May 24 in A.A. History

1893: Founded in Oberlin, Ohio, by a group of ministers and professors, the Anti-Saloon League became a key component of the Progressive Era. Its primary aim was to promote temperance and influence state government. The League garnered strong support in the South and rural North, particularly from Protestant ministers and their congregations, including Methodists, Baptists, Disciples, and Congregationalists. Focusing on legislation, it was concerned with how legislators voted, not whether they drank. Its motto was “The saloon must go” [right: Anti-Saloon League poster].
    Initially established as a state society in Ohio, the League’s influence quickly expanded, becoming a national organization in 1895. It rapidly emerged as the most powerful prohibition lobby in the United States, surpassing both the older Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party. The League’s ultimate success culminated in nationwide prohibition, enshrined in the Constitution through the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919.

1949: Bill W. [left: at a podium] delivered a talk titled “The Society of Alcoholics Anonymous” at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, held at the Windsor Hotel [right, c. 1949] in Montreal, Quebec. His presentation took place on the second day of the event, which ran from Monday, May 23, through Friday, May 27.
    During his presentation, Bill referenced an original six-step program—the earliest known mention of such a program. This was a significant detail, as it had been ten and a half years since he drafted the more widely known Twelve Steps for the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in December 1938. He stated categorically that these six steps had not evolved over time but had been explicitly given to him by Ebby T. in November 1934:

    My former schoolmate [Ebby] did, however, ascribe his new sobriety to certain ideas that this alcoholic [Rowland Hazard] and other Oxford people had given him. The particular practices my friend had selected for himself were simple:

1. He admitted he was powerless to solve his own problem.
2. He got honest with himself as never before; made an examination of conscience.
3. He made a rigorous confession of his personal defects.
4. He surveyed his distorted relations with people, visiting them to make restitution.
5. He resolved to devote himself to helping others in need, without the usual demand for personal prestige or material gain.
6. By meditation he sought God’s direction for his life and help to practice these principles at all times.

    Most A.A. historians who have researched the subject believe that no formalized six-step program existed during the so-called ‘Flying Blind’ period, even though these six steps likely sum up and summarize the practices of that era.

1950: James “Jim” S. [far left], 63, chief librarian of the Akron Beacon Journal, died at his home in Akron, Ohio [near left: obituary]. He was the first Australian to achieve sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, doing so in Akron in June 1937. Scott solicited, edited, and sometimes wrote several stories from Akron members that were included in the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. His own story appeared in that edition as “Traveler, Editor, Scholar” and in the second and third editions as “The News Hawk."

A.A. History—month and day unknown

1880: Annie C. was born. She would join Alcoholics Anonymous in April 1947. Her story, “Annie the Cop Fighter” appeared in the second edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

May 23 in A.A. History

1888: Dr. Nathan Clark Burnham and Matilda Hoyt Spelman [left, respectively, c. 1888] were married in Brooklyn, New York, likely at the local Swedenborgian Church [right: Clark St. & Monroe Place, 1922]. Their first child was Lois, who would marry Bill W.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1966: The AA Exchange Bulletin, later renamed Box 4-5-9, in a short item named “AA on TV,” announced [left] the creation of four 60-second A.A. television spots. Public Information Committees, Groups, and Central Offices could purchase these spots for $20 each [~$206 in 2026].
    These spots featured real A.A. members, whose faces were not visible, but who represented a diverse cross-section of society: a truck driver, a housewife, a switchboard operator, and a business executive. Each concluded with an appearance by Dr. John “Jack” L. Norris, the Class A (non-alcoholic) chairman of the General Service Board [right, 1967]. He affirmed that while A.A. did not solicit members, it stood ready to assist anyone struggling with their drinking.
    These spots were intended for local television stations to air as Public Service Announcements (PSAs). Stations broadcast PSAs at no charge, fulfilling their legal requirement to provide free airtime for a certain number of them.

