September 1 in A.A. History

1898: Edward Patrick “Ed” Dowling [left: at far right, with siblings, c. 1907] was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He would become a Jesuit priest and important spiritual advisor to Bill W.

1918: Major Frederick Ernest B. [near right, 1919] wote a letter [below right] to Dr. Henry Milton Whelpley, the dean of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy and editor of Meyer Brothers Druggist magazine, enclosing a questionnaire for Whelpley to complete. The War Department wanted to know the military status of all chemists. This letter was written on Chemical Warfare Service letterhead and indicated that Frederick was the Chief of Personnel there. Presumably he sent the same request to chemists throughout the U.S.

1939: “Earl T―― and the Earlytimers” met^* in Evanston, Illinois, forming the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Chicago area. This meeting took place in the apartment of Earl [left] and his wife, Katie,^† at 1324 Central Street [right]. Eight people attended^‡: Earl, Katie, Dick R., Ken A., Sadie I., Sylvia K. [left], 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.”

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^*One source notes that the meeting occurred on “a Tuesday night in September,” suggesting the 5th, 12th, 19th, or 26th, while others indicate the 13th, 20th, or 21st.

^†Some sources claim the meeting was held “at Sylvia Kauffman’s apartment on Central Street.”

^‡There are discrepancies regarding attendance; one source states there were “six brand-new A.A.s and three non-alcoholic spouses,” while another reports that “eight people were present, four men and four women, two of whom were non-alcoholics.”

1954: Bill W. began dictating “the story of myself and the story of AA from true recollection only” to Ed Bierstadt at the Hotel Bedford [right], 118 E. 40th St. in Manhattan. Bill also said,

[I]t is my purpose to start in with childhood recollections bearing upon my background and ancestry and the events of that time as they related primarily to my personality structure and the defects in it, which no doubt laid the groundwork for my alcoholism.…

I have always been intensely averse to anything autobiographical being done in print. Indeed, I have always been very much against a biography of any sort, due to our studied policy of playing the founding of this movement down, for as people in it know, this is a society which can function peculiarly well without too much sanction from the top. Of course, I realize that someday biographies may be written, and there is no legal means of preventing them. Therefore the early part of this narrative is intended to set the record somewhere near straight, and for this immediate purpose I will just try to hit a few highlights in the sketch to follow.

A transcript of this recording led to the publication of Bill W.: My First 40 Years [far left: 3rd edition] by Hazelden in 2000. The first printing consisted of only 2,500 copies, making it somewhat rare. It also served as the foundation for the first section of Robert Thomsen’s Bill W. [near left: 1st edition], first published in 1975.

September in A.A. History—day unknown

1885: Robert S. [left, as a young man] (the future Dr. Bob) entered Summer Street Elementary School [right: former school?] in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, just two blocks from his home at Central and Summer Sts.

1894: Robert S. entered St. Johnsbury Academy [near right, c. 1908], located about 0.3 miles [~480 meters] from his childhood home.

1894: Bill W.’s parents, Emily Griffith [far left, c. 1905] and Gilman W. [near leftt], were married. 

August 30 in A.A. History

1926:While camping in Holyoke, Massachusets [left: downtown, c. 1925], Lois W. [right, 1925] wrote in her diary, Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos,

I called up Esther Congdon Blanchard, an old Brooklyn friend, and although Esther was on vacation, her mother invited us to supper at six. I foolishly said we’d be there, without consulting Bill, who had gone with a Mr. Nickelson, superintendent of the coarse grades mills, to inspect a factory. I waited and waited for him to come home, preparing everything so he could just jump into clean clothes—but all in vain. I had to call Mrs. Congdon that we couldn’t make it before 6:30.

It was then that the tent blew down and in trying to raise it I punched the pole through the fabric, thus presenting myself a nice little job of mending. The folks at the foot of the hill, seeing my predicament, invited me to wait for Bill in their house, out of the wind, and kindly offered me a cup of tea and a piece of pie. Afraid to spoil my supper, I hesitated before accepting, but it turned out I was having it, because at 7 o’clock it was again necessary to call Mrs. Congdon, this time that we couldn’t make supper but would be there later in the evening.

About 7:30 Bill and his friend showed up. They had changed plans and gone to a factory in Connecticut, fifty miles distant and stopped for supper on their way back. We had a pleasant evening when we finally did reach the Blanchards’. Gordon, whom I had not met before, is sales manager for a rival writing paper company and evidently doing splendidly, for he and Esther have a beautiful home. We are sorry to miss her and the children.

The next day Gordon conducted Bill through the mill, more modern and up-to-date than the American Writing Paper Co., but Gordon considers Willson the best paper man in the country.

1943: The Selective Service finally responded to Clarence S.’s application to become an officer in the U.S. Army, informing him that his request had been referred to another department. He had previously served a brief stint at Officer Candidate School in the U.S. Army in 1942. A month earlier, he had been classified as 1-A by the Selective Service [left: Clarence in uniform].

