July in A.A. History (day unknown)

In 1935, encouraged by T. Henry Williams [left], Ernie G.—the “devil-may-care chap” in “A Vision for You” (pp. 158–159 of Alcoholics Anonymous)—reached out to Dr. Bob S. and got sober. At just 30 years old, some believed he was “too young” to get sober. He becomes the fourth member of A.A. and authors “The Seven Month Slip” in the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

    In September 1941, he would marry Dr. Bob S’s adopted daughter, Sue, but he struggled with continuing to drink, leading to marriage becoming a disaster. Tragically, on 11 June 1969, their daughter Bonna would take her own life after killing her 6-year-old daughter—Ernie and Sue’s granddaughter—Sandy. Ernie died exactly two years later [right: Ernie and Sue in happier times].

In 1946, Ricardo “Dick” [left] and Helen P. traveled from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City to “have the pleasure of delivering our work [a translation of Alcoholics Anonymous into Spanish] to Bill W——.”

    Dick had gotten sober in 1940 while living illegally in Cleveland, Ohio, after reading in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about major league baseball player Rollie H. [right] getting sober. In 1943, Helen “got the idea that maybe if the Big Book was in Spanish, it would be easier for other Mexicans who don't understand or speak English to recover.” From 1943 to 1946, they worked in their spare time on the translation. Dick wrote,

    My wife already had an old typewriter. We sent it out to be fixed. We worked on the translation using several dictionaries, an encyclopedia and several other books. We usually did this work at nights and on the weekends. Thank God, little by little this adventure was finished at the beginning of 1946. My wife and I took the translation and the Big Book to the college professor, Mary Coates, so that she could do a detailed revision of our work and correct style and grammatical errors.… [Bill] told us that our translation of the AA Big Book into Spanish was the first translation ever done into a foreign language. [Note: quoted translation from Spanish by Jim W.]