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

Early 1860s: After five years in Sing Sing prison [left], Jeremiah “Jerry” McAuley [near right] was moved to tears at a Sunday chapel service. The cause: Hezekiah Orville “Awful” Gardner [far right], a man with whom Jerry had collaborated on many corrupt enterprises, was testifying to his Christian conversion. Jerry immediately recognized Orville’s sincerity.
    Orville’s powerful testimony ignited Jerry’s own search for answers in the Bible. Night after night, he read, fueling a burning desire to experience the same transformation he had witnessed in Orville. A still, small voice within him urged, “Pray,” but Jerry felt utterly unable to. The inner voice then reminded him of the publican’s prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Still, he couldn’t bring himself to pray, and the struggle continued.
    “It was as if God were fighting the devil for me,” Jerry later recalled. “To every thought that came up, there came a verse of Scripture.”
    For three or four weeks, this internal battle persisted. Many times, he would drop to his knees, only to quickly jump up again, prayer eluding him. One day, a female missionary visited the prison. Her fervent prayers, as she literally cried out to the Lord, moved Jerry deeply and intensified his already profound struggle. That night, he resolved to remain on his knees until he found forgiveness. As he later recounted in his autobiography, Transformed:; or, The History of a River Thief, Briefly Told [right: 1st edition title page]:

    All at once it seemed as if something supernatural was in my room. I was afraid to open my eyes. I was in an agony and the tears rolled off my face in great drops. How I longed for Gods [sic] mercy! Just then, in the very height of my distress, it seemed as if a hand was laid upon my head and these words came to me: “My son, thy sins which are many are forgiven.” I do not know if I heard a voice, yet the words were distinctly spoken in my soul. I jumped from my knees. I paced up and down my cell. A heavenly light seemed to fill it. A softness and a perfume like the fragrance of flowers. I did not know if I was living or not. I clapped my hands and shouted, “Praise God! Praise God!”

May 22 in A.A. History

1940: Works Publishing, Inc. was legally established as the publishing arm of the Alcoholic Foundation. Bill W. [near right] and Hank P. [far right] had been asked to surrender their stock [left: one share]. As a condition of this surrender, Dr. Bob and Anne S. would receive 10% royalties for life on sales of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous (35¢ per book [~$8.33 in 2026]), royalties that would normally have gone to Bill as the author. Hank had been persuaded to give up his shares in exchange for a $200 payment [~$4,760 in 2026] for office furniture he asserted was his even though he had likely already sold it to them once.

1943:  Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland, Ohio celebrated its 4th anniversary. The June 1943 Central Bulletin reported [right] on the event:

FOUNDERS’ ANNIVERSARY PARTY

    Over 300 [?] persons jammed Masonic Hall in Cleveland Heights when the originators of the AA movement in Cleveland helped sponsor the Fourth Anniversary party, Saturday evening, May 22, in conjunction with the Lee Mayfield Group. After an excellent dinner, where the choice was steak or chicken, various speakers arose and spoke on the progress of the AA movement in Cleveland. These speakers included the first Clevelander in AA and the several others who were convinced by him as well as well-known Akronites.
    Excellent entertainment was also supplied and with the singing of Old [sic] Lang Syne, the crowd disbanded united in praise for the committee who arranged this inspiring evening.

1948: New Jersey’s Atlantic City Group [left: brochure for this group] celebrated its second anniversary. The event featured talks by several A.A. members and Dr. C. Nelson Davis, the non-alcoholic co-founder of the Saul Clinic. Dr. Davis established the clinic—the first private treatment center for alcoholism in the U.S.—in 1946 with C. Dudley Saul at St. Luke’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1986: The 29th International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (ICYPAA) convened at the Hyatt Regency in Miami, Florida [near right: registration form; far right: press release].

