March 2 in A.A. History

In 1941, a meeting was held in the office of the Cleveland Switchboard Co. to form a “Cuyahoga County A/A [sic] Committee.” The announcement card for the meeting stated:

    MOTION by B——, second by C—— - that a CLEARING HOUSE COMMITTEE be formed, and that it be composed of two (2) members from each and every A/A [sic] Group in Cuyahoga County. This Committee to have NO AUTHORITY to commit, involve or bind any one or all of the Groups in Cuyahoga County in any manner whatsoever without referring proposed ideas, plans or propositions to each individual Group for its acceptance or rejection.
    MOTION was carried.
    COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Kindly conform to this important rule.
                                        C[larence]. H. S——, Chairman [shown above right].

    Following the passage of this motion, another motion was made and passed to remove Clarence S. as Chairperson. Two days later, he wrote to Bill W., seeking help with this “revolution.” It appeared that the Cleveland members were still upset about the articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Clarence wrote: 

    They wanted to know how much the Plain Dealer pd. me. Why I didn’t put it in the kitty. Where did I get the authority etc. etc. etc. Not one kind thing said in my behalf. This from persons I had picked out of the gutter & worked on & gave unceasingly & unselfishly of fellowship & whatever I could. Experience then, the resentment & hatred has been there. They have gone out of their way on numerous occasions to embarrass me.

    These disgruntled members voted Clarence out of office, just as they had previously voted him out of A.A. during the original split of the Cleveland Group. They elected Bill H. as chairperson and wanted nothing further to do with Clarence.

In 1979, at Nancy O.’s urging, former Senator Harold E. Hughes appeared as a witness before the Senate Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse—a committee he had once chaired. She wrote a book, With a Lot of Help from Our Friends, [left], about her work with Senator Hughes.