous… it’s a most ininteresting story.” She shared stories about A.A. overseas and concluded by saying, “A.A. both here and abroad working with Loners, or large groups of people… [it] is an extraordinary organization.”

2002: The Scarborough General Hospital Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous [left: Scarborough General Hospital, c. 2014] in Scarborough, Ontario, celebrated 25 years of continuous service, with one original member and several early members in attendance. The speaker was Mildred F. from the Rox Glen Traditional Group of A.A.

2019: Central Recovery Press published the first edition of Writing the Big Book: The Creation of A.A. [near right] by William H. “Bill” Schaberg [far right].

November in A.A. History—day unknown

1941: Leonard V. Harrison [left], director of public affairs for the Community Service Society of New York, joined the Alcoholic Foundation Board as a Class A (non-alcoholic) Trustee. He would serve on the board until October 1950 and then again from January 1953 to July 1965. Harrison would twice hold the position of Chairman of the Board, first from March 1942 to October 1950 and again from April 1956 to April 1961. He would be named Trustee Emeritus in July 1965 and hold that title until his death in September 1969.

1941: Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker [right, 1940] broke with Moral Re-Armament (MRA, formerly the Oxford Group), which was already losing adherents rapidly, and re-formed the “Faith at Work” fellowship. Sam Shoemaker’s long-confidential document “The Decision of 1941” recounts his experience of Buchman’s manipulation and exploitation of a man who had been his closest follower. 

Buchman went on to make Moral Re-Armament an international anti-Communist, pro-morality organization. Shoemaker’s dispute with Frank Buchman was amplified in the press, leading to MRA being asked to vacate Calvary House, the parish house of Calvary Episcopal Church, which had served as their U.S. headquarters.

1942: The Fresno (California) Bee reported that during the local A.A. group’s first week, it received requests for help from 28 people.

1942: The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine [far left: cover; near left: 1902 Class Notes extract] published a brief note about Dr. Bob S.:

Bob S[——] as we knew him is now Dr. Robert S[——], surgeon, of Akron, Ohio. He visits Hanover [VT] each year but seems to have missed our reunions. We want you next time, Bob. He has a daughter, Sue, and a son, Lieutenant Robert S[——], in the Air Corps. His wife, a graduate of Wellesley, he says is ‘a remarkable woman mentally, morally and spiritually’ and we want to meet her, also. Bob has sent me a book ‘Alcoholics Anonymous.’ In the past few years he has been very interested and I judge a prime worker in the field of rescuing the pitiable souls who have lost themselves in drink, so far having rescued over 8000. I know of no more splendid work in the world. 1902 is proud of you, Bob.

November 4 in A.A. History

1939: The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer published the second and final article [right] in Elrick B. Davis’s second series titled “A Physician Looks Upon Alcoholics Anonymous.” It read, in part,

The first appraisal in a scientific journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, former drunkards who cure themselves by curing each other with the help of religious experience, was published in the July issue of the journal Lancet [sic]. It was “A New Approach to Psychotherapy [in]^* Chronic Alcoholism,” by W. D. Silkworth, M.D. physician in charge, Chas B. Town’s [sic] Hospital, New York City. A drunkard [Bill W.] during a moment of [deep]^* depression had the spontaneous “religious experience” which started his cure. This was the seed from which came Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. silkworth [sic] was at first skeptical. He is no longer.

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^*Brackets in original.

1939: Encouraged by Nona W., Marty M. and Bill and Lois W.^* first visited Joy Farm^* in Kent, Connecticut, which was run by Ethelred Folsom [left], who preferred to be called Sister Francis, after Francis of Assisi. A remarkable woman, she generously provided a home for those in need of healing and spiritual nourishment. Because her beliefs aligned with the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, she offered the farm to Bill for the work of A.A. Bill declined, but in 1940, others established it as the world’s first 12-Step treatment center, renaming it High Watch Farm [right: aerial view].

Marty would later describe their arrival:

There was something there, something that was really palpable that you could feel and every one of us felt it. To say that we fell in love with it, is not to use the right terminology at all. We were engulfed… What is at the Farm was already at the Farm before we ever found it. It found us, in my opinion.

Bill famously described the spiritual atmosphere as so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

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^*Marty, in a speech at the 25th anniversary of High Watch, mentioned that it was late October and that Horace C. and Bert T., along with their wives, accompanied them.

1940: Bill and Lois W. moved into one of two small upstairs bedrooms [left: line drawing from Feb 1951 A.A. Grapevine] in the clubhouse at 334½ W. 24th St. in New York City, where they lived for five months. Lois increased the apparent size of the room by removing unnecessary shelves and painting the walls white with red trim. She also made a dressing table out of an orange crate.

