July in A.A. History (day unknown)

In 1908, exhausted and depressed after a budget dispute that led to his resignation, Rev. Frank Buchman [upper right], the future founder of the Oxford Group, arrived in England to attend the Keswick Convention of Evangelicals. He hoped to meet the renowned Quaker-influenced Baptist evangelist F. B. Meyer [center right] (1847–1929), whom he believed could offer him guidance. Although Meyer was not there, Buchman experienced a profound spiritual surrender after hearing a sermon titled “The Cross of Christ” delivered by evangelist Jessie Penn-Lewis [lower right, a descendant of William Penn’s]. As he later recalled:

    She pictured the dying Christ as I had never seen him pictured before. I saw the nails in the palms of His hands, I saw the bigger nail which held His feet. I saw the spear thrust in His side, and I saw the look of sorrow and infinite suffering in His face. I knew that I had wounded Him, that there was a great distance between myself and Him, and I knew that it was my sin of nursing ill-will.…
    I thought of those six men back in Philadelphia who I felt had wronged me. They probably had, but I'd got so mixed up in the wrong that I was the seventh wrong man. Right in my conviction, I was wrong in harbouring ill-will. I wanted my own way and my feelings were hurt.
    I began to see myself as God saw me, which was a very different picture than the one I had of myself. I don't know how you explain it, I can only tell you I sat there and realised how my sin, my pride, my selfishness and my ill-will, had eclipsed me from God in Christ.

    He later helped another participant in undergoing the same experience. These experiences became pivotal to the rest of his life’s work. Upon returning to the U.S., he entered his “laboratory years,” where he developed the principles he would later implement on a global scale.

In 1918, Bill W. [left, in uniform (1918)] sailed from Boston to New York Harbor aboard the H.M.T.^* Lancashire [below right].
    During the subsequent voyage to England, an officer shared brandy with him, which he immediately took to, of course.

    On the eve of their arrival, while Bill was on watch, a sudden crashing thud sent the soldiers into a panic. With his pistol drawn, Bill took control of the situation by barking orders, thus proving to himself, at least, that he was the coward he feared.
    After reaching shore, his unit was delayed by a minor epidemic near Winchester. During this time, Bill visited Winchester Cathedral, where he felt a “tremendous sense of presence,” partly inspired by an epitaph on the headstone of a Hampshire Grenadier, Thomas Thetcher. He later quoted this epitaph from memory in “Bill’s Story” in the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

---

^*Hired Military Transport, i.e., non-commissioned

In 1921, without a job and no idea what he wanted to do, Bill W was “restless and his drinking increased,” according to his wife, Lois. She worked as an occupational therapy aide for the Red Cross at Brooklyn Naval Hospital [upper left: exterior, 1940s; lower left: a group of nurses at the hospital, 1920]. Using her vacation time, she and Bill embarked on a camping trip along the 300-mile Long Trail* [below right: map], along the peaks of Vermont’s Green Mountains—a trail that her father and brother had helped to clear. For Lois, these camping trips served as an opportunity to “think things over” and to encourage Bill to curb his drinking.

During this trip, Bill resolved to attend law school. His grandfather, who had raised him from the age of 11, had always wanted him to be a lawyer. Although bill was “not sure he wanted to be an attorney,” he believed that “knowledge of the law would always be useful.” Upon their return, Bill enrolled in night classes at Brooklyn Law School [left: Brooklyn Eagle Building, home of Brooklyn Law School, 1923], a division of St. Lawrence University, and kept at his studies for four years. Lois later wrote, “After paying the fifteen-dollar fee [~$270 in 2025] for his diploma, he was too drunk to leave the apartment the next day to pick it up. He never bothered to get it. It could still be there.”

    Lois was not quite correct. David G. Trager, who served as Dean of Brooklyn Law School from 1983 to 1993 and reviewed Bill’s records from the early 1920s, noted that Bill failed a course on Executors and Administrators (pertaining to wills, estates, and trusts) in his final term in 1924. He returned in the fall to retake the course but ultimately left the law school without completing the required examination, and so was ineligible for a diploma (although New York state allows anyone with at least one year law school to take the bar exam, after completing three years of law office study under the supervision of a practicing attorney or judge).

---

[All quotes are from Lois Remembers.]
^*The Long Trail, constructed from 1910 to 1930, follows the main ridge of the Green Mountains from Massachusetts to Canada. It is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States, and later inspired the creation of the Appalachian Trail.

In 1922, Lois W. experienced her second ectopic pregnancy, where a fertilized egg develops outside the uterus—in her case, in a fallopian tube. The first had occurred just a month before in her other fallopian tube, and her father, Dr. Clark Burnham [left], had treated her at home.

    This time, he promptly sent her to the Skene Sanitarium [right], where he was on staff. A colleague performed the surgery, and Lois then went to her family's camp on Emerald Lake in Vermont to recover under her father's care. 

    Unfortunately, her condition worsened instead of improving. Despite feeling increasingly unwell, she missed home and pretended to be getting better until Dr. Burnham “let” her go home. Once home, her husband Bill kept her in bed for several weeks. Concerned about her deteriorating health, he consulted Dr. Leonard Strong [left], his brother-in-law, who realized that a cyst had formed on what remained of her ovary. Lois returned to the surgeon who had operated on her, but he only conducted a “cursory examination” and prescribed a laxative for what he assumed was constipation. Knowing better, Bill contacted Dr. Burnham, who quickly took a train back from Vermont and readmitted Lois to the Skene Sanitarium. There, the cyst was removed, and she began to recover rapidly.
    Lois would suffer a third and final ectopic pregnancy the following May.