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1966: Ernest “Ernie” Kurtz [right: in Egypt] began his studies at Harvard University in the fall. He “ploughed a very wide and wandering path” in his 12 years at Harvard, completing an MA in history in 1968 and a PhD in the History of American Civilization in 1978.

1967: Switzerland’s first General Service Office opened as the Gremium, which means “committee” in German, and started serving German-speaking members of Alcoholics Anonymous [far left: cover of German Big Book; near left: Geneva, Switzerland].

1967: The copyright for the 1st edition of Alcoholics Anonymous [right: 1st edition, 1st printing] expired because it was never renewed.

All our editions of A.A.’s Big Book were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in the years they were published, including the 2nd edition, in 1955. However, there was apparently a misunderstanding that the copyright for the 2nd edition would automatically renew the copyright for the 1st edition. In reality, only the additional material unique to the 2nd edition was protected. This failure to renew the copyright for the 1st edition resulted in its expiration.

Furthermore, it seems highly likely that because a number of multilith copies [left: 1st page of Chapter 5, “How It Works” from the multilith edition] were distributed in early 1939 without the required notation that they were “Loan Copies,” the original copyright on the 1st edition was never enforceable.

Whatever the reason, the consequence is that the heart and soul of the Big Book—the first 164 pages—have been in the public domain since at least 1967 and remain so today.

August 29 in A.A. History

1886: T. Henry Williams was born in South Woodstock, Connecticut. In the 1930s, he and his wife, Clarace [right], hosted meetings of the Oxford Group in their Akron, Ohio home [left]. The home became a weekly gathering place for early members of Alcoholics Anonymous, who called themselves the Alcoholic Squad of the Oxford Group. By the end of 1939, this group had begun meeting separately as an independent A.A. group.

1956: Bill W. first took LSD in California under the guidance of Gerald Heard, a British-born American historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. Heard had introduced Bill to Aldous Huxley, the English writer and philosopher, as well as to British psychiatrists Drs. Humphry Osmond^* and Abram Hoffer, who were then working with schizophrenic and alcoholic patients in Canada. At the time, LSD was believed to hold psychotherapeutic potential, and research into it was being funded by the NIH and the National Academy of Sciences. Osmond and Hoffer sought to induce an experience resembling delirium tremens (DTs), hoping to shock alcoholics away from drinking. Bill took LSD with Heard and Huxley.

Among those Bill later invited to experiment with LSD—and who accepted—were Nell Wing, Father Ed Dowling, Sam Shoemaker, Lois W. (a reluctant participant), Marty M., and Helen W. These sessions took place in New York under the medical supervision of a psychiatrist from Roosevelt Hospital. The experiments would go on to have significant repercussions within Alcoholics Anonymous, yet Bill continued his own LSD experiments into 1959, and possibly into the 1960s [below: all persons named herein].

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^*Osmond coined the term psychedelic in a reply to a letter from Huxley [right], who had proposed his own coinage, phanerothyme, in a short rhyme: “To make this mundane world sublime, just half a gram of phanerothyme.” Osmond countered with a couplet of his own: “To fall in Hell or soar Angelic, you'll need a pinch of psychedelic”—from the Greek ψυχή (psyche, meaning “mind”) and δῆλος (delos, meaning “manifest”). The exchange took place in April 1956; Osmond went on to formally propose the term to the New York Academy of Sciences the following year.

Today in A.A. History—August 29–September 1

1991: The 34th International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) took place at the Hilton San Francisco [right: c. 1971–73] in San Francisco, California [far left: registration form; near left: one bit of swag from the event].

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1966: Bill W. wrote to Herbert “Herb” M., General Manager of the General Service Office from 1960 to 1968, expressing his feelings after the General Service Conference finally agreed in April to change the ratio of Class A (alcoholic) to Class B (non‑alcoholic) Trustees on the General Service Board from 7–8 to 14–7, which marked Bill’s “last official business with the Fellowship.… Bill’s A.A. work was finished.” He wrote:

You cannot imagine how happy and grateful I am that the decision was taken that A.A. should try to go on its own at the level of the board. Chief among my sources of happiness at this outcome is the remembrance that without your good offices, nothing might have been accomplished for years, if ever.

At the January 1958 Board meeting, Herb.—then a Class B (alcoholic) trustee moved that the Board could function with more alcoholic than non-alcoholic trustees and would act on it if the Conference asked. That vote split three in favor, three opposed, and three abstaining—it didn’t pass, but it opened the debate formally within the Board.

August 28 in A.A. History

1926: Bill W. had spent a few days investigating the American Writing Paper Co. [right: stock certificate; below left: logo]. Two days later, his wife, Lois, summarized in her diary of their trip, Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos, what Bill had told her:

Paper making had always sounded dull until we came here and learned a little about it. It turns out to be complicated and quite an art. Saturday Bill took me through one of the plants where red photographic paper for Eastman and blue paper for phonograph records are made. The company has the government contract for postcards and envelopes.

