August 26 in A.A. History

1910: William James [far left: 1903], 68, died of heart failure at his family’s summer home [near left] in Chocorua, New Hampshire. He was buried [right: gravestone] in the family plot in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

James had continued to write and lecture, publishing Pragmatism that same year, followed by The Meaning of Truth and A Pluralistic Universe in 1909. He had suffered increasingly from cardiac pain in his final years, and his condition worsened in 1909 while he was at work on a philosophy text, left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in 1911 as Some Problems of Philosophy.

In the spring of 1910, James had traveled to Europe to undergo experimental treatments for his heart ailment. The treatments proved unsuccessful, and he returned home on 18 August.

1935: Bill W. [right, mid-late 1930s] returned to New York City from Akron, Ohio. Reflecting on his journey, he later said,

By the time I got home, I was endowed with a little more humility, a little more understanding, and considerably more experience. Very slowly a group began to take shape.

He began looking for drunks to help at Calvary Mission and Towns Hospital. His first two successes came from Towns Hospital: Hank P. [far left] from Teaneck, New Jersey, and Fitz M. [near left] from Cumberstone, Maryland.^* Bill and his wife, Lois, started a group^† for drunks trying to get sober that met on Tuesday nights in their home at 182 Clinton St., Brooklyn.

Their home would also serve as a kind of halfway house for alcoholics who had nowhere else to go.

---

^*It’s unclear who got sober first, Hank or Fitz.

^†This group would later be recognized to have been the second group of Alcoholics Anonymous, after the one in Akron, Ohio.

1936: The New York World‑Telegram published a story about Frank Buchman [right], written by William A. H. Birnie, who had been granted a personal interview with Buchman after arriving at Buchman’s press conference the previous day, after it had already ended.

Buchman and the Oxford Group faced a public relations disaster when other media outlets began quoting only selected portions of the interview, omitting crucial context.

The headline, byline, and first few paragraphs read:

HITLER OR ANY FASCIST LEADER CONTROLLED BY GOD COULD CURE ALL ILLS OF WORLD, BUCHMAN BELIEVES.
By William A. H. Birnie,
World-Telegram Staff Writer

To Dr Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, vigorous, outspoken, 58-year-old leader of the revivalist Oxford Group, the Fascist dictatorship of Europe suggests infinite possibilities for remaking the world and putting it under “God Control”.

I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism,” he said today in his book-lined office in the [Oxford Group] annex of Calvary Church, Fourth Ave and 21st St.

“My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from Communism. That’s how he felt. Of course, I don’t condone everything the Nazis do. Anti-Semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew.

“But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to the control of God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last, bewildering problem.”

The remaining twenty-two paragraphs outlined Buchman’s vision of what a God-controlled country might look like, along with his claim that God could reveal His will to anyone:

The world won’t listen to God, but God has a plan for every person, every nation. Human ingenuity is not enough. That is why the ‘isms are pitted against each other and blood flows.

In his press interviews, Buchman aimed both to share his profound experiences of change and to answer the reporter’s questions. He devoted much of this interview to discussing his personal encounter with the Cross of Christ — a power he believed strong enough to eliminate hatred from his own life, and therefore capable of transforming anyone, even a dictator.

The often-quoted legend from this interview claims that Buchman said, “Thank God for Hitler.” In fact, this phrase was neither uttered by Buchman nor printed in the article. Those present at the interview also insist it did not reflect the overall tone. Garrett Stearly, for instance, recalled:

I was present at the interview. I was amazed when the story came out. It was so out of key with the interview. This had started with an account of the Oxford Group’s work in Europe. Buchman was asked what about Germany. He said that Germany needed a new Christian spirit, yet one had to face the fact that Hitler had been a bulwark against Communism there — and you could at least thank heaven for that. It was a throw-away line. No eulogy of Hitler at all.

Others took a starkly different view. In 2016, a blogger wrote:

Buchman, who had attended Nazi rallies and was Heinrich Himmler’s guest at the Berlin Olympics, was a Nazi appeaser. If his cult had targeted the disenfranchised and disaffected like so many others, this position might not have caused much harm. But Buchman sought and obtained power and influence. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his principle [sic] foreign affairs advisor Sir Horace Wilson were both members of the Oxford Group. When Buchman advised giving Hitler whatever he wanted to prevent war, they listened.

