May 14 in A.A. History

1939: The first A.A. meeting in New Jersey, and the fourth in the world, was held in Upper Montclair at Hank and Kathleen P.’s home, 344 N. Fullerton Ave. [left].

1948: A Long Beach (California) Central Office, located at 1128 Dawson Ave. [right, Apr 2011] opened with 10 identified groups. It was listed in the Long Beach Telephone Directory:

Alcoholics Anonymous Harbor District
1128 Dawson Ave. — Long Beach, California
Telephone number 305-150 [later changed to 905-150]

    According to local accounts, the establishment of this office was spearheaded by Jack J. Tired of traveling to Los Angeles for everything they needed, Jack partnered with the group in Signal Hill to propose a Central Office in Long Beach, aiming to mutually benefit all groups in the Harbor Area.

1998: Sybil C. [far left: 1940s; near left: 1961] died just six days shy of her 90th birthday. A former bootlegger and dance hall girl, she was also the first woman in Alcoholics Anonymous west of the Mississippi. Later, Corwin served as Long Beach (California) Archivist and the first executive secretary of California A.A. She got sober on 23 March 1941. Known for her multiple marriages, Sybil often began her later talks with the memorable introduction: “My name is Sybil Doris Adams Stratton Hart Maxwell Willis C., and I’m an alcoholic.”

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1947: The seeds of Idaho’s first A.A. group were planted when a woman in the small town of Rigby, Idaho [right], read Jack Alexander’s article about A.A. in The Saturday Evening Post earlier that spring. Presumably seeking help for her husband, she wrote to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City. By coincidence, Harry B.—a former member of both the Los Angeles, California “mother” group and the Salt Lake City, Utah group—had recently moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho, only 15 miles [~24 km] from Rigby. The two men connected and established Idaho Falls Group #1 in May, initially holding meetings in the home of Harry and his wife. The group quickly grew to 19 members and subsequently moved to a room in Rigby’s City Hall.

1948: The A.A. Grapevine reported receiving an inquiry that read, in part, “Enclosed you will find $2.00 for a bottle of… Alcoholics Anonymous.” The article, titled “Letters Ask for Bottle of Cure” [left], also noted,

    Letters addressed “Anonymous, • New York City,” and even some addressed, “Anonymous, U.S.A.,” sooner or later find their way into the General Service Headquarters. Many letters are now coming from foreign countries from people who have received anonymous gifts of food or money from the U.S.! These are most always written in the sender’s native tongue, posing a problem of translation.

May 13 in A.A. History

1935: The day after they met, Bill W. [near right] and Dr. Bob S. [far right] had dinner together.

1953: Bill W. wrote a letter to Al S. [far left], which would later form the basis of his well-known A.A. Grapevine article, “Emotional Sobriety,” published in January 1958 [near left; cover]:
Dear Al,
    I think that we oldsters who have put the A.A. booze cure to such severe tests, yet still find we lack emotional sobriety, are probably the spearhead for the next major development in A.A.—the development of something like real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.
    Those adolescent urges for top approval, perfect security, and the perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age 17, prove to be an impossible way of life at 47 or 57.
    Since A.A. began I’ve taken immense wallops in all these departments because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep insisting on the impossible, and how painful to discover that we have the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how damned wrong we are but still finding ourselves unable, seemingly to get off the merry-go-round.
    How to translate right intellectual conviction into right emotional results and so into easy, happy, active and good living—well that’s not only the neurotic’s problem, it’s the problem of life itself for all who have got to the point of willingness to hew to right principles. Even then, as we hew away peace and joy still eludes us. That’s the place so many of us A.A. oldsters have come to. And it’s a hell of a spot, literally. How shall the unconscious, from which our fears, compulsions, and phony aspirations still stream be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want—how to convince our dumb, raging, and hidden “Mr. Hyde”, becomes the final task.
    I’ve recently come to believe this can be done. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones, folks like you and me, commencing to get results.
    Last fall, depression, having no really rational cause at all, took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another five year chronic spell. Considering the grief I’ve had with depression, it wasn’t a bright prospect.
    I kept asking myself, “Why can’t the twelve steps work to release depression? By the hour I stared at the Francis Prayer—“It’s better to understand than to be understood—it’s better to comfort than be comforted—it’s better to love than to be loved….”. Here was the formula, all right. But why didn’t it work?
    Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence—absolute dependence—on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and romance. Failing to get them according to my still childish dreams and specifications, I had fought for these things. And when defeat came, so did depression. There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and really absolute dependencies were cut away.
    Because I had undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful liabilities had never before been so starkly revealed. Therefore, reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found that I must exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these emotional dependencies upon people, upon A.A.—indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatever. Then, only then, would I be free to love as Francis could. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.
    Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as he would have me. And I couldn’t possibly do that so long as I was victimized by my dependencies. For dependency meant demand; demand of possession and control of people and conditions.
    While the words “absolute dependency” may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that triggered my release into my present stability and quietness of mind which I’m now trying to consolidate by having love and offering love, regardless of the return.
    This is, Al, the primary healing circuit: our outgoing love of God’s creation and his people, by which we avail ourselves of His love for us. But the real current can’t flow until our dependencies are broken—broken at depth. Only then can we have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
    Spiritual calculus you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any A.A. of six months working on a new 12th step case. If the case says “the hell with you” the 12th stepper smiles and turns to another case. He doesn’t feel frustrated or rejected. If his case responds and starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, but returns none to the sponsor, then the sponsor is happy anyway. He still doesn’t feel rejected. And when his case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the sponsor is joyful. But his happiness and joy were by-products, nothing more.
    The really stabilizing thing was the having and offering of love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand.
    In my first six months of sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not one responded but that kept me sober. It wasn’t a question of their giving me anything. Stability came out of giving, not of receiving.
    Thus I think it will work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we can find at the root of it some sort of unhealthy dependency and consequent demand. Let us hack away at these chains, begging God’s help. Then we shall be set free to live and to love. We shall then be able to 12th step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.
    Well, Al, I haven’t offered you a single new idea—just a gimmick that has started to unhook my several “hexes” at depth. My brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.
    Top best to Hazel and yourself.
    Affectionately,
    Bill