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1956: The first issue of the A.A. Exchange Bulletin—Volume 1, Number 1 [left: page 1]—was published. This publication consolidated several existing newsletters, among them The General Service Bulletin. The General Service Bulletin had previously been known as The Group Secretary, and was originally called The A.A. Bulletin. It described itself this way:

    This new General Service Headquarters publication, which will be distributed to all groups and to lone members and Internationalists throughout the world, replaces the single-sheet “General Service Bulletin” which, in one form at or another, carried Headquarters news to the movement for more than a decade.
    The “Exchange Bulletin” was created to fill many requests for a concise, movement-wide publication that would combine Headquarters news, basic information on A.A. as a whole and brief accounts indicating how particular problems are being met by groups throughout the world. It is also designed to give loners, Internationalists (seamen) and groups in prisons and hospitals a monthly forum through which they can keep in touch with developments in their areas of A.A. activity.
    The “Exchange Bulletin” is not a substitute for “The A.A. Grapevine” which, because of its greater size and different editorial approach, will continue to be the movement’s international interpretive journal.

    In December 1966, the A.A. Exchange Bulletin would be renamed Box 4-5-9.

May 21 in A.A. History

1945: The New Republic published “Blueplate Gospel,” a review by Dr. Leslie H. Farber [left, c. 1981] of September Remember [right: cover], a novel by Eliot Taintor.^* A chapter from the book had been serialized in the March and April 1945 issues of the A.A. Grapevine. The review stated, in part,

    The advantage of the present 300-page pamphlet (disguised as a pulp-style novel) over the shorter booklets distributed by AA, lies in its detailed revelations of group ac­tivity. While the formal weekly meetings are devoted to inspirational talks by ex-alcoholics, coffee is drunk in no blue-nose spirit; good fellowship abounds (“You can get that sense of abandon without liquor”). AA members feel a natural solidarity: the way they would “get up and talk at meetings, really let their hair down, made other contacts seem thin and superficial. Other people shadowy.”

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^*“Eliot Taintor” was the pseudonym used by the married couple Ruth F. and Gregory M., one of whom was an A.A. member.

1960: The Saturday Evening Post [right: cover] published “I Always Have Help” anonymously. An introductory note read:

    A man who has had more than his share of trouble—alcoholism, shattered marriage, tragic losses—tells anonymously how he manages to face life, one day at a time.

The anonymous author wrote,

    As I write this I’m in as warty a financial pickle as a small businessman could contrive—broke, no property, heavy family responsibili­ties, head of a small concern which is also broke, with creditors expecting in a few months to be paid $20,000 [about $225,000 in 2026] it hasn’t got. Less than this has driven highly strung people to break­down and even suicide, and I confess I am a little uneasy. But because of a limited grasp of a philosophy which members of a celebrated secret society call The 24-Hour Plan, I’m fairly confident of pulling through.… I took up with some people who were supposed to know how to lay hold of a situation of this kind. They gave me a book called Alcoholics Anonymous, and my eye fell on a remarkable passage. Be­fore I tell you what it said, let me assure the reader that he doesn’t have to be an alcoholic to proceed with this article; everyone concerned with open-minded living may find something of interest.

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1954: The A.A. Grapevine [left: cover] published a brief item titled “Calling All AA ‘Hams’: A Meeting in the Ether,” stating:

    Several AAs around the country who are amateur radio operators would like to contact each other via the air waves. Send us your signal, if you’re a “ham,” and we’ll print it.

1954: [Early; Pass It On wrongly says 1956] Bill W. received a letter from the notorious robber, kidnapper, and rapist Caryl Chessman [right, 1953], popularly known as “The Red Light Bandit.” In May 1948, Chessman was convicted on 17 of 18 counts for crimes committed during the first three weeks of January 1948. He was sentenced to death under California’s “Little Lindbergh Law”^* and, at the time he wrote to Bill, Chessman was on death row at San Quentin Prison [left: inside view, c. 1950s], awaiting execution on May 14. (He was granted a stay. Over nearly twelve years on death row, Chessman filed dozens of appeals, acting as his own attorney. He avoided eight execution dates, often by only a few hours.)
    Later, in 1954, Prentice-Hall published Chessman’s autobiography, Cell 2455, Death Row: A Condemned Man’s Own Story [right: cover].^† In it, Chessman drew a comparison between psychopaths and alcoholics. This prompted Jack Alexander, who likely saw a prepublication copy, to encourage him to write to Bill. Alexander wondered whether criminals could “recover” through a surrender similar to that of A.A. members, writing to Bill:

    There is a close resemblance between the criminal psychopath and the alcoholic mind. Both are grandiose, resentful, defiant, and hating of authority; both unconsciously destroy themselves trying to destroy others.

