1939: The mortgage on 182 Clinton Street
[right, c. 1940]
in Brooklyn was foreclosed. Five days earlier, Lois and Bill W. had moved
in with Hank and Kathleen P. at their Montclair, New Jersey home, 344 N.
Fullerton Ave.
[left, recent].
1944: The Alcoholic Foundation’s New York City headquarters, later known as
the General Service Office (GSO), moved from 30 Vesey Street to a three-room
office at 415 Lexington Avenue, directly across from Grand Central
Station
[right: Vesey, Lexington locations, respectively].
Today in A.A. History—May 1–7
2008: The 58th General Service Conference was held at the Crowne Plaza
Times Square
[left: view from an upper floor]
in New York City. Advisory Actions included:- the trustees’ Finance and Budgetary Committee gather input from the Fellowship on the benefits and liabilities, both spiritual and practical, of fully funding G.S.O. services to the Fellowship (G.S.O. functional expenses) by the voluntary contributions of A.A. members and groups;
- the Online Intergroup of A.A. (OIAA) be listed in a new section titled “Online Intergroups” under the section “lnternational Correspondence Meetings” in the A.A. Directories above where “Online Meetings” appear; and
- the amendments to the 2007 General Service Board Bylaws, as forwarded from the General Service Board to include options for interim changes to member trustee ratio and composition in response to the 2007 Advisory Action, which instituted consideration of all eligible Class A and Class B trustees when selecting the chairperson of the General Service Board be approved.
May in A.A. History—day unknown
1919: Two months after his honorable discharge on March 14, Bill W. [right: in France] returned home from service in what was then called the Great War (WWI). His regiment, which had remained in France, had shipped out just six days before his arrival.
1923: Lois W., Bill’s wife
[left: Bill and Lois, c. 1925],
suffered a third ectopic pregnancy—a condition in which the fertilized egg
develops outside the uterus. Her first two had occurred in June and July of
1922. In her memoir, Lois Remembers, she later wrote:In May 1923 the improbably happened—a third ectopic. I was tutoring a young girl in Latin when I felt the first symptoms. After another operation I made a quick recovery. By then both tubes and the complete cystic ovary had been removed. A small portion of the other ovary was kept so that I might retain my feminine characteristics, it was said. Bill was often too drunk, for days at a time, to come to see me in the hospital.
We had both deeply desired a family. But after my second ectopic, Bill and I knew positively that we could never have children. My tubes had apparently been closed since birth. Bill, even when drunk, took this overwhelming disappointment with grace and with kindness to me. But his drinking had been increasing steadily. It seemed that after all hope of having children had died, his bouts with alcohol had become even more frequent.
I knew I had done nothing to prevent our having children; yet somehow I could not help feeling guilty. So how could I blame him for the increase in his drinking?
This kind of thinking made me try harder to understand him and to be tolerant when he was drunk. But there were many times when I lost my temper. He never hit me, but I hit him. I remember with shame on time toward the end of his drinking, when I was so angry as he lay drunk on the bed that I beat his chest with both my firsts as hard as I could.