May 12 in A.A. History

1935: On this Mother’s Day, 39-year-old Bill W. [near right] met 55-year-old Dr. Bob S. [far right], his wife Anne, and their 17-year-old son Smitty. The meeting took place at 5 p.m. at the Gate Lodge [far left] of the Stan Hywet estate,^*the home of Oxford Group member HenriettaBuckler Seiberling [near left]. Dr. Bob was so severely hungover that he couldn’t eat dinner and planned to stay only 15 minutes.
    Left alone in the library, Bill told Bob he wasn’t there to help Bob, but to keep himself sober. Following Dr. Silkworth’s advice, Bill then shared his own experience as an alcoholic, emphasizing the medical hopelessness of the condition rather than preaching. Dr. Bob opened up, and their conversation extended from his planned 15 minutes to over six hours, lasting until after 11 p.m. As Dr. Bob would later recount in his story, “Doctor Bob’s Nightmare”—included in all four editions of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous:

    … he was the first living human with whom I had ever talked, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience. In other words, he talked my language. He knew all the answers, and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading [emphasis by Dr. Bob].

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^*This was the home of Franklin Augustus “Frank” Seiberling (1859–1955), who co-founded The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 and the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. This historic estate includes a 65-room Tudor Revival Manor House, the Gate Lodge, historic gardens, and the Corbin Conservatory. Frank’s son, John Fredrick “Fred” Seiberling (1888–1962), married Henrietta (1888–1979) in 1917. They separated in 1935; Fred subsequently moved back into the Manor House. They never divorced.

1949: Bill W. addressed the American Psychiatric Association’s 105th annual meeting, held at the Mount Royal Hotel [right, 1950 postcard] in Montreal, Quebec. His talk was titled “The Society of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

1956: The First Annual A.A. Convention for England and Wales, a two-day event, was held at the Belle Vue Hotel [left, 1956] in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. By the time of the convention, 56 English groups were registered with the UK headquarters. Irish speakers Sackville M. and Richard P. addressed the convention.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1947: The earliest known use of the term “co-founder” in reference to Dr. Bob S. appeared on the first page [right: a fragment of p. 1] of this month’s Central Bulletin, the newsletter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland, Ohio, in an item titled “Twelfth Anniversary.” This item stated, “[The] mass… meeting will be presided over by Dr. Robert S., one of the co-founders of AA, who will introduce Bill D., the first ‘Guinea Pig’ of Bill and Doc.” [Emphasis in original.]
    Bill also conferred the title of “co-founder” on several other individuals, including William James, Dr. William Silkworth, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Anne S. (Doctor Bob’s wife), and Sister Ignatia.