On 9 February 1954, Chessman wrote to Bill, saying in part:

I woke up to the fact I’d been nothing more than a cynically clever, aggressively destructive and sometimes violent damn fool. The question of guilt or innocence aside, it dawned on me that my condemnation was a public proclamation of spectacular failure. As I saw it then, two courses were open to me. I could spend my time figuratively or literally whining and indulging in a narrow self-pity or I could see—perhaps a more appropriate word is envision—myself and all that a death sentence implied in terms larger than my own predicament.… I could tell my story and plead, not my personal cause, but society’s cause and the cause of those who—in my opinion, needlessly—are criminally damned and doomed.… I am most hopeful it will make a very useful contribution to a most vexing social problem.

    On 31 March, Bill replied, including a copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. On 25 May, he wrote to Father Ed Dowling, enclosing copies of Chessman’s letter to him, his own reply to Chessman, and his reply to Jack Alexander’s letter noted above. A postscript added,

P.S. Brother Chessman got another stay—maybe 60 days. Have a most interesting letter from him in response to my last. Will send it on.

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^*This law had been repealed by the time Chessman’s trial began but was in effect at the time of his crimes, and the repeal was not retroactive.

^†Chessman began writing this memoir after San Quentin Prison Warden Harley Teets encouraged him to do something with his life. With Teets’s support, he chronicled his descent into what he called criminally insane behavior. When the book was published, it became a bestseller and was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1955. Its success led Teets to try to prevent Chessman from writing any more; however, three additional books by Chessman were later smuggled out of prison and published. In 1957, Teets died while serving as warden.
    Clinton T. Duffy, the first warden to introduce the A.A. program into prisons and a prominent opponent of the death penalty, was warden when Chessman first arrived. Duffy described him as one of the most dangerous men he had ever met: tough, mean, contemptuous, arrogant, deviant, a troublemaker, and a constant threat—“Chessman represented nothing.”

May 20 in A.A. History

1908: Sybil A. [left: with her two older brothers] was born in Melrose, New Mexico, to Addie Florence Jones and Henry Filander A., a poor but hardworking couple. (The family likely resided at 108 Fifth Street, their home in 1910 [right: 100 block, Aug 2019]). The family soon relocated to Simmons, a small oil town in Texas.
    Sybil began drinking around the age of 14 after her family relocated to Los Angeles, California, from Texas. She had a child with her first husband, James S., a sailor. She believed that having the child would help her stop drinking, but instead, she drank more than ever. Eventually, her parents took the child from her.
    In 1928, she married Lyle H., with whom she had two children—one who died the day she was born, in 1929, and another in 1931. They lived at 7319 S. Halldale Street, Los Angeles [far left, Dec 2017]. In 1938, she married Richard M., and they lived for many years at 7711 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles [near left, before being rebuilt in 2009].
    As Sybil M. [right: Sybil as a young adult], she became the first woman west of the Mississippi to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). She later became best known by her fourth and second-to-last married name, Sybil C.

1938: Two days after receiving an advance from Charles B. Towns, Bill W., then less than 3½ years sober, began writing the book that would eventually become Alcoholics Anonymous. He likely started with his own story, marking the first of three attempts at the manuscript. This initial effort is a handwritten manuscript of fourteen paragraphs on eight sheets of yellow legal paper, titled “The Strange Obsession” [left: page 1].

1941: The 15th Alcoholics Anonymous group in the Cleveland, Ohio area, the first known women’s group, formed with 16 members and met at 12214 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, Ohio [right, Nov 2015].

May in A.A. History—day unknown

1950: Nell Wing [left], a non-alcoholic who had worked at the Alcoholic Foundation since 1947, became Bill Wilson’s secretary. In 1955, she would begin collecting archival items, eventually organizing A.A.'s archives and becoming its first Archivist.