1963: Bill W. attended the funeral service for Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, III at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Owings Mills, Maryland, near Burnside, the Shoemaker estate [right: recent photo of the manor house at Burnside].

Thirty years later, Shoemaker’s daughter, Nickie Shoemaker Haggart [left], “well remembered” something Bill had said to her as they stood together that day in the driveway at Burnside:

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that I founded A. A. If it wasn’t for Sam Shoemaker, A. A. would never have been born.

November in A.A. History—day unknown

1937: The first challenge Bill W. [near right, 1930s] and Hank P. [far right] faced with the project of writing a book about A.A.—what would eventually become our Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous—was funding. The United States was still in the throes of the Great Depression; overseas, the specter of another world war loomed. The two men spent the entire month trying to raise funds for the book, without a penny to show for their efforts.

1941: Margaret Kate Carleton “Daisy” Farrand [left], wife of a former Cornell University president and a friend of the U.S. Surgeon General, became A.A.’s first female trustee, a Class A (non-alcoholic). She would serve on the Board of the Alcoholic Foundation until 1944. As a wealthy socialite, she helped raise funds to support the Alcoholic Foundation’s early work.

In 1922, she had founded the Ithaca Garden Club, and a delphinium cultivar was named in her honor (Delphinium ‘Margaret Farrand’) [right: a delphinium, not the cultivar named for her].

November 3 in A.A. History

1938: Enclosing the latest chapters for the proposed, yet-to-be-named book (which would become Alcoholics Anonymous [right: 1st edition]), Bill W. wrote to Dr. Bob S. for the third time, seeking feedback from the members of the Akron, Ohio, “Alcoholic Squadron.” He urged Dr. Bob to encourage the Ohio members to “speak up or forever hold their peace” regarding the drafts he had been sending. It turned out that Dr. Bob had not shared any of these drafts with the other Akron members.

Bill added that he “hoped to get out there about December first for a week or two so we can cover these matters better.” However, the ongoing writing and editing of the book ultimately prevented Bill from making that trip.

1941: At 8:00 p.m., the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Columbus, Ohio, took place in the basement of the Downtown YMCA at 40 W. Long St. [right, c. 1926], with six attendees.

1975: Lois W., Bill’s widow, and Tom S. cut a blue ribbon [right, respectively: Lois W., back of Nell’s head, Dr. Norris, George G.] to officially open the A.A. Archives at the General Service Office (GSO) in New York City. In attendance were Nell Wing, non-alcoholic archivist; Dr. John Norris, non-alcoholic chair of the Board of Trustees; Lois; George G., Class B (alcoholic) trustee and chair of the Trustees’ Archives Committee; Tom S., former Class B (alcoholic) trustee and former chair of the Trustees' Archives Committee; other trustees; GSO and A.A. Grapevine staff; and a few overseas guests [left: A.A. Archives, Winter 2022].

The opening speaker called for “a minimum of myth about A.A. and its co-founders.” Dr. Norris emphasized that A.A. can continually renew itself by returning to its source. He recalled Bill’s frequent admonition that the Board and GSO should document everything they do. Both George and Lois paid special tribute to Nell Wing. Lois reminisced about the early days of A.A. on Clinton Street in Brooklyn during the 1930s. She noted that most of the early records were not saved, partly because their importance was not recognized, but mostly because “we were just too busy trying to help alcoholics and their families.” Lois added that Bill appreciated the theoretical significance of these records, “but he wasn’t very good at doing anything about it.” After the “usual closing” (i.e., the Lord’s Prayer), food and coffee were served. Then came the big laugh of the day: everyone realized that the opening of the archives had not been recorded for posterity!

November in A.A. History—day unknown

1936: Dartmouth College’s Alumni Magazine published a brief note [right] about Dr. Bob S. that said:

Some of you fellows have been wondering about Bob S――, but you can let up on it now. Bob says that while he has been in Hanover [New Hampshire] many times, he could never make it at reunion time. He hopes now to be present in June 1937.

1936: Within three months of Frank Buchman [left, 1936] interviewing Himmler [right: inspecting Gestapo troopers] in August 1936, the Gestapo’s Central Security Office produced the first official document warning its network against the Oxford Group (OG) as “a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism.” The operative part of the document ordered the intelligence service to pay the closest attention to the work, tendency and influence of the movement, and in particular to infiltrate every kind of OG meeting, to monitor the productions of the Leopold Klotz Verlag of Gotha—a company that had published OG books and pamphlets—to determine who was receiving the company’s literature, and to find out which men and women in public life were interested in the OG’s ideas.

November 2 in A.A. History

1881: Frank Belford Amos [left] was born in Caldwell, Ohio, the youngest of three children of John Major and Mary Elizabeth Wallar Amos. He would become a close associate of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and an original Class A (non-alcoholic) trustee of the Alcoholic Foundation.

