August 24 in A.A. History

1948: In the early morning hours, police raided the Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) Club in Springfield, Missouri, arresting seven members. All seven were tried and convicted of gambling charges, even though the wagers were limited to just ten cents. Police nonetheless deemed the activity illegal, and the raid made front-page news that same day [right: Springfield Leader and Press story, pp. 1, 6].

2020: Clancy I. [left], 93, died of an undetermined cause while in isolation after testing positive for COVID‑19, according to his daughter, Mary I. Dougherty. He had been undergoing rehabilitation for a broken hip and was nearing the end of his isolation period when the rehabilitation center informed her of his passing.

Clancy went from being homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles, California, to getting sober in Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) on 31 October 1958, to building a successful career at a Beverly Hills marketing firm. In 1963, he founded the Pacific Group, a prominent and highly structured A.A. group that hosts some of the largest weekly 12-step recovery and speaker meetings in the world, known for its rigid discipline, intense commitment, and active daily virtual and in-person sessions. Over his 61 years of sobriety, Clancy sponsored thousands of people.

In 1974, he left marketing to return to the Midnight Mission [right]  on Skid Row, and two years later became its managing director—a transformative leader in the very institution that had once expelled him for bad behavior. Under his leadership, the soup kitchen and residential facilities expanded, and new programs were introduced to address the social needs of the Skid Row community.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1960: Bill W. wrote to Elise Shaw, Frank Shaw’s widow and Lois's best friend:

It is both amazing and comforting that this experience of mine with Frank in Wall Street has had a great deal to do with the present success of A.A. It was the training I then received in large affairs and in the constant effort to foresee and to evaluate the future that has since counted for so much. Without such invaluable experience, I would have made a great many grievous errors. By no stretch of the imagination could I have integrated the business and policy side of our A.A. affairs with its spiritual objective.

1960: Alcoholics Anonymous Great Britain issued its first reprint of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions [left: 1st edition, 1st printing].

1960: Hillhouse Press published The Disease Concept of Alcoholism [near right: 1st edition, 1st printing cover] by Elvin (“Bunky”) Morton Jellinek [far right, c. 1960].

1960: The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. published AA Today [below—left: cover; right: page opposite copyright page], a “special publication… commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous.” This 111-page publication features a Foreword, 41 essays by various alcoholic and nonalcoholic authors, the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions, and an Epilogue by Bill Wilson in memory of Dr. Bob Smith.

In the Foreword, the editors wrote,

A quarter of a century is always an appropriate place to stop and look back, to pause and look forward, to savor, to commemorate.

And that was the task your editors, in their innocence, began months ago…

We found that far beyond our original amorphous idea, it had in total substance become a kind of study of a latter-day movement of survival. Far from being a picture of mere survival, it showed again to us a deeper nature, a capability of growth, strong and straight and inevitably upward.

August 31 in A.A. History

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1968: The Dallas Central Office was reorganized as an Intergroup Office operating under the guidance of the AA Groups, which numbered 8 or 9 by then. A local member loaned the Intergroup $2,000.00 to buy literature from AA World Services, Inc.

1969: Bill W. wrote in a letter:

In general, A.A. really has to deal with alcoholics no matter what their other complications. You would be the first to agree that there is no such thing as an alcoholic who has no emotional “complications.” So the question boils down to this: shall A.A. try to help those with severe and addictive problems, provided they are alcoholics? The answer is “yes” we should try.

This amount of charity does not mean that we cannot exclude those who disturb meetings or seriously interfere with the functioning of the group. Such people can be asked to quiet down or go elsewhere, or, [sic] to come back when they are better able to participate [right: “The Third Tradition,” from the pamphlet “The Twelve Traditions Illustrated”].

1970: In Argentina [left: location on globe], where there were twenty Alcoholics Anonymous groups, La Comisión Organizadora de la OSG (the Organizing Committee of the GSO) was formed.

1970: KUAT in Tucson, Arizona, launched “AA-of-the-Air,” a radio show designed for homebound A.A. members [right: radio towers, including KUAT’s, on Mount Bigelow, northeast of Tucson].

1971: Morris B. got sober in a North Carolina prison when he saw a wooden sign with the Serenity Prayer printed on it. He had been in and out of A.A. in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco for many years. He recalled that at one of his first A.A. meetings, he heard, “If you are an alcoholic and if you continue to drink, the end is death or insanity.” He added, “They hadn’t mentioned the living hell before death.”

Morris described himself as a five-time loser, meaning he had five felony convictions (not including the cases he beat). He served time in four penitentiaries and several prison camps, including a maximum-security facility. He spent eleven months in solitary confinement, bouncing in and out of the “hole”—a bare concrete-and-steel cubicle—about five times during that period. The crimes he had committed were the result of drinking and drug use.