1940: Bill W. wrote to Dr. Bob S.:

To say that I am overjoyed with the progress of Alcoholics Anonymous is stating the case mildly. For a long time I was earful that weak situations… would develop in large numbers as a result of publicity and half-baked starts. But even Washington now has a strong group and places that were shaky such as Los Angeles and San Francisco are coming on beautifully both in quality and quantity. It has become evident only with the last two or three months that the casual traveler, the book, and our central office correspondence and “propaganda” is sufficient to spread AA all over the country. That is a demonstrated fact about which I have no doubt whatever. Neither would anyone who has seen the amazing correspondence which rolls into this office. In some instances there has been no personal contact at all—just our correspondence and the book. An increasing number of people are coming to light who have been dry on the book alone. In many instances they have commenced to work with other people. It is all truly miraculous. Considering the amount of attention and nursing and the great difficulty of starting the original groups, it is all quite incomprehensible. Nevertheless, nationwide success is already here. We cannot possibly fail now.

1941: The Cuyahoga County^* Central Committee met for the third time. Their bulletin to all groups announced plans for a Halloween party and a New Year’s Eve party for “all the combined groups,” and inquired if anyone was interested in forming a bowling league. Additionally, it noted the availability of two A.A. pamphlets:

1) the Houston Press articles [above left: the pamphlet], written by Larry J., and
2) the Cleveland Plain Dealer articles [above right: one such article].

This shows that the Cleveland fellowship was actively engaged not only in meetings and Twelfth Step work but also in public relations and social activities.

---

^*Cuyahoga County includes Cleveland, Ohio and its surrounding areas.

2012: Московские Начинающие (Moscow Beginners) celebrated its 25th anniversary with the theme “Наша дверь всегда открыта…” (Our door is always open…) [left: meeting room; right: token from the 25th anniversary].

August 25 in A.A. History

1926: Bill W., “in high glee, all dressed up in his neatly pressed old suit,” went “to interview the president of the American Writing Paper Co.” [right: American Writing Paper Co. cylinder machine, 1936–7]

He and Frank Shaw—the only Wall Street associate still willing to finance Bill’s valuation services—had developed a strong interest in the company, then in receivership. The day before, Bill and Lois had ridden their motorcycle [left: Lois on the Harley, 1925] to Holyoke, Massachusetts, where the company's headquarters and 13 of its 23 original rag paper mills were located. They set up camp and had Bill’s suit pressed.

In a note added in 1973 to her diary of their trip, Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos, Lois wrote:

Upon our return from Holyoke, Frank was so pleased with Bill’s report on the American Writing Paper Co. That [sic] he gave Bill a regular weekly salary of $50 [~$940 in 2026], as well as options on stock. This permitted us to feel secure enough financially to buy a second-hand car, in which it would be much easier to make the extended trips for Bill’s work. So in early October we left Brooklyn for Vermont and parts north, in our new-to-us 1924 Dodge [right: 1924 Dodge touring car], for which we paid $250 [~$4,700 in 2026].

1934: Edwin “Ebby” T. [left, c. 1920] appeared in court [near right: court record] for shooting pigeons with a shotgun, believing the birds would ruin the new paint job on his house [below, left: Dunean House, 110 Taconic Rd, Manchester, Vermont, early 1900s (built in 1910)]. Judge Collins Graves [far right, c. 1910–15] sent him home for the weekend, ordering him to return to court on Monday, and warning him to arrive sober. Back at home, there were three or four bottles of Ebby’s favorite beer, Ballantine’s Ale, waiting for him in a cool cellar. Something unexpected happened when he got home:

So down I went [into the cellar], and I reached for a bottle of ale, and I couldn’t take it. I had said I would be there sober, and this wouldn’t exactly be sobriety. I went upstairs and this voice said, “Oh, don’t be silly. Go down and get that ale. My God, you’re shaking. Go on down and get it.” Well, I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t playing the game square, the way I looked at it. And when I finally made the decision not to touch it and took it over to a friend of mine, three or four houses away, I felt right then a great release from the whole thing. And that lasted for me for over two years. That was the start of the whole release from the problem for the time being.

