A Guardian of AA’s History: AA Speaker – Gail L. – Stockholm, Sweden
Gail L., an AA archivist, shares the detailed history of Alcoholics Anonymous from its founding in Akron, Ohio through the writing and publication of the Big Book. A comprehensive AA speaker talk on AA’s origins.
Gail L., a retired schoolteacher and AA archivist from Akron, Ohio, shares the story of how Alcoholics Anonymous was born—from Dr. Bob’s recovery with the Oxford Group to Bill Wilson’s arrival in Akron to the harrowing journey of writing and publishing the Big Book. In this AA speaker tape, she walks through the “slender threads” of providence that kept the fellowship alive through near-bankruptcy, rejection, and skepticism, showing how the program was built not by money or prestige, but by one drunk helping another.
Gail L., an AA archivist, traces the complete history of Alcoholics Anonymous from its roots in the Oxford Group through the founding in Akron and the creation of the Big Book, detailing the roles of Dr. Bob, Bill Wilson, and countless early members. This AA speaker tape covers how early AA members struggled to write, publish, and distribute the Big Book despite bankruptcy and public ridicule, relying instead on faith and the support of unlikely allies like the Rockefeller family. The talk emphasizes how small decisions, chance meetings, and spiritual direction (“slender threads”) shaped the fellowship into the worldwide recovery program that exists today.
Episode Summary
Gail L. opens with a personal story about her own sobriety—sober since May 13th, 1978, in Akron, Ohio—and how saying “yes” to AA’s suggestions led her to become the archivist and guardian of the program’s earliest history. Her journey began when she met Nell Wing, Bill Wilson’s secretary and the first AA archivist, who asked her to start an archives in Akron. What began as confusion about what an “archives” even was became a 40-year mission to preserve, conserve, and share AA’s founding documents and stories.
The bulk of her talk is a meticulously detailed account of how Alcoholics Anonymous was born. She takes the audience back to Akron during the Great Depression, when Harvey Firestone’s son—a wealthy but hopeless alcoholic—met Jim Newton, a luggage salesman who had stumbled into the Oxford Group. Through a series of what Gail calls “slender threads” of providence, Bill Wilson eventually made his way to Akron. Desperate, penniless, and looking for another alcoholic to work with, Bill called a woman named Henrietta C. (respecting anonymity), who connected him with Dr. Bob, a physician whose practice and family were crumbling under the weight of his drinking.
What happened next changed everything. Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson met and talked late into the night in a small library at Dr. Bob’s home. Dr. Bob, who had spent two and a half years in the Oxford Group without getting sober, found in Bill something the Oxford Group couldn’t provide: another alcoholic who understood. The obsession was lifted. Dr. Bob stayed sober.
Gail meticulously walks through the early days—the “flying blind period”—when there was no Big Book, no twelve steps, only the four absolutes from the Oxford Group (Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness, Love) and desperate drunks meeting in homes. She describes how the group grew to 40 sober people, a moment of ecstasy for the three founders (Dr. Bob, Bill, and Henrietta C.), when they realized “a light had come into the dark world of the alcoholic.”
Then comes Bill’s ambition. He wanted a chain of hospitals, paid missionaries, literature—something organized and professional. Dr. Bob resisted. The tension between expansion and simplicity would define AA’s early character. Gail brings this conflict alive, showing how the group conscience—a new concept at the time—became the tool to decide the program’s direction.
The talk shifts to New York, where Bill and a few others began writing the book. Gail shares the almost comedic struggle: Bill pacing behind his secretary Ruth H. with a cigarette, dictating chapters she typed on an old typewriter; the stock certificates they sold to early members at $25 a share to fund the writing; the conflict over whether the book should be “Christian” or “psychological”; Bill’s depression and imaginary ulcers. She introduces Bill Wilson himself via archival audio, letting him explain in his own voice the chaos and providence of the Big Book’s creation.
The publishing story is almost unbelievable. They had $5,000 from Rockefeller (shrunk from $50,000 because Rockefeller feared money would ruin the work). They printed 5,000 books and paid a printer $500 (10 percent down) with almost their last dollars. When the Reader’s Digest promised a feature article, Bill was ecstatic. Then the editor forgot about them. When Morgan R., a newly sober alcoholic, arranged for Gabriel H. to mention the book on his radio show, they sent postcards to every physician east of the Mississippi River. When they rushed to their post office box to collect orders, they found 12 postcards—10 from drunk doctors complaining, and 2 actual orders.