May 11 in A.A. History

1935: It was Saturday. Bill W. [right], less than five months sober, stood in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio. Howard Tompkins of Baer and Company had involved Bill in a complex proxy fight for control of the National Rubber Machinery Company^* in Akron. A successful outcome could have made Bill president, lifting him and Lois out of their dire financial situation. However, the deal fell through, possibly due to rumors of Bill’s drinking. Dejected and distressed, he returned to the Mayflower.
    In the lobby, Bill felt a powerful pull towards the hotel bar. After a brief internal struggle, a sudden realization struck him: his work with alcoholics at Towns Hospital, though unsuccessful for them, had ironically been instrumental in maintaining his own sobriety.^† Turning away from the bar, he found a public telephone and began calling ministers from a nearby church directory, seeking someone he could work with. He finally reached Rev. Walter Tunks [left], who connected him with Dr. Norman Arthur Shepard, a local member of the Oxford Group. Shepard, in turn, provided the phone number for another member, Henrietta Seiberling [right].
    Henrietta had recently been praying for a particular Oxford Group member who struggled with alcohol. When Bill introduced himself, declaring, “I’m from the Oxford Group, and I’m a rum hound from New York,” Henrietta felt her prayer answered, thinking, “This is really like manna from heaven.” She had been praying for someone to help Dr. Robert “Bob” S. [left], a surgeon who, despite attending her Oxford Group meetings for two and a half years, had been unable to get sober. She told Bill about the doctor. Though she would have invited them both for dinner, the doctor was too drunk to meet anyone that night. Henrietta instead made plans for the two men to meet the following evening at her home, the Gate Lodge [right] at Stan Hywet, the Seiberling estate.

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^*T. Henry Williams—at whose home the Oxford Group that included Henrietta, the doctor, and the doctor’s wife met—had lost his job as Chief Engineer of the National Rubber Machinery Company in a reorganization earlier that spring.

^†There is no basis for believing that it was Lois who pointed this out, as much as many of us would have wanted it that way.

1939: Inspired by the recently published book Alcoholics Anonymous, the first group to adopt that name convened at Albert “Abby” Golrick’s home at 2345 Stillman Road in Cleveland, Ohio [left]. This pioneering group would later be known by several names, including the Cleveland Group, the Stillman Road Group, and the “G” Group.
    Before forming their own fellowship, these Cleveland A.A. members had been part of the Akron, Ohio Oxford Group’s “alcoholic squad,” attending weekly Wednesday meetings. The night before their inaugural meeting, Clarence S. [right] had announced their decision to leave the Akron group and establish an independent one. Clarence later reflected on the Akron group's reaction:

    I made the mistake of telling these people the address. They invaded the house and tried to break up our meeting. One fellow was going to whip me. All in the spirit of pure Christian love! But we stood our ground.

May 10 in A.A. History

1939: Clarence S. [right] announced at the regular Wednesday night meeting of the Oxford Group in Akron, Ohio, as he later recounted:

    … that this was the last time the Cleveland [Ohio] bunch was down as a contingent—that we were starting a group in Cleveland that would only be open to alcoholics and their families. Also that we were taking the name from the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
    The roof came off the house. “Clarence, you can’t do this!” someone said.
    “It’s done.”
    “We’ve got to talk about his!”
    “It’s too late,” I said.…
    I made the mistake of telling these people the address. 

    Newly sober Albert “Abby” G., [left] a patent attorney from Cleveland, was still in Akron City Hospital, but his wife, Grace, had offered their large home to host the new Cleveland meeting.

1946:  Searcy W. [right] took his last drink, and would remain sober for 57 years, until his death on 30 September 2003.

1962:  Dr. Frederick “Freddie” B. [left: artificially aged from 1923], 81, died in San Diego, California. He had been Bill W.’s first prospect, a man Bill had met just six days after his final discharge from Charles B. Towns Hospital.

1969: For Searcy W.’s 23rd anniversary, Bill W. gave him a signed copy of his paper promoting vitamin B-3 (niacin) therapy, inscribing it: “For / Searcy W. / 5/10/69 / Bill W.” [right: inscription].

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1940: Richmond “Rich” W. [left] took his last drink upon joining the newly formed Boston, Massachusetts, Alcoholics Anonymous group, beginning a lifelong period of sobriety. Rich had first gotten sober in 1939 through the Oxford Group, a time when no A.A. group yet existed in Boston. He had stayed sober for 2½ years before relapsing in 1941. After another 1½ years of drinking, he found permanent recovery with A.A.
    In 1948, after moving to Daytona Beach, Florida, Rich compiled and self-published Twenty-Four Hours a Day [near right: a later book cover] using a mimeograph machine [far right: two cut-and-pasted pages ready for mimeographing]. The book became wildly popular, making him the second best-selling A.A. author, surpassed only by Bill W.
    Rich would die on 25 Mar 1965, at the age of 72, with 22 years of continuous sobriety.

May 9 in A.A. History

1882: Silas B. [right, as an adult] was born in Millersburg, Kentucky, the youngest of three known children of Rev. James McClelland and Sarah Ann “Sallie” B. He would become a journalist and author. In late November 1935, he would get sober in New York City, becoming A.A. #4 there. Then shortly before the Big Book was published, Silas would write the earliest published story about Alcoholics Anonymous, which appeared in the 19 January 1939, issue of The Hackettstown (NJ) Courier-Post. Unfortunately, however, he would relapse within a year and die in 1945.