This marked the beginning of Ebby’s first sustained period of sobriety—one that lasted long enough for him to introduce Bill W. to certain new ideas about getting and staying sober.

Around the same time, during a visit to Rowland Hazard [left, 1920] in Bennington, Vermont, Cebra Graves [near right, c. 1930], son of Judge Graves, learned that Ebby was facing criminal charges and the possibility of commitment to the Brattleboro Retreat (formerly the Vermont Asylum for the Insane) [far right, c. 1927] because of his drinking problem. Cebra and Rowland decided to take Ebby on as a “project.” They attended Ebby’s trial and persuaded Judge Graves to release Ebby into their custody. That fall, despite having just met him, Rowland brought Ebby to New York City, where he sobered up with the help of the Oxford Group at Calvary Mission.

1936: Upon returning from the Olympic Games in Germany, where he had met with Heinrich Himmler, Frank Buchman [left, January 1936], founder of the Oxford Group (OG), held a press conference at Calvary House. While nearly all the journalists filed routine stories, William A. H. Birnie, a reporter for the afternoon paper New York World‑Telegram [right: front page, 5 Aug 1936] , arrived late and requested a special interview. In the presence of several colleagues, Buchman answered the reporter’s questions. At the time, the exchange seemed inconsequential—but it would soon lead to a public relations disaster for the OG.

August 24 in A.A. History

1948: In the early morning hours, police raided the Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) Club in Springfield, Missouri, arresting seven members. All seven were tried and convicted of gambling charges, even though the wagers were limited to just ten cents. Police nonetheless deemed the activity illegal, and the raid made front-page news that same day [right: Springfield Leader and Press story, pp. 1, 6].

2020: Clancy I. [left], 93, died of an undetermined cause while in isolation after testing positive for COVID‑19, according to his daughter, Mary I. Dougherty. He had been undergoing rehabilitation for a broken hip and was nearing the end of his isolation period when the rehabilitation center informed her of his passing.

Clancy went from being homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles, California, to getting sober in Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) on 31 October 1958, to building a successful career at a Beverly Hills marketing firm. In 1963, he founded the Pacific Group, a prominent and highly structured A.A. group that hosts some of the largest weekly 12-step recovery and speaker meetings in the world, known for its rigid discipline, intense commitment, and active daily virtual and in-person sessions. Over his 61 years of sobriety, Clancy sponsored thousands of people.

In 1974, he left marketing to return to the Midnight Mission [right]  on Skid Row, and two years later became its managing director—a transformative leader in the very institution that had once expelled him for bad behavior. Under his leadership, the soup kitchen and residential facilities expanded, and new programs were introduced to address the social needs of the Skid Row community.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1960: Bill W. wrote to Elise Shaw, Frank Shaw’s widow and Lois's best friend:

It is both amazing and comforting that this experience of mine with Frank in Wall Street has had a great deal to do with the present success of A.A. It was the training I then received in large affairs and in the constant effort to foresee and to evaluate the future that has since counted for so much. Without such invaluable experience, I would have made a great many grievous errors. By no stretch of the imagination could I have integrated the business and policy side of our A.A. affairs with its spiritual objective.

1960: Alcoholics Anonymous Great Britain issued its first reprint of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions [left: 1st edition, 1st printing].

1960: Hillhouse Press published The Disease Concept of Alcoholism [near right: 1st edition, 1st printing cover] by Elvin (“Bunky”) Morton Jellinek [far right, c. 1960].

1960: The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. published AA Today [below—left: cover; right: page opposite copyright page], a “special publication… commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous.” This 111-page publication features a Foreword, 41 essays by various alcoholic and nonalcoholic authors, the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions, and an Epilogue by Bill Wilson in memory of Dr. Bob Smith.

In the Foreword, the editors wrote,

A quarter of a century is always an appropriate place to stop and look back, to pause and look forward, to savor, to commemorate.

And that was the task your editors, in their innocence, began months ago…

We found that far beyond our original amorphous idea, it had in total substance become a kind of study of a latter-day movement of survival. Far from being a picture of mere survival, it showed again to us a deeper nature, a capability of growth, strong and straight and inevitably upward.