Yet the book survived. A man named Bert T. hawked his tailor shop on Fifth Avenue to lend money for a magazine article. That article in Liberty Magazine brought 600 inquiries. An article in the Saturday Evening Post by Jack A. in March 1941 brought 6,000 more. Rockefeller held a dinner for bankers and society figures, presenting AA as a work of goodwill (not a money-making scheme), and his son Nelson told Bill his father believed “money will ruin it.” Bill watched “a couple billion dollars get up and walk out the door”—and the fellowship was safer for it.
Throughout, Gail emphasizes the concept of “slender threads”—small moments, unlikely people, near-misses that could have ended the story but didn’t. A woman finding the right book in an old bin. A sponsor’s daughter later saved by the Big Book her mother typed. Henrietta C.’s morning prayer guidance leading her to Delphine W., who called about Dr. Bob, setting off the chain of events. Bill hearing a voice telling him to call Henrietta when he was about to walk away from the phone. A printer willing to work on credit. A radio broadcaster who showed up sober for his interview.
Gail’s talk is grounded in primary documents—she shows the marked-up manuscript Bill and Hank worked from, letters from Bill to Dr. Bob, the prospectus for stock sales, the canceled checks when AA paid back the Rockefellers (taking an oath of poverty and never again accepting outside funding). She invites the listener to “remove one slender thread from this story and ask yourself: would we still be here?”
Her conclusion is both humble and awe-struck: Bill and Lois, after losing their home, watching the Big Book spread to 58 languages and nearly 160 countries, with Bill reflecting, “It transcended the mountain and the sea and is even at this moment lighting candles in dark caverns and on distant beaches.”
Notable Quotes
When AA asks you to do something, say yes. And that’s what has actually led me all the way to this moment here with you tonight.
Bill saw that this program could get distorted, could become myth. So he asked her if she would keep the history.
Money can’t buy sobriety. They tried. They sent him away to treatment. They did all the family could do. With all the power, prestige, and wealth this family had, they could not help this young man get sober.
On what slender threads our destiny does lie.
My father thinks this is a work of goodwill and money will ruin it.” — And Bill watched a couple billion dollars get up and walk out the door.
It transcended the mountain and the sea and is even at this moment lighting candles in dark caverns and on distant beaches.
Founders & AA History
Spiritual Awakening
Fellowship & Meetings
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Big Book Study
- Founders & AA History
- Spiritual Awakening
- Fellowship & Meetings
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly. So, be sure to subscribe.
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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. My name is Gail and I'm a grateful alcoholic. >> Hi everyone.
Um I want to begin by thanking my host who just walked in. Uh Suzanne, um thank you for your hospitality. Thank you Gunnar for picking me up from the airport.
Iletta, thank you so much for uh coordinating so many plans and Marie for all your thoughtfulness knowing that I'm a history lover, which you're going to find out in a minute. Um, and all the Andreases that helped hook everything up. You got some smart boys here in Sweden.
Um, uh, I had a little trouble in Scotland, so I appreciate that you were able to do this. Um, well, I'm going to begin because, um, I want to make sure we have enough time for this talk. And as I told you, I'm an alcoholic, but I'm going to prove it because a picture is worth a thousand words.
Now, I'd like to tell you that this is Woodstock. It's not. I was on a camping trip.
If you notice, to the right is about a half gallon of wine. I was a wineet. To the left is a can of beer.
I think there's a pack of cigarettes there and a cigarette in my hand. And my zipper is not down. That's just that was the way those zipper I mean the way those pants were.
So, um I think that's a pretty good qualifying picture. And um and if and by the way, my sobriety date is uh May 13th, 1978. I found my way into this wonderful program.
Thank you. And I was lucky enough to sober up in Akran, Ohio. And so I hope I can bring Akran, Ohio to Sweden.
That's my job today. Now, here's another picture of me. Um, that's a picture of me in a blackout.