1939: The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer published the first article in a second series by Elrick B. Davis about Alcoholics Anonymous, titled “A Noted Divine Reviews ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’” [right]:

When 100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous, the extraordinary fellowship of men and women who have cured themselves of “incurable” alcoholism by curing each other and adopting a “spiritual way of life,” had established their cures to the satisfaction of their physicians, families, employers and psychotherapists, they published a book.

It is a 400-page volume of which half is a history of the movement and a description of its methods, and the other half a collection of 30 case histories designed to show what a wide variety of persons the fellowship has cured.

November in A.A. History—day unknown

1934: Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker III [left, c. 1940] wrote in his personal diary:

A significant thing… met Bill W――.

Note that this was the month before Bill W.’s final stay at Towns Hospital.

1934: [Late] While staying at the Calvary Rescue Mission in New York City, Edwin “Ebby” T. [near right] learned about the drinking problem of his old schoolmate, Bill W. [far right, mid-late 1930s]. Ebby called Bill (or his wife Lois), who invited him over for dinner. During his visit, Ebby shared his recovery experience, “one alcoholic talking to another.” Although Bill, who was intoxicated at the time, and Ebby, who was sober, later had very different recollections of this key event, Lois’s brief account—not surprisingly—generally aligned with Bill’s.

Earlier in the year, while in Vermont, Rowland Hazard, III [far left] and Francis Shepard “Shep” [near left] Cornell had introduced Ebby to the Oxford Group. Later, Rowland had taken Ebby to the Calvary Rescue Mission.

1935: John Henry Fitzhugh “Fitz” M. [right] was discharged from Towns Hospital and became the third person to get sober and join A.A. in New York, following Hank P. and Bill R. His story, “Our Southern Friend,” would appear in all four editions of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

A “blue blood” from Maryland and the son of an Episcopalian minister, Fitz was said to be quite handsome, with chiseled features and the quiet, easy charm of the landed gentry. He embodied the qualities of a true Southern gentleman. Lois W. described Fitz as an impractical, lovable dreamer. His intellectual and scholarly traits gave him common ground with Bill W., who—like Fitz—was also a dreamer.

Alcoholism may have run in his mother’s family. Although they never drank at home, Fitz discovered during his first drink in college that it alleviated his fears and sense of inferiority. He had attempted to enlist during World War I but could not pass the physical examination, which further contributed to his feelings of inadequacy. He had held a good job with a large corporation until the onset of the Great Depression. Subsequently, he worked various jobs—as a traveling salesman, teacher, and farmer—but he couldn’t stop drinking. He had been drunk during significant moments: when his mother-in-law died, when his own mother died, and when his child was born. His wife had heard about Towns Hospital in New York City and urged him to go; he eventually agreed.

November 1 in A.A. History

1934: Edwin “Ebby” T. [left] made his “surrender,” presumably to Jesus Christ, at an Oxford Group meeting at the Calvary Church Rescue Mission [right, c. 1930s], located at 246 E. 23rd St. in New York City.

1941: Oklahoma’s Oklahoma City Times published an article titled “For Drunks: A Real Cure Comes to City” [right], which reported, in part:

Seven guys who can’t take their liquor without becoming “175 pounds each of roaring hell” met in an office in the Ramsey Tower Friday night to work over the eighth guy who was roaring drunk.

It was the first mass meeting here of Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization of former drunks formed by a drunk in New York six years ago, for the purpose of curing and keeping cured the sort of drinkers who are “alergic” [sic] to alcohol.

1947: A.A. “Group #1” was started in Anchorage [left, 1945], Alaska, with Herman C. as its leader. It would be the first lasting group in Alaska. Jack Alexander would write in his article “The Drunkard’s Best Friend,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in April 1950:

The group at Anchorage, Alaska, which started in a blizzard, has a dozen members, including one slightly puzzled Eskimo.

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^*Eskimo has been criticized as an offensive term. In Canada, Eskimo is especially frowned on; the only acceptable term is Inuit, and many Americans have come to prefer this name. Inuit is a more specific term than Eskimo, but properly applying to the traditionally Inuit-speaking peoples of Arctic Canada and parts of Greenland. In southwest Alaska and Arctic Siberia, where Inuit is not spoken, the comparable term is Yupik, which has not gained as wide a currency as Inuit. Use of these more specific terms is preferable when speaking of the appropriate ethnic group. For lack of a universally accepted general term, Eskimo is still often used in the U.S. for speaking of the Yupik and Inuit peoples collectively.