August 31 in A.A. History

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1968: The Dallas Central Office was reorganized as an Intergroup Office operating under the guidance of the AA Groups, which numbered 8 or 9 by then. A local member loaned the Intergroup $2,000.00 to buy literature from AA World Services, Inc.

1969: Bill W. wrote in a letter:

In general, A.A. really has to deal with alcoholics no matter what their other complications. You would be the first to agree that there is no such thing as an alcoholic who has no emotional “complications.” So the question boils down to this: shall A.A. try to help those with severe and addictive problems, provided they are alcoholics? The answer is “yes” we should try.

This amount of charity does not mean that we cannot exclude those who disturb meetings or seriously interfere with the functioning of the group. Such people can be asked to quiet down or go elsewhere, or, [sic] to come back when they are better able to participate [right: “The Third Tradition,” from the pamphlet “The Twelve Traditions Illustrated”].

1970: In Argentina [left: location on globe], where there were twenty Alcoholics Anonymous groups, La Comisión Organizadora de la OSG (the Organizing Committee of the GSO) was formed.

1970: KUAT in Tucson, Arizona, launched “AA-of-the-Air,” a radio show designed for homebound A.A. members [right: radio towers, including KUAT’s, on Mount Bigelow, northeast of Tucson].

1971: Morris B. got sober in a North Carolina prison when he saw a wooden sign with the Serenity Prayer printed on it. He had been in and out of A.A. in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco for many years. He recalled that at one of his first A.A. meetings, he heard, “If you are an alcoholic and if you continue to drink, the end is death or insanity.” He added, “They hadn’t mentioned the living hell before death.”

Morris described himself as a five-time loser, meaning he had five felony convictions (not including the cases he beat). He served time in four penitentiaries and several prison camps, including a maximum-security facility. He spent eleven months in solitary confinement, bouncing in and out of the “hole”—a bare concrete-and-steel cubicle—about five times during that period. The crimes he had committed were the result of drinking and drug use.

Even in prison, he was always fighting the system, even going so far as to use his body: he cracked his leg with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer in the rock hole and let lye and water eat away at four of his toes and foot for five hours.

He was released in 1974 but eventually relapsed on marijuana after approximately 20 years of sobriety. According to Gene C., “Morris knew more about alcoholism than anybody else he ever knew.” Morris’s story in the third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous is titled “A Five-Time Loser Wins.”

1971: The Dallas Intergroup office, by this time located at the Hudson & Hudson Building^* [left, recent], was publishing a meeting directory that included groups in jails, hospitals, and more. By 1973, the number of groups being served grew to 30.

---

^*Originally, the Marvin Building. Later, the Gulf States Building.

August 23 in A.A. History

1895: Junius Lee C. Jr [right, 1914] was born in McComb, Mississippi, to Junius Lee C. Sr and Thomasine Lane Moore C.

The family suffered two tragedies before 1900. Their first-born son, Joe, born in late 1888, lived just 322 days. Junius was the middle of three surviving sons—Willie was 5 years older, and Hilton was 2 years younger. A second tragedy struck when their father died, 3½ months before Hilton’s birth; Junius was only 2 at the time.

In World War I, Junius served as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant aboard the cargo vessel SS Maine [left] (not the USS Maine of “Remember the Maine!” fame). The ship was tor­pe­doed and sunk without casualties in the English Channel in March 1917 while sailing from London, Eng­land, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Junius married Marjorie Dickerson in 1922. In 1925, they had a son, Junius Lee C. III, and in 1926 a daughter who lived only 2 days. He retired as a Navy Commander just before World War II began, but in 1940, newly sober, was ordered out of retirement to the under-construction Naval Air Station [right: aerial view, 1943] in Jack­sonville, Florida. Junius later became a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in Jacksonville.

1940: [On August 27, according to Mitchell K.’s How It Worked] The Berea Group was started at the home of Bob J. near Cleveland, Ohio. It branched off from the Lakewood Group and initially had eight members. Soon after, it relocated to the Parish Hall of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church [left] in Berea, Ohio.