1950: The General Service Office (G.S.O.), formerly known as A.A. “Headquarters,” and the A.A. Grapevine’s two-person editorial staff relocated just a two-minute walk away in New York City, moving from 415 Lexington Ave. to 141 E. 44th St. [right: respectively, c. 1940]. At the same time, a system for rotating Senior General Secretaries was established.

1951: Al-Anon was founded by Lois W. and Anne B. [left, respectively], both spouses of Alcoholics Anonymous members. Al-Anon considers its founding to have occurred throughout the entire month. 
    After the 1st A.A. General Service Conference, Lois invited the wives of the Delegates to the Conference to lunch at her home. This led Lois and her close friend and neighbor, Anne, to open an office at Stepping Stones [right]. They obtained a list of 87 family groups and nonalcoholic individuals or family groups across the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Ireland from the Alcoholic Foundation. To unify them, Lois and Anne sent a combination invitation/questionnaire [left: cover letter]. Eventually, the name Al-Anon Family Groups was chosen for the resulting new fellowship. With A.A.’s permission, Al-Anon adopted the Twelve Steps and, later in 1954, the Twelve Traditions as its guiding principles.

May 19 in A.A. History

1942: As a supplement to its Commerce Reports, the U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce published Trade Information Bulletin No. 231, “British Dyestuffs Industry” [far left], authored by Dr. Frederick B. [near left, 1923], the American trade commissioner to Germany.

1942: The War Department’s Office of the Adjutant General responded to Bill W.’s 6 March 1942 request for a World War II commission with a non-responsive form letter [right] that stated, among other things:

• All new applicants for the Army or the Army Specialist Corps are now being asked to fill out a revised form of questionnaire in duplicate.
• You will note that the new questionnaire calls for more details than the old form you filled out originally. The reason for asking for more details is that they are needed by the Army Specialist Corps so that the applicant’s training, experience, skills, and interests can be adequately considered by that Corps when the branches of the Army call upon it to locate and appoint civilians fitted for specific technical, professional or administrative duties.
• Sending you the new form to fill out does not mean that an offer of appointment will necessarily be made in the immediate future. All that can be said is that the revised system will make it easier to consider your application when men with your qualifications are needed. You are particularly requested not to make inquiries of the War Department as to the probability of your employment.

2000: Dr. Paul Hubert O. [left, with wife Max], sometimes referred to as “the funniest man in A.A.,” died at 83 in Mission Viejo, California.
    His story, “Bronzed Moccasins,” initially credited to “A Physician in California,” first appeared in the May 1975 issue of the A.A. Grapevine. It was later republished in the third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous as “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict,” and in the fourth edition as “Acceptance Was the Answer.” Dr. Paul began his journey to sobriety in December 1966, achieving permanent sobriety in July 1967.

    Though he founded Pills Anonymous and Chemical Dependency Anonymous, he did not attend either group. Notably, he also did not introduce himself as “an alcoholic and addict,” and was irritated by those who sought to include addictions other than alcoholism in A.A. meetings. In a July 1995 interview with the A.A. Grapevine, he expressed concern that his story may have “overshot the mark” because it was used to justify drug discussions in meetings. He felt “most uncomfortable” when members recognized him and thanked him for providing justification for such discussions. Despite these reservations, he maintained there was nothing in his story he would change.

Today in A.A. History—May 19–25

2019: The 69th General Service Conference was held at the Crowne Plaza Times Square [right: view from an upper floor] in New York City. Among the Advisory Actions were the following:

• “a draft Fourth Edition of the Spanish Big Book, Alcohólicos Anonimos, be developed;”
• “the pamphlet ‘A.A. for the Black and African-American Alcoholic’ be updated;”
• language be added to “Questions and Answers on Sponsorship” to emphasize anonymity;
• “update the pamphlet ‘The Twelve Steps Illustrated’;”
• “update the pamphlet ‘The Twelve Concepts Illustrated’;”
• “allow time for discussion [during] the ‘Process for Polling the General Service Conference between Annual Meetings’;”
• “A.A. World Services, Inc. apply for Google AdWords/Grants, for the purpose of providing information about A.A. to the public;” and
• “The pamphlet ‘A.A. for the Older Alcoholic—Never Too Late’ be updated with a revised introduction; current and inclusive stories; reference to online A.A.; and an updated ‘How Do I Find A.A.?’ section;”