Even in prison, he was always fighting the system, even going so far as to use his body: he cracked his leg with a sixteen-pound sledgehammer in the rock hole and let lye and water eat away at four of his toes and foot for five hours.

He was released in 1974 but eventually relapsed on marijuana after approximately 20 years of sobriety. According to Gene C., “Morris knew more about alcoholism than anybody else he ever knew.” Morris’s story in the third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous is titled “A Five-Time Loser Wins.”

1971: The Dallas Intergroup office, by this time located at the Hudson & Hudson Building^* [left, recent], was publishing a meeting directory that included groups in jails, hospitals, and more. By 1973, the number of groups being served grew to 30.

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^*Originally, the Marvin Building. Later, the Gulf States Building.

August 23 in A.A. History

1895: Junius Lee C. Jr [right, 1914] was born in McComb, Mississippi, to Junius Lee C. Sr and Thomasine Lane Moore C.

The family suffered two tragedies before 1900. Their first-born son, Joe, born in late 1888, lived just 322 days. Junius was the middle of three surviving sons—Willie was 5 years older, and Hilton was 2 years younger. A second tragedy struck when their father died, 3½ months before Hilton’s birth; Junius was only 2 at the time.

In World War I, Junius served as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant aboard the cargo vessel SS Maine [left] (not the USS Maine of “Remember the Maine!” fame). The ship was tor­pe­doed and sunk without casualties in the English Channel in March 1917 while sailing from London, Eng­land, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Junius married Marjorie Dickerson in 1922. In 1925, they had a son, Junius Lee C. III, and in 1926 a daughter who lived only 2 days. He retired as a Navy Commander just before World War II began, but in 1940, newly sober, was ordered out of retirement to the under-construction Naval Air Station [right: aerial view, 1943] in Jack­sonville, Florida. Junius later became a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in Jacksonville.

1940: [On August 27, according to Mitchell K.’s How It Worked] The Berea Group was started at the home of Bob J. near Cleveland, Ohio. It branched off from the Lakewood Group and initially had eight members. Soon after, it relocated to the Parish Hall of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church [left] in Berea, Ohio.

By the end of its first year, the group had grown to thirty members. An announcement in the August 1943 issue of Cleveland’s Central Bulletin provided details about the group and its meeting location:

This group is noted for its friendliness and hospitality.… Berea has most unusual quarters. It meets in the delightfully simple rooms of the Parish Hall of St. Thomas’ which is itself a tiny jewel of a church on the very edge of the Baldwin-Wallace campus. The tall elms and maples, the broad stretches of lawn, the quiet of this charming village plus the dignity and serenity of the church all lend an air of peace and rest to these pleasant meetings. Any of you who have ever attended a Berea meeting will never forget it.

A.A. History—year month & day unknown

1960?: [1960 is most likely, could have been anytime from ’59–’64] Marty M. [right, 1960], whose story “Women Suffer Too” appeared in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions of Alcoholics Anonymous, suffered a brief relapse. She had begun drinking bitters, which contain 45% alcohol (90 proof), having convinced herself that such small amounts wouldn’t count as a “first drink.”
Fortunately for Marty, an admirer^* from Bronxville, New York—sober herself for a year—happened to stop by the apartment ^† [left] Marty shared with her partner, Priscilla P. [right, 1970]. She was shocked to find Marty drunk, the apartment in disarray, and the dogs neglected. Taking immediate action, she brought Marty and the dogs back to her own home and phoned a mutual friend in Bronxville, Bonnie R., who had ten years of so­bri­ety. Bonnie advised her to keep Marty there until she was fully detoxed, a process that took several days. Even so, Marty refused to attend an A.A. meeting, citing her need for confidentiality, and eventually returned to her apartment in New York City. Very few people knew of this relapse during her lifetime.

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^*The name of this admirer has been forgotten or lost, but at least three other people were aware of the incident and were interviewed by Marty’s biographers, Sally and David Brown.

^†The Daytonian, 375 W. End Ave., New York City

August 22 in A.A. History

1945: The first Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meeting in Scotland took place. This event was reported in an article [left], titled “Alcoholics Anon­ymous Comes to Scotland,” published in Scotland’s The Sunday Mail:

Six men who met in a Church vestry in Perth this week-end made Scottish history—when they formed the first Scots branch of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Most unorthodox movement in the world—it began in America—Alcoholics Anonymous has as its only members people who are addicted to alcohol.

