September 15

1855: The future Dr. Clark Burnham [near right, c. 1888] was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a middle child, one of ten children of Mary Pancoast and Rev. Dr. Nathan Clark Burnham Jr. [far right, respectively]. His father practiced law, medicine, and religion, serving as an ordained minister in the Swedenborgian Church. Lois Burnham, who would become Mrs. Bill W. in 1918, would be Clark’s eldest child.

1940: A recently retired and newly sober Cmdr. Junius Lee Cotton [left] arrived at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Jacksonville, Florida, from Pasadena, California, to organize the first Aviation Training Schools there. The NAS was set to be commissioned on October 15. Cmdr. Cotton would become a key player in the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous in Florida.

1978: Father Mychal Fallon J. (born Robert Emmett J. on 11 May 1933) [right] got sober. He would die in the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 Sep 2001, while serving as a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. Although he was not the first to die, he would officially be designated as Victim 0001 because his body was the first to be recovered and taken to the medical examiner.

2001: On the 23rd anniversary of his sobriety, a funeral Mass for Father Mychal Fallon J., 68, was celebrated by Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop of New York, at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Manhattan. Father Mychal had died in the World Trade Center attack just four days earlier. The Mass was attended by 3,000 people, including former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. President Clinton said that his death was a “special loss” and urged, “We should lift his life up as an example of what has to prevail. We have to be more like Father Mike than the people who killed him” [left: FDNY Memorial to Judge at Engine 1, Ladder 24 in Manhattan].

September in A.A. History—day unknown

2003: Liberty Street published Time magazine’s 80 Days That Changed the World [right: cover, 1st edition, 1st printing], which reflects on more than 80 years of Time’s publishing history by revisiting the significant events that have shaped our lives today. One of those 80 days was June 10, 1935 [below left: anonymized illustration from the book]:

AA Takes Its First Steps
By James Poniewozik

Bill W—–, a stockbroker and a drunk from Brooklyn, N.Y., thought he had found the secret of kicking the bottle. But on a business trip to Akron, Ohio, in May he found himself outside a bar, tempted and desperate. In the past, he had fought the urge by talking to other alcoholics, who truly understood his struggle. Through a church group, he found local surgeon Robert Holbrook S—–.

Dr. Bob and Bill W., as Alcoholics Anonymous members know them, promised to keep each other sober, following Bill W.’s strategy: a simple set of principles — later refined into 12 steps — that would become the foundation of America’s self-help culture. Alcoholics, he said, must admit they are powerless over their addiction. They must make amends to all those they have harmed. And they must submit to God—however they define the deity.

The advice did not immediately take. Dr. Bob went to Atlantic City, N.J., for a convention; several days later, he showed up at the Akron train station, smashed. On June 10, the dried-out but still jittery doctor was due in surgery. That morning, Bill W. gave Dr. Bob a bottle of beer—to steady his scalpel hand. The operation was a success. The beer was Dr. Bob’s last. And the two men pledged that day to work to bring Bill W.’s principles to other alcoholics, one day at a time.