Think you can relate? Well, when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in Akran, Ohio, they told me to say, uh, whenever AA asks you to do something, say yes. You might have heard that here as well.
And that's what has actually led me all the way to this moment here with you tonight. And um I happened to have said yes to someone who asked me to see Lois Wilson at Founders Day after Bill died. Lois continued to come back um and visit us and each year and we honor that on June 10th uh Dr.
Bob's last drink and so we'll have 12,000 people here this June and we have a big party. So I was seating Lois and I was going to seat her companions down in front of her and I met this beautiful woman here. This is Nell Wing.
Nell Wing was um secretary to Bill Wilson and Bill saw that this program um could get distorted, could become myth. So he asked her if she would keep the history and she eventually became an archavist, our very first archavist at headquarters. So I was talking to her and I said, "Neverthing I can do for you, well just ask." Don't ever say that in alcoholic synonymous.
She said, 'Well, yes, Gail, there is. I'd like you to start an archives. I didn't know what an archives was.
I thought it was some smelly old papers somewhere till I came to this country. I've spent um a good day and a half um enjoying your history that's hundreds and hundreds of years old. And tonight I'm going to bring you history that's just a little over almost 75 years old, but it's traveled quite far since its birth in Akran.
So I um want to tell you just a little bit about Nell. She was like a Wilson. Uh if you go to the Wilson house, there's actually Nell's room is there at Stepping Stones and was a constant companion to Bill and Lois.
So when she asked me to do that, I didn't know how am I going to do this? We Akan didn't care about its history. We hadn't done anything in in uh you know a half a century.
And um so I got involved in the purchase of um Dr. Bob's home. In fact, I negotiated the purchase on the home and I thought, "Okay, I've done it.
Um I uh have a place for the archives now. We can put it in there." So I took off and went to New York to stay with Nell. I stayed with her for about 10 days and I visited Lois to learn how to do archives.
And Nell said, "Well, Gail, if you want to be an AA archavist, AA can't own property." And I started doing what alcoholics do when they don't hear what they want to hear. I started whining. Whining is anger coming through a very small hole.
And I tried to talk Nell Wing out of our traditions the next three days. So, here I am on a visit to um Stepping Stones. This is Bill and Lois's home in uh Westchester County, New York with the lovely gardens.
And um there's Nell um took a picture of her while I was there. And you can see the beautiful interior. Lois Wilson was an interior decorator.
And here I am having a drink with Lois Wilson. Now, I know you don't recognize me in that picture. Um, you see, I was sober in that picture, but my hair hadn't sobered up yet.
Um, it's uh still kind of unmanageable. Um, Stockholm weather got a hold of it um last night and uh but anyway, it was a sweet visit and um I left um to go back to Akran and I broke away from the house and to try to set it up under the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous. >> >> And that's what I'm going to tell you about now.
Now, I'm a retired school teacher. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to take you on a field trip to our office first so you know when you come to Akran. And I'm inviting you all now to please come.
You've showed me a wonderful time here. And um I would like to do the same for you if you were to make it to the year 2010 uh to Dallas. I mean, not Dallas, San Anton, Texas, where we are going to celebrate uh AA together.
You know, we're all just one family. the one circle of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's how I feel when I come to meet you. You're just my brothers and sisters in AA and um so the office uh we were getting mixed up with uh 855 Ardmore which is Dr.
Bob's home. So we took this large picture window and it took us about a year to do. Uh we cut it into um about a thousand pieces of glass.
If you had come in you would have cut a piece of glass and become a part of the window or you might have thrown us a sobriety coin. We are men and women who normally would not mix and that window is surrounded with sobriety coins uh of various members that came through. And then we framed it with what I'm going to be talking about a little bit tonight and that's called the four absolutes.
Um they would not have taken this is a symbolic picture. Uh and the the the gentleman on the bed is symbolically Bill D who was the third member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when he got sober, he walked out of City Hospital on July 4th of 1935, a free man to never drink again.
And that's when group number one began. And in your big book, you'll see that in his story. Bill makes a comment.
So, we're not the only one over in America celebrating the 4th of July. You can celebrate with us because it's our Independence Day as well. I called this Embassy Row.
The big book just turned 70 in April. And we're going to talk about that book tonight. It's a great history book and we'll be talking about it, but it's in many languages now.