They set out as drunkards to help cure one another, to the extent of being prepared at a moment’s notice to go out at any time of the day or night to help a “brother” in distress.

The two churches most likely to have hosted this meeting are St. Matthew’s (West Church) [far left] and St. John’s Kirk [right].

1985: Francis “Barry” L. Jr. [left: middle-aged Barry], 66, died at his home in Manhattan [far right: obituary]. He was buried [near right: gravestone] in Weather­ford, Texas, where he had grown up.

Barry earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and Journalism from Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, Texas, where he taught those subjects for two years in the early 1940s. He later completed his doctorate at Yale University.

In 1944, he relocated to New York City, where he got sober in 1945. He became one of the first openly gay members of Alcoholics Anonymous and played a crucial role in discussions about inclusivity within the organization, particularly concerning LGBTQ+ members, including early efforts in 1945 to establish special meetings for gay men.

Barry testified before the U.S. Congress and appeared on television to advocate for legislation addressing alcoholism. He authored Living Sober [far left, 1st ed. 1st prtg.] (1975) and the pamphlet “Do You Think You’re Different?” [near left, 1st ed. 1st prtg.] (1976), which included two stories by gay authors. He also co-authored Lois’s book, Lois Remembers [right: 1st ed. 1st prtg.], and worked as a staff writer at the General Service Office (GSO) of A.A., where he recorded and wrote many of the early General Service Conference final reports. He additionally worked on the staff of the A.A. Grapevine. Barry retired from GSO eighteen months before his death.

He became a trusted friend of Bill and Lois W., growing particularly close to Lois after Bill’s death in 1971. In 1978, Lois presented Barry a copy of the original multilith manuscript of the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous [left: 1st page of Chapter 5, “How It Works"]. The following year, Barry signed a notarized letter gifting the manuscript to A.A. World Services, while retaining possession of it for the remainder of his life—a fact he discussed publicly shortly before his death in 1985.

His final major public appearance was at the 8th International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous, celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary in Montreal, Quebec, just a month before his death. 

A.A. History—year, month & day unknown

1950s: [Late] In Dallas, Texas, Lester F. hired Merl—“a perfect lady”—to run the Dallas Central Office. According to Lester, she kept the place “real clean and orderly” during the time she worked there.

August 21 in A.A. History

1988: During the 1st Canadian National A.A. Convention at the Halifax Metro Centre [left, 2006]—renamed Scotiabank Centre in 2014—in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a group of LGBTQ members met at the Sheraton Hotel. In 2011, Mike A., who attended the event, recounted the details of that meeting:

In August, 1988 we had the first Canadian National AA Roundup [sic] which had nearly 5,000 people at one time in the Metro Center. People from all over the US and Canada (and perhaps other continents, not sure) came to this gathering. Eyebrows were raised, eyes rolled when 3 people who got up to read Steps, Traditions, etc. said “Hello, my name is _____ and I am a GAY alcoholic.” The G Word caused a slight flap. One member, JJL―― [right], met a number of friends of Bill W. and ‘Dorothy.’ He was tall and carrying a shoulder-bag, they couldn’t miss him. Someone said, “There are an awful lot of ‘us’ here, perhaps we should have our own meeting!” A Flyer [sic] was typed up and put on notice boards and a member from Vancouver said we could have a meeting in his Suite (at the Sheraton, now the Marriott) which had a large meeting room.

Twenty-seven people came to our meeting on Sunday afternoon. Surprise! We’re everywhere! It was a most uplifting meeting, we were all impressed that so many nice people came on short notice. Several people said, “Hey! We could have our own Roundup!”

Georgina C―― and Leonard, Mike A.’s partner, were surprised that they were nominated—right out of the blue—to be our first Co-Chairs. They accepted (relent­ed?) and a date was set for October to have a meeting to discuss the possibilities.

The result would be the Courage Roundup [left: logo], “an annual gathering of LGBT alcoholics and those affected by the alcoholism of others, that is, an LGBT Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.”

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1959: [Late] The General Service Office (GSO) and A.A. Grapevine staff, having moved to 141 E. 44th St. [right, c. 1940] a few years earlier, were now experiencing a “hopelessly cramped” environment there. A small group that included Bill W., Nell Wing, and Edward “Ed” Bierstadt, a writer and editor assisting Bill with various writing projects, worked separately elsewhere. To address the overcrowding, Alcoholics Anon­ymous. rented the entire 18th floor at 305 E. 45th St. [left, in background, c. 1940], consolidating both groups in a building that had once housed GSO’s shipping department on the 12th floor. Since the new location was a loft, the space required the construction of offices, restrooms, and work areas, a process that took about a year. Nell, who shared a large office with Bill, was “tickled” to be reunited with the rest of the GSO team.