By the end of its first year, the group had grown to thirty members. An announcement in the August 1943 issue of Cleveland’s Central Bulletin provided details about the group and its meeting location:

This group is noted for its friendliness and hospitality.… Berea has most unusual quarters. It meets in the delightfully simple rooms of the Parish Hall of St. Thomas’ which is itself a tiny jewel of a church on the very edge of the Baldwin-Wallace campus. The tall elms and maples, the broad stretches of lawn, the quiet of this charming village plus the dignity and serenity of the church all lend an air of peace and rest to these pleasant meetings. Any of you who have ever attended a Berea meeting will never forget it.

A.A. History—year month & day unknown

1960?: [1960 is most likely, could have been anytime from ’59–’64] Marty M. [right, 1960], whose story “Women Suffer Too” appeared in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions of Alcoholics Anonymous, suffered a brief relapse. She had begun drinking bitters, which contain 45% alcohol (90 proof), having convinced herself that such small amounts wouldn’t count as a “first drink.”
Fortunately for Marty, an admirer^* from Bronxville, New York—sober herself for a year—happened to stop by the apartment ^† [left] Marty shared with her partner, Priscilla P. [right, 1970]. She was shocked to find Marty drunk, the apartment in disarray, and the dogs neglected. Taking immediate action, she brought Marty and the dogs back to her own home and phoned a mutual friend in Bronxville, Bonnie R., who had ten years of so­bri­ety. Bonnie advised her to keep Marty there until she was fully detoxed, a process that took several days. Even so, Marty refused to attend an A.A. meeting, citing her need for confidentiality, and eventually returned to her apartment in New York City. Very few people knew of this relapse during her lifetime.

---

^*The name of this admirer has been forgotten or lost, but at least three other people were aware of the incident and were interviewed by Marty’s biographers, Sally and David Brown.

^†The Daytonian, 375 W. End Ave., New York City

August 22 in A.A. History

1945: The first Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meeting in Scotland took place. This event was reported in an article [left], titled “Alcoholics Anon­ymous Comes to Scotland,” published in Scotland’s The Sunday Mail:

Six men who met in a Church vestry in Perth this week-end made Scottish history—when they formed the first Scots branch of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Most unorthodox movement in the world—it began in America—Alcoholics Anonymous has as its only members people who are addicted to alcohol.

They set out as drunkards to help cure one another, to the extent of being prepared at a moment’s notice to go out at any time of the day or night to help a “brother” in distress.

The two churches most likely to have hosted this meeting are St. Matthew’s (West Church) [far left] and St. John’s Kirk [right].

1985: Francis “Barry” L. Jr. [left: middle-aged Barry], 66, died at his home in Manhattan [far right: obituary]. He was buried [near right: gravestone] in Weather­ford, Texas, where he had grown up.

Barry earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and Journalism from Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, Texas, where he taught those subjects for two years in the early 1940s. He later completed his doctorate at Yale University.

In 1944, he relocated to New York City, where he got sober in 1945. He became one of the first openly gay members of Alcoholics Anonymous and played a crucial role in discussions about inclusivity within the organization, particularly concerning LGBTQ+ members, including early efforts in 1945 to establish special meetings for gay men.

Barry testified before the U.S. Congress and appeared on television to advocate for legislation addressing alcoholism. He authored Living Sober [far left, 1st ed. 1st prtg.] (1975) and the pamphlet “Do You Think You’re Different?” [near left, 1st ed. 1st prtg.] (1976), which included two stories by gay authors. He also co-authored Lois’s book, Lois Remembers [right: 1st ed. 1st prtg.], and worked as a staff writer at the General Service Office (GSO) of A.A., where he recorded and wrote many of the early General Service Conference final reports. He additionally worked on the staff of the A.A. Grapevine. Barry retired from GSO eighteen months before his death.

He became a trusted friend of Bill and Lois W., growing particularly close to Lois after Bill’s death in 1971. In 1978, Lois presented Barry a copy of the original multilith manuscript of the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous [left: 1st page of Chapter 5, “How It Works"]. The following year, Barry signed a notarized letter gifting the manuscript to A.A. World Services, while retaining possession of it for the remainder of his life—a fact he discussed publicly shortly before his death in 1985.

His final major public appearance was at the 8th International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary in Montreal, Quebec, just a month before his death. 

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

1950s: [Late] In Dallas, Texas, Lester F. hired Merl—“a perfect lady”—to run the Dallas Central Office. According to Lester, she kept the place “real clean and orderly” during the time she worked there.