It's um in I believe 58 languages. It's in nearly 160 countries. And if you should come in for a visit, please look for your big book because we lift that plastic up and you sign it.
And these books are becoming archival as well. Uh right there on the end of the left is a poster that was given to me uh by the uh France, a group in France. It was signed by the first AAS in Russia and we recently had one of those AAS visit the office and see that poster.
So also, well, we're not in the UK, but there was some tartans. Do you are you aware that there was tartans commissioned for recovery? Um they wear ties and things in Scotland and stuff.
So, there's actually three tartans that have been commissioned that are there as well. Pretty cool, huh? Now, I'm a retired school teacher, so I have 26 displays from A to Z.
And if I'm not there, you can put some headsets on and you can walk around. Um, and we're we're redoing these. So, by the time of the international year, we're going to have them really special.
Um, so that's the outside and you the whole history of AA is portrayed there. And then if you go to the inside, there's Reverend Tons's chest. That's the man Bill called.
It's filled with AA books. Um there's the magazines and you can take them down and read them and I'll tell you more about those in my story tonight. Uh the one bookcase to the left is filled with big books, including the ones that influenced Bill on the writing of the big book.
So that's the interior room. And uh we'll open the safe and show you some very special things. So if you come, I know many of you are coming.
I know some of you are going to New York and you're renting a car. It's only 10 hours from New York and there's many many things to see uh when you come to Akran. And I'm going to wet your appetite.
This is a um gallery of uh some artists have been doing some paintings that have brought some of the scenic things to life for us. So, it's there. And then finally, no archives would be complete without conservation.
And it's there. Um, we want this to be here for the next generation. Paper dies.
So, we are cleaning it, uh, repairing it, deacidifying it, encapsulating it, and taking care of it for you because this is your archives. If you don't have a first edition, first printing big book, come and see yours at our office. It's a we deal.
Also, if it's pretty far away for you to visit, you can go to akrana.org. Some of you may know about the book Dr. Bob and the good old-timers.
We're trying to keep those voices alive and we're putting on an MP3 files and you can directly download them um off of our web page. And um for those of you that would like definitions of the steps and the traditions um you can click on any of the words and little definitions will pop up and uh more will be revealed because we're always adding things. So please visit and um well let's start on our story.
That took me about six weeks to learn to do that. I want to ask you to go back in time a little bit to um Akran. Now, a lot of our story is going to take place during depression times and um our co-founders thought that was providential because this is a fellowship and it brought people together.
The hard times caused them to have to work harder to help each other. I don't know if it could happen in good times if we could have birthed this thing. Akran was the rubber capital of the world and we didn't have royalty like you have here.
Um, what we had was the industrial revolution that produced a lot of money for some families. The family you're looking at here is from the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. This is Harvey Firestone's family.
Harvey is here in the center. And the son to the right of him is Russell, and his nickname was Bud. And he was a terrible alcoholic.
And um, you know, money can't buy sobriety. They tried. They sent him away to treatment.
They um did all the family could do. With all the power, prestige, and wealth this family had, they could not help this young man get sober, so they gave up. It's like all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Bud back together again.
Well, this man here on the left, his name is Jim Newton, and he's my favorite. He's just my favorite guy. He now you might already know this, but God can use womanizers in our story.
He's a young luggage salesman and he's chasing pretty girls in Massachusetts and he thinks he's on his way to a singles dance and he follows them into the hotel and he ends up in an Oxford group meeting. And after that, you're probably all familiar with a man by the name of Thomas Edison. Well, he ends up working for Thomas Edison down in Fort Myers, Florida.
And next to Thomas Edison is Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg is one of those guys down there and Harvey Firestone. And um they would all get together down there. Well, Harvey Firestone likes Jim and he's going to invite him to Akran and get him a good position with the company.
Thank God or you don't sit here tonight. Well, Jim Newton takes the son on a train trip to Denver where the Oxford group was meeting. And on the way there, they nurse the bottle, controlled drinking.
This is before Alanon. And on the way back, a man by the name of Sam Shoemaker was on that train. Now, some of you might nod because I hope you know who Sam Shoemaker is.