For Dennis Manders [right, 1967], GSO’s longtime non-alcoholic controller responsible for overseeing the ½ mile [~800 m] move, the experience was a nightmare, particularly because the 44th Street building was partially residential. Building managers prohibited the furniture from exiting through the lobby, so every desk, chair, and file cabinet had to be carried to the basement and maneuvered up a narrow staircase to the sidewalk and into the moving truck. The entire move was completed overnight, after the office closed.

There was no extra space at the new location. Shortly after the move, GSO began knocking down walls to expand, and additional space was acquired on another floor for meeting rooms. Nevertheless, the annual rent decreased from about $6.50 [~$75 in 2026] to $3.25 [~$37 in 2026] per square foot.

A.A. History—year, month & day unknown

1950s: [Late] Alcoholics in Argentina began organizing La Oficina de Servicios Generales (OSG) de Alcohólicos Anónimos en Argentina (The General Service Office (GSO) of Alcoholics Anonymous in Argentina).

August 20 in A.A. History

1940: Clarence and Dorothy W. S. [right, respectively], two strong personalities, both active in Alcoholics Anonymous, were divorced.

Clarence wrote to Ruth Hock [left]:

Oh well, it is about in line with about everything else I hear about myself, including being engaged to seven different girls, secretly married to four, drunk and disorderly, married to an heiress and engaged to two others, and a wife beater. So what the hell. On the contrary, I am doing fine, officially single, sober (3 years) don’t ever expect to slip, don’t beat anyone’s wife, no heiress’ [sic] have proposed to me, but just going along. Have been fired out of the finance business and am now selling Fords… Have had a lot of interesting experiences in the past 3 years and have since listened to some screwy ideas. Which convinces me that all the nuts aren’t alkies... All in all it’s a great world.

Dorothy wrote to Ruth as well:

Dear Sugar-Puss, Tell Bill that Prince Blue-Flame is getting a divorce from his “100% I Am” wife—said that a man needed a woman—I gather that spir­itual mysticism wasn't enough.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1959: Alcoholics Anonymous came to Austria.

Two A.A. members from Bad Reichenhall, Germany, decided to carry the A.A. message across the border into Salzburg, Austria. With the help of their first contact—a doctor at a local clinic for nervous diseases—they helped a small number of alcoholics form a group.

Meanwhile, to the east in Vienna, two alcoholic women undergoing treatment at Dr. Rotter’s psychiatric clinic learned about A.A. and started a group of their own. Joined by a man from Linz, they began meeting in private homes. Both groups, working independently, sought guidance from German A.A. groups and received German-language A.A. literature [right: map showing the location of Bad Reichenhall, Germany; and Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna in Austria].

1959: The third printing of the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous—the Big Book—was published with a dust jacket that incorrectly labeled it “The Third Edition”—an error made in two separate places on the jacket [left].

Additionally, this printing was the first to append the misattributed* Herbert Spencer quote to the end of Appendix II, “Spiritual Experience.” Ray C. had opened his story, “An Artist’s Concept,” in the first edition of the Big Book with this quote:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Ray’s story was dropped from the second edition, and this quote was added to Appendix II, but not until this print­ing.

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^*Scholars assert that Herbet Spencer [right] (1820–1903) would never have written such a statement. The correct attribution belongs to William Paley [left] (1743–1805), an English clergyman, author, and college lecturer. In his work A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), he wrote, “The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination.” Rev. William H. Poole [right] (1820–1896) may have been the first to render the quotation in its more familiar form, in Anglo-Israel or, The British Nation: The lost [sic] Tribes of Israel (1879): “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination.”

August 19 in A.A. History

1936: After attending the Olympic Games in Berlin—where he met Heinrich Himmler but failed to secure a meeting with Adolf Hitler—Frank Buchman [right: in Miami, Florida, 1945] sailed for New York City.

1941: The first A.A. meeting in Denver, Colorado [left: aerial view, 1940], was held at the home of Sarah McP. and was attended by 11 people.
This gathering followed the March 1941 publication of Jack Alexander’s article, “Alcoholics Anonymous: Freed Slaves of Drink, Now They Free Others,” in The Saturday Evening Post. Inspired by the article, a Denver alcoholic named Venard F. traveled to Houston, Texas, to observe an A.A. group’s practices there. Upon returning, he brought back a copy of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, along with some pamphlets. He then published an article in a local newspaper, including his P.O. Box number. It is likely that the 11 attendees at the first meeting were those who had responded to Venard’s article.