Bill raves about the ability and personality of the president, Mr. Willson, and instead of a report about costs and profits, he plans to write about the power of one man to make a success of a company that had failed. All those with whom Bill has talked, whether laborer, superintendent, or official of the company, has been full of enthusiasm and pep, eager to do a good job for Mr. Willson. He has won me over, too, for Saturday afternoon he asked Bill and me to go up Mt. Tom with him.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1964: Frederick Harold “Hal” M. [right], a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, got sober. He later earned the nickname “Dr. Gratitude” for the “Attitude of Gratitude” lapel pins [left: possibly one of Hal’s] he commissioned and gave away by the thousands.

While earning a Master’s in Business Administration and a Doctorate in Education at Columbia University, he played trumpet in a small dance band, which performed once at a society function at the world-renowned Sardi’s restaurant [right, Apr 2026], 234 W. 44th St., in Manhattan’s theater district. This marked the beginning of a lifelong relationship between Dr. Marley and Sardi’s—sixty years later, the maître d’ would still greet him by name whenever he arrived with a guest, which he did on nearly every visit to New York. After Columbia, Dr. Marley continued to play trumpet in a dance band, touring the United States and foreign nations.

After serving in World War II, the Korean so-called “police action” (War), and the Vietnam Conflict (War), Hal retired from the Air Force in 1965. Nevertheless, he often described his departure differently at A.A. meetings, saying, “I was kicked out,” to convey how his alcoholism had left him professionally, spiritually, and emotionally bankrupt. Following his military career, Hal directed educational and vocational training programs in the Job Corps. In the 1970s, he joined the Foreign Service, where he established and led initiatives to support the recovery of alcoholics and drug addicts within the State Department and at U.S. Embassies around the world.

1966: Bill W. [right, 1970] responded to an unknown correspondent who complained that he had been “disturbed to hear some A.A. speakers say, ‘A.A. is a selfish program.’”

I can can see why you are disturbed to hear some A.A. speakers say, “A.A. is a selfish program.” The word “selfish” ordinarily implies that one is acquisitive, demanding, and thoughtless of the welfare of others. Of course, the A.A. way of life does not at all imply such undesirable traits.

What do these speakers mean? Well, any theologian will tell you that the salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation that a man can have. Without salvation—however we may define this—he will have little or nothing. For us if A.A., there is even more urgency.

If we cannot or will not achieve sobriety, then we become truly lost, right in the here and now. We are of no value to anyone, including ourselves, until we find salvation from alcohol. Therefore, our own recovery and spiritual growth have to come first—a right and necessary kind of self-concern.

August 27 in A.A. History

1862: Gardner Fayette Griffith [below] (Bill W.’s maternal grandfather) enlisted at age 21 in Danby, Vermont, for nine months in Company B of Vermont’s 14th Regiment, which was mustered into the Union Army. In return, he received a $100 bounty [~$3,300 in 2026] from the town of Danby [Main Street, Danby, VT, c. 1890] .

Today in A.A. History—August 27–30

1992:The 35th International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) was held at the Marriott Society Center Hotel^* [left: recent] in Cleveland, Ohio, under the theme “Back to Basics” [below right: souvenir tee shirt].

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^*Later renamed the Marriott at Key Center, likely in 1994, shortly after the Society Center itself was renamed Key Center.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1961: Ernest “Ernie” K. [left] was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and assigned as parish priest of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Rochester, New York’s 19th Ward, a neighborhood that would soon become racially diverse.

1962: The message of Alcoholics Anonymous first reached Belize [near right: map showing its location] from neighboring Central American countries. The first A.A. group in Belize was founded at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church [far right, now a cathedral] on North Front St. in Belize City. The group later relocated to its own site on Barrack Rd., where it remained for many years.

1962: Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were established in Hamburg (with help from Mr. Abel of England), Düsseldorf (with help from Robert of Chicago, Illinois), and at the South Side Chapel on Ramstein Air Base—all in Germany [far left: all locations in Germany: near left aerial view of Landstuhl (later Ramstein) Air Base, April 1953].

1963:The first known German-speaking group in Switzerland was founded in Lucerne [right: aerial view, with Old Town in foreground].

1963: WNBC in New York City launched a radio program titled “Ask an Alcoholic.” The program aired for 22 weeks, gained widespread popularity, and led to a 33% increase in traffic at the New York Intergroup Office. At least as late as 1966, the Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office (GSO) in New York City was still receiving requests for copies of the outline—script and instructions—for this program [left: such a request published in Aug/Sep 1966 issue of Box 4-5-9].

1963: The Internationalist Meeting bulletin had grown to five or six single-sided pages, mimeographed on blue paper. It was a bi-monthly confidential bulletin produced by Alcoholics Anonymous’s General Service Office, connecting members who were unable attend regular meetings—seafarers and those living abroad (Internationalists), and members confined to home or institutions (Homers). In 1976, it would be merged with a similar bulletin for those isolated by geography (Loners) to create the Loners-Internationists Meeting (LIM) bulletin.

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.

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^*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.

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^*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].