Small world. They put him in a train car coming back and he made a surrender in that train car and he gave his life and his will like we do in the third step. And when he got off the train, he didn't look the same.
Lines on his forehead were gone. The family looked at him. This was a new man.
And uh if you're familiar with the prodal son, when the son comes home, the father is so overjoyed. What does the father do? The father throws a dinner for all his friends.
And he invites the Oxford group to Akran and they now now the Oxford group was for the down and uppers. If you were down and out, you went to the Salvation Army. So this was society times.
It was who knew who. And you can see that our society got all dressed up and came out to meet the Oxford group. Now the Oxford group traveled like an army for God.
They were what originally was a return to first century Christianity. Uh later he had uh they became the Oxford group and um then they became moral rearmament uh MRA when uh Buckman had a spiritual experience another conversion experience in the black uh forest in Germany and they changed their name and um they were going to change the world uh one leader at a time and today they're known as initiatives of change. Do you ever hear up with people They used to travel up with people.
Do you ever hear that group? Do you know that they broke off from the Oxford group just like us in the 60s? I thought that might be interesting because I think they traveled around a lot.
So the newspapers pick it up because uh Frank Bookman's coming to town with anywhere from 40 or 60 of the group. And Mr. Firestone's going to put them up.
They're going to have the dinner and his son is going to give testimony to his recovery from alcoholism. You see, this is how the Oxford group came to Akran. This is how the story gets started.
And it's important. It gets started with the drunks recovery. That's not what's going to happen in New York.
But in Akran, it gets started with the drunks recovery and Henrietta Cyberling attended because for the next 10 days, they're going to have house parties and they're going to throw have meetings in the morning and at night for the next 10 days and they'll go out into the pulpits of the churches. Well, Anne Smith, this is Dr. Bob's wife here, began attending.
Now, these two women um they had a way of manipulating poor Dr. Bob. You know, he started out okay in Akran, but eventually his alcoholism increases and he's not he doesn't have too many friends left.
So, by the time he joins the Oxford group, he's grateful to have these friends and he likes the people much like when you walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous today. They were comfortable with themselves. They were laughing and they were of good spirit.
But Dr. Bob and Anne Smith are going to be in the Oxford group for two and a half years now. It's going to be the same principles that we get sober on today.
I mean, they read lots of books. Dr. Bob read the Bible a couple times.
He read all the books. He prayed. Even went back to church.
He did everything the Oxford group told him to do. And he did not get sober in two and a half years. That's an important point because there's a reason why.
So, um, this is Henrietta. A woman by the name of Delphine Weber calls Henrietta and says, "What are we going to do about Dr. Bob?" She goes, "What do you mean, what are we going to do about Dr.
Bob?" Well, he's a terrible drinker. He's about ready to lose his practice. He's about ready to lose his home.
And she did what they did in the early days of the Oxford group and AA. They would get up in the morning and they would open the Bible or a spiritual inspirational book and they would read it and then they would stop and they would go into the listening part, listen to what God had to say for them and then they would get a uh sheet of paper and a pencil or a pen and they would begin writing what they thought God was saying to them. Then there was another part that they did.
It was called checking. You never went it alone any more than you should in AA I suppose but they did this thing called checking and then you would check it through the four absolutes honesty purity unselfishness and love to make sure that guidance wasn't coming from your ego that guidance is one of the reasons why I think we have the program today it so many people were listening by the way your 24-hour book how many people know about the 24-hour book not a whole lot that came from two listeners from the Oxford group just two women who listened and then a a drunk came along and made it into a book for us. So anyway, Henrietta comes up through her guidance and she calls her friends T.
Henry and ClariS Williams. Now T. Henry looked like a drunk but he wasn't.
Um who was actually a tire mold inventor. Bill Wilson comes to town and he loses his job because of Bill Wilson in the proxy takeover fight uh at his company because uh it was National Rubber Company and he was the the inventor there. and they had this beautiful home and they almost lost their home.
Now he's lost his job. He almost loses his home because they were foreclosing on homes much like they're doing today in the United States. People can't pay their mortgages.
And um the bank stopped short of taking this house because they had already taken so many they couldn't take anymore. So um Henrietta asked him if we could use the house for a special meeting for Dr. Bob and Anne because they weren't sharing.