1951: The San Francisco Group, the first Alcoholics Anonymous group on the North American West Coast, had been arranged for 21 November 1939 by Ray W., a New York member, who had gone there to attend a sales course. Some of those on the list of contacts he had brought provided the attendees for that meeting. After a few days, having completed his sales training, Ray left for home. Bill later recalled that after that, “there was plenty of slipping and backsliding.” Early on, the Alcoholic Foundation, in New York City, “began writing letters to San Francisco, but the replies were sketchy and uncertain.” Two non-alcoholics—Mrs. Gordon Oram and Dr. Percy Poliak—struggled to keep the group going. At the end of 1940, a San Francisco member appeared at the Alcoholic Foundation. According to Bill, “She was a little tight, and crying.… [S]he said, ‘Bill, we’ve been going a whole year in San Francisco and do you know that at Christmas time we were all drunk.’”

But the A.A.s in San Francisco somehow turned around. In the early- to mid-1950s, Bill described his recognition of this fact:

Only a few years later, in 1951, the Lasker Award was given to A.A. in the San Francisco Opera House. On the night following the award presentation there was an A.A. meeting, and the huge place was packed. Sober alcoholics were practically hanging from the rafters. What once looked like a mighty poor acorn had produced a great oak.

1963: The first all-Swiss A.A. meeting, a two-day event that began on this date, brought together French- and German-speaking members. Following this gathering, the all-Swiss Bulletin would be published in both languages [left: “Latest News from Abroad,” Box 4-5-9, Dec 1963, p. 2].

2001: The fourth edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book”) [right: cover] was published; it included 24 new personal stories.

2001: JP Miller, the pen name of James Pinckney “Pappy” Miller [left, c. early 1980s], 81, died of pneumonia in Flemington, New Jersey. He wrote the screenplay for the film Days of Wine and Roses, which starred Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, and Jack Klugman.

2022: JAMA Network Open published an open-access article by Marissa B. Esser, PhD; Gregory Leung, PhD; Adam Sherk, PhD; et al., titled “Estimated Deaths Attributable to Excessive Alcohol Use Among US Adults Aged 20 to 64 Years, 2015 to 2019” [right: p. 1]. The article concluded that an estimated…

694,660 mean deaths per year between 2015 and 2019 suggest that excessive alcohol consumption accounted for 12.9% of total deaths among adults aged 20 to 64 years and 20.3% of deaths among adults aged 20 to 49 years.

2024: A.A.W.S., Inc. first published the Conference-approved soft-cover Plain Language Big Book: A Tool for Reading “Alcoholics Anonymous” [left: cover].

October 31 in A.A. History

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.]

1945: Vernon E. Fabrick had his last drink. Born 22 April 1895, he would join the Pasadena (California) Group and die on 18 June 1964, with 18 years of sobriety [left: Vernon F.’s Big Book (leather cover, inside front cover) and letter of condolence from the AA Grapevine editor to his widow].

1951: The American Public Health Association presented the Lasker Award to Alcoholics Anonymous at its 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 [right]. 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, the delegates also approved. The Foundation declined the accompanying $1,000 cash grant [~$13,000 in 2026].

1957: John Richard “Dick” S. [left] died in Stow, Ohio. He had gotten sober on 28 February 1937 and his story, “The Car Smasher,” appeared in the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. He later rewrote it as “He Had To Be Shown” for the second and third editions.

1958: Clancy I. [right] 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.” He walked 72 blocks to a small alcohol rehabilitation center. 

He would leave a lucrative career with a Beverly Hills marketing firm to become managing director of the Midnight Mission in downtown’s skid row, returning as a transformative leader to an institution that had once kicked him out for bad behavior. Under his hand, the soup kitchen and housing facilities would grow with programs to address the social needs of skid row.

1963: Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker [left], 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.

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. She was 35 years sober at the time. [Right: obituary from the 1 Nov 1974 Sarasota (FL) Journal, p. 4-A.]

October in A.A. History—day unknown

1985: Dartmouth College’s Alumni Magazine published Rex Roberts’ interview “Thomas V. Seessel ’59: ‘It’s okay to say “No”’” [left], highlighting Seessel’s new role as Executive Director of the National Council on Alcoholism (NCA), founded by Marty M. and Dr. E. M. Jellinek. In the interview, Roberts noted,

The NCA works closely with Alcoholics Anonymous, a separate but better known organization, which helps alcoholics recover through self-help fellowship. (This year marks the 50th anniversary of AA, co-founded by Dartmouth Alumnus Robert Holbrook S―― ’02.)

1988: The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. published The Language of the Heart [right: 1st printing, 1989], a collection, as the Introduction says, of “virtually every article written for the AA Grapevine by Bill W.”

1999: The D.I.A.log, the official newsletter of the Dallas (Texas) Intergroup Association [left: logo], published an interview with Searcy W. In this interview, he discussed his own recovery, Esther E.—whose story, “A Flower of the South,” appears in the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous—Bill W. and the Twelve Traditions, and Ebby T., who spent several years in Texas with Searcy.