1944: At the invitation of Drs. Silkworth and Tiebout, Bill W. spoke on “Basic Concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous” to the Section on Neurology and Psychiatry during the annual meeting of the Medical Society of the State of New York. This took place at the Hotel Pennsylvania [left] in New York City, located on the east side of Seventh Avenue between W. 32nd and W. 33rd Streets.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1940: ^*Bill W. transferred his Works Publishing shares [right: certificate for one share] (one third of the total issued) to the Alcoholic Foundation. He then sought to persuade a hesitant Hank P., who had relapsed in 1939 and was still drinking, to transfer his own one-third share. Hank eventually agreed, but only if he was first paid for the Honors Dealers’ office furniture. Bill had moved this furniture in February from 17 Williams Street, Newark, New Jersey, to 30 Vesey Street, New York City (Lower Manhattan). Despite Bill’s claim that he had had already paid Hank for it, he consented to have the Alcoholic Foundation purchase the furniture a second time for $200 [~$4,700 in 2026].

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^* Sheehan dated this event to 22 May 1940; Schaberg to May 1940. Olson, however, was uncertain, and neither Pass It On nor Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age provides a date.

1941: Chicago, Illinois, established Alcoholics Anonymous’s first organized local service center. Members of A.A. there opened a Central Office at 127 N. Dearborn St. [left], a development Bill W. highlighted in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. He noted, “This was A.A.’s first organized local service center, the forerunner of the many Intergroup Associations we maintain in large cities nowadays.”
    While there was once debate about whether Chicago or Cleveland, Ohio, had A.A.’s first Central Office, the Cleveland A.A. website now acknowledges Chicago’s primacy. Cleveland’s claim centered on the formation of its “Cuyahoga County A/A Committee” (later called the Central Committee), which How It Worked reports was formed at a meeting on 2 March 1941, in a Cleveland Switchboard Co. office. Doctor Bob and the Good Oldtimers even refers to this as “the first central committee.” However, this committee did not meet until early August, and Cleveland members subsequently established their District [Central] Office in the Williamson Building [right], on the southeast corner of Public Square at Euclid Ave. in August 1941.
    This timeline clearly places Cleveland’s operational office after Chicago’s.        

May 8 in A.A. History

1935: Five hundred sober alcoholics gathered in Akron, Ohio, to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous’s first group. Officially founded on 4 July 1935—the day Bill D. (A.A. #3) was discharged from Akron City Hospital—this group was referred to by Bill W. as “Akron Number One” and is now known as “King School Group #1.” After splitting from the Oxford Group in December 1939, the A.A. group initially met a few times at Dr. Bob S.’s home before relocating to the King School [right] in January 1940. It remained there for many years, possibly until the building closed in 2018.

1971: Following a church memorial service [left: with a white-haired Lois sitting front right], Bill W. was buried [right: gravesite] in a private ceremony at East Dorset Cemetery in East Dorset, Vermont. He had always wanted to be buried there with his family, so his body, enclosed in a Vermont oak casket, was kept in cold storage in Miami, Florida, until the New England ground thawed enough for the burial.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1940:  Dave W. of Seattle, Washington [left: aerial view, 1930], connected with Mrs. J.J.S. and Margaret D. Both women had sent letters of inquiry to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City, in November 1939 and February 1940, respectively. Ruth Hock, who had been corresponding with Dave from the Foundation since March, facilitated their connection. With all three living in Seattle, Dave assisted in establishing the first Alcoholics Anonymous group there and in the state.

1940: [March? April?] In Little Rock, Arkansas, Sterling C., Harlan N., and Bud G. founded the first Alcoholics Anonymous group, located in the Wallace Building [right] at the corner of Markham and Main Streets. This group was unique, earning the distinction of being “the first group formed solely by mail.” This meant its members relied entirely on reading the Big Book, without the benefit of attending an existing A.A. meeting or receiving in-person guidance from established members.
    To ensure the seriousness of potential members, the founders implemented a rigorous screening process, asking four key questions:

1. Are you convinced you cannot handle your alcohol problem?
2. Are you willing to let a group of fellows who had the same problem prescribe a course of action?
3. Will you do anything to eliminate alcohol from your life? 
4. Do you believe in a power bigger than yourself?

    A prospect unable to answer “yes” to all four questions was advised to return later. If accepted, however, he faced a set of requirements:

1. Read the Big Book in three days;
2. keep a 28-day journal;
3. write his case history;
4. make time and money budgets;
5. if employed, take a two-week leave of absence to devote full time to the plan; and 
6. accomplish other assignments given to him by his sponsor.

    This rigorous and structured approach became widely known as “The Little Rock Plan.”