1941: The Finance Committee of the Central Group Committee held a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. The minutes recorded that

…the representatives of the groups that they in turn propose to their respective group that they deposit with the Finance Committee the Sum of one dollar each week beginning January 1st 1942.

The minutes went on to state that

Such funds are to be used for the purpose of defraying normal expenses of the Central Committee Group such as P.O. box rental, postage and such other incidental expenses as may be required… [And to] make contributions to the [Alcoholic] Foundation in New York and such other charities as may be recommended to the finance committee by the various groups and approved by the finance committee.

1981: The United States Postal Service (USPS) issued a special 18¢ [~66¢ in 2026] stamp [right], bearing the message, “Alcoholism/You Can Beat It!” Nearly 100 million (97,535,000) of these stamps were printed. Some mistakenly claimed the phrase was a slogan used by Alcoholics Anonymous. The stamp sparked controversy, as many feared recipients might read the message as an implication that the sender doubted their drinking habits. This reluctance to use the stamp underscored the deep-seated stigma surrounding addiction.

At the time, sending a first-class letter weighing up to 1 oz [~28⅓ g] cost 18¢, though the rate rose to 20¢ just 74 days later. Today, this stamp in mint-condition would sell for about 20–50¢.

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1958: Bill W. wrote to Harrison Miller Trice [left], a nonalcoholic Trustee, explaining his reasons for wanting to change the ratio of alcoholic to nonalcoholic Trustees in order to increase the number of alcoholic Trustees:

Because of the increased press of work with which we have no business to saddle the nonalcoholic members; because of the increasing importance of proper determination of the A.A. policy and its administration, which the nonalcoholics [sic] have, wrongly, I think, disclaimed all ability to handle; because of the need for a wider representation geographically of alcoholic trustees; and finally, because it is unsound psychologically for a movement of the present size and maturity to take a childish and fearful view that a majority of alcoholics cannot be trusted to sit on our most important board—well, these are the reasons for the change as I see them.

August 18 in A.A. History

1938: The second meeting of the Alcoholic Foundation Board took place in the office of A. LeRoy Chipman [left] at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. During this meeting, the board decided to transfer the remaining $2,150 [~$51,000 in 2026] from the fund John D. Rockefeller Jr. had established to the Alcoholic Foundation, to support A.A. efforts in Akron. Additionally, they agreed to provide Dr. Bob S. [right] with $200 [~$4,700 in 2025] per month from September 1938 through April 1939.

Today in A.A. History—August 18–21

1988: Around 5,000 people attended the 1st Canadian National A.A. Convention in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Halifax Metro Centre (renamed the Scotiabank Centre in 2014) [left: aerial view from the east, early 1980s; right: notice of this event in the “Calendar of Events” section of the August–September issue of Box 4-5-9].

A.A. History—month & day unknown

1956: Switzerland's first Alcoholics Anonymous group formed after a Geneva alcoholic learned about A.A. through a lecture. He obtained A.A. literature and, with friends, organized a French-language meeting [left: aerial view of Geneva, 1956].

1956: The National Committee on Alcoholism (NCA) — formerly the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism (NCEA) — was renamed the National Council on Alcoholism.

1957: [Jan/Feb] The editorial offices of the A.A. Grapevine moved to 141 E. 44th St. [right] in New York City, joining the General Service Office (GSO)—also the headquarters of the Alcoholic Foundation—which had been located there since May 1950.

1957: Professor Emeritus E. B. (Ernest Bradlee) Watson [left], president of the Dartmouth class of 1902, which included Dr. Bob S. [right: portrait from an April 1994 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine], wrote to the General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous, recalling a discussion regarding Bob at a house party on Cape Cod:

We think there has hardly ever been a more widely beneficial uplift effort of any sort to genuine, so fruitful in human rescue, and so practically sensible as your wonderful Alcoholics Anonymous.

He went on to describe his late classmate as…>

a great reformer of himself and others. As a class, we are proud to have had as a fellow member so dynamic and socially beneficial a creative figure as Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, whose influence now extends to the ends of the earth.

He had earlier written about Bob:

Although he indulged somewhat excessively in beer (the only beverage then obtainable in New Hampshire), he did not become a slave to alcohol until his graduate schooling.

In an undated interview, Dr. Philip P. Thompson [left], who was Bob’s roommate at Dartmouth, described him as “a tall lanky gentleman, a little bit abrupt in manner,” “restless,” and “rather quick spoken.” He also recalled a Saturday when several classmates engaged in a seemingly endless debate about where to go and what to do that afternoon, during which the topic of alcohol arose a couple of times. Dr. Thompson remembered Bob saying, “Well, if we’re going to get drunk, why don’t we get at it?”