May 18 in A.A. History

1926: [Date uncertain^*] Bill and Lois W. [right: on the Harley, 1925] were involved in a serious motorcycle accident while traveling through the eastern U.S. on their Harley-Davidson, conducting research on publicly traded companies. The day before, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, they had decided to head straight home to arrive in time for her sister Kitty’s wedding on June 17. In 1973, Lois wrote,

    Just outside of Dayton, Tennessee, I was driving on a sandy road, which apparently ran straight ahead, when suddenly, hidden by a large barn, it made a sharp angled turn to the right. I tried to force the wheels, but the sand was too deep and over we went. Bill, in the sidecar, was thrown over my head, breaking his collarbone as he landed; I twisted my leg, causing water on the knee; the equipment flew in every direction; and the trunk burst open.
    Luckily a man in a car soon came along and drove us, dazed and badly scratched, to a doctor in town who set Bill’s shoulder, bandaged my knee, and there being no hospital, settled us in a hotel room over his office.
    During our week’s stay there, Bill and I tried to picture what the town had been like the year before during the Scopes Evolution trial. We imagined William Jennings Bryan as he paced back and forth on one of the hotel’s five fancy grill-railed balconies rehearsing his speech, and Clarence Darrow with his chair tilted back against the wall and his feet on the rail, haranguing a coterie of youths; while the streets were crowded with visitors come to hear the great orator and see the show.
    It wasn’t too long before we were able to return to the fateful corner. The man who had picked us up had collected all our duffle and put it and the motorcycle into the barn, as he said he would. Although the door was left open, and more than a week had passed, not a single article was missing; even such attractive and easily packed items as the traveling clock, compass and radio were all there.
    We made arrangements to have the motorcycle and most of the gear shipped to Brooklyn. Then in a few days, when the doctor said we could travel, we took the train for home.

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^*Lois and Bill had arrived in Muscle Shoals on the evening of the 16th, just before dark. On the 17th, Lois wrote her final diary entry, noting: “There are great plans for the development of the whole area around Muscle Shoals…” The date of their departure for home, given here as the 18th, assumes they spent the 17th exploring Muscle Shoals. The distance to Dayton, Tennessee, is only about 210 miles [~340 km].

1950: Upon learning that A.A. members in Akron, Ohio, were hoping to erect a large monument to him, Dr. Bob S. told Bill W., “I reckon we ought to be buried like other folks” [left: Dr. Bob and Anne’s grave]. Bill recounted this in his “Dr. Bob” tribute in the January 1951 A.A. Grapevine:

    A year ago, when Anne passed away, the thought of an im­posing shaft came uppermost in the minds of many. People were insistent that something be done. Hear­ing rumors of this, Dr. Bob promptly declared against AAs erecting for Anne and himself any tangible memorials or monument. These usual symbols of personal distinction he brushed aside in a single devas­tating sentence. Said he, “Annie and I plan to be buried just like other folks.”

1978: At 1:10 a.m., an explosive device, believed to be dynamite, detonated at the front door of what the FBI identified as “the Alcoholics Anonymous Faith Club” [right] at 2814^* Clovis Road in Lubbock, Texas. While there were A.A. meetings there, the Faith Group & Club—its proper name—was also a bingo parlor and a drug and alcohol treatment/recovery center. Fortunately, no injuries were reported; however, property damage was estimated at $2,500 [~$12,700 in 2026].
    Lubbock police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene. The FBI, Secret Service, and an Assistant U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of Texas were also notified. The ATF agreed that the “FBI would assume jurisdiction… due to possible terrorist involvement.” The FBI attempted to determine whether any “known militant Mexican-American organizations operating in the Lubbock area, or any incidents which would create a climate for militant activity,” However, no suspects were ever identified, and no charges were filed [left: first non-cover page, redacted, of 37-page FOIA response regarding this incident].

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^*Now 2819 Clovis Road.