1834: Helen Elizabeth Barrows
was born to Betsey Cochran and Blake Barrows, the third of four children, in
Almont, Michigan. On 5 May 1861, she married William Curtis W. in Dorset,
Vermont, and on 13 September 1870 gave birth to Gilman Barrows W.
[right], who would be Bill W.’s father.
1939: The first A.A. meeting in
the Chicago area took place*
in the apartment of Earl T. [left] and his wife, Katie, at 1324 Central Street
[right] in Evanston, Illinois. It was also the first A.A. meeting in Illinois. Eight
people attended:† Earl and Katie;
Dick R.; Ken A.; Sadie I.; newly sober Sylvia K.
[left], who is generally considered to be the first woman to achieve permanent
sobriety; George M.; and a non-alcoholic, Grace Cultice
[right], who would later become the
secretary of the group and be known as “The
Angel of Chicago A.A.”
1983: Faith S.* [left] founded “Creating a Sober World.” The brief biography on the back flap
[right] of the dust jacket of her book,
Distractions That Keep Us from Being Who We Are & Doing What We Really
Want to Do [below left: cover], states:In 1983, out of a vision, Faith founded “Creating a Sober World.” This project led to the establishment of the first Alcoholics Anonymous in the Soviet Union in 1986. From that beginning, A.A. and Alanon [sic] now flourish in Russia and adjacent countries.
Independent sources, however, tell a somewhat different story. A.A.’s own Box 4-5-9 newsletter, the Christian Science Monitor, and a firsthand A.A. Grapevine account of a 1989 visit to Moscow all credit the founding of the first Soviet A.A. group, “Moscow Beginners,” to the Rev. J. W. Canty, an American Episcopal priest who laid the groundwork starting in 1985 and saw the group get underway in 1987—not 1986.
None of these accounts mention Faith or “Creating a Sober World.” This doesn’t necessarily mean her claim is false; materials from New Directions for Women describe her leading “a contingency of volunteers to help the USSR” with its addiction problems, so she may have been involved in a parallel, lower-profile effort that the press and A.A.’s own newsletters simply didn’t cover. But as it stands, her specific claim to having sparked the first Soviet A.A. group rests on her book’s dust jacket and her affiliated organization’s own retrospectives, without outside corroboration.
1984: The A.A. Grapevine, Inc.
began publishing The Best of Bill [right: cover], a pocket-sized
collection of five articles by Bill W, from the A.A. Grapevine on
“Fear,” “Faith,” “Honesty,” “Humility,” and “Love.” This book replaced the
original packet of five pamphlets introduced at A.A.’s 4th International
Convention in Toronto, Ontario, in 1965.1985: The 1978 proposal for an Asia-Oceania Service Meeting (AOSM) was raised again at a meeting in New York City and then further discussed in New Zealand. This was another of several discussions that eventually led to the first AOSM meeting in Tokyo, Japan in 1995.













