And um they agreed and so Henrietta set up the meeting and she said she it was on Monday. The first meeting was what they called a setup meeting. Now you call uh we call when we speak a lead because from the Oxford group there was always a leader and when you speak in AA in our country we call it a lead.
Well she was the leader of this and she said you come to mean business. There's not going to be any footing around. We're going to share and we're going to share deeply.
Sounds like intervention, doesn't it? For some of you that might know what an intervention is. Now, she got that from her guidance.
So, they planned the meeting for Wednesday at 8:00. And um I don't know what they said. They all went around the room and they shared and I don't know, those were down and uppers.
What did they do? Touch the stove and say some four-letter word? I don't know.
But when it came Dr. Bob's turn. There was this long pause and he thanked them and then he said, "Now there's something that I want to share with you.
I am a secret drinker and I cannot Oh, he said at the cost of my profession." He was a doctor. I am a secret drinker and I cannot stop. Step one.
Would you like us to pray for you, Bob? Yes, I would. They all get down on their knees in this home.
That's what they prayed back then. They'd all get down on their knees and they prayed for Dr. Bob.
Now, Henrietta would continue to pray for him for the next couple weeks. It's not going to be long before something happens here, but she will continue to pray for him in her morning quiet time. Well, Bill Wilson, as you know, comes to town and the deal falls through.
and he is left in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel that you see here and um he's pacing the lobby and he hears the tinkling of the glasses and he thinks he's going to go in and have a drink or strike up a conversation when he remembers something Lois said to him. You see, he'd been working with alcoholics for months before he came to Akran and not one got sober and he was pretty depressed about that. But Lois said, "But you're sober, Bill." So, thank God he w he walks over to the telephone.
He puts a nickel in the phone. Oh, before he does, he looks at the directory and he finds the most perfect name he can find. Reverend Tunks.
When Bill went for a walk, he took a Tunk. That's an old Vermont term that he used. You know, thank God he picked that name or we might not be here tonight because this is the this is the only name he picks and it's it's the Firestone minister that had brought the Oxford group to town.
So, when he's looking for the Oxford group and he needs help, Reverend Tunks will give him 10 numbers. Thank God nobody was home. We might not be here tonight.
People are busy. They're not home. When he finally gets a hold of one man, the last number, and it's Norm Shepard, and Norm Shepard gives him Henrietta Cyberlings's number.
Whoa, Bill doesn't want to call a Cyberling. That's probably the president's wife. He doesn't That's what he thinks.
So, he walks away from the phone. He's not going to call her. And then he hears that voice of guidance.
He says, "I heard a voice say to me, "You better call that lady." He turns around and he goes back upstairs and he calls her Slender Threads. Now Henry at a cyberling was very proper. She was raised at Vasser to marry a Vanderbilt but she had ended up marrying a cyberling.
Now I want to remind you this is high society times in our in back in the 30s and it's going to be Mother's Day weekend. What a great gift we got for all the moms, huh? Um he's going to call her though on a Saturday and um uh when he calls her, he says, "I'm a rumhound from New York." Can you imagine saying that to her?
Total stranger. I'm a rum hound from New York and I'm looking for another alcoholic. >> >> because of her faith, because of her morning prayers, she thinks, "Mana from heaven, you come over here right now.
I've got just the man for you." Well, that man, you know, was drunk. So, the next day, she says, "If you'll go to church with me, we'll try to do it the next day." And Bill did that. Now, I want to um and as you know, Dr.
Bob didn't want to meet with him. I'm going to give that bird 15 minutes. And Bill looks at him and says, "It looks like you could use a drink." And the two of them go back and retire into that little library.
Right here is where they met. And if you come to Akran, you can visit there. Same wallpaper, same everything.
And you know, they talked late into the night. Two real quick stories I just feel like I want to tell you. One is when I told the story about Deline Weber, the woman who called Henrietta, I did it at the 50th anniversary of group number one.
A gentleman came from the back of the room crying. He came up to me and he said, "Delfine, Delphine Weber, that's my grandmother." I didn't know my grandmother had anything to do with the start of AA. Then um a woman comes into the program, Ethel Macy, and um she saw FA Cyberlings limousine driver who drove Bill home that night.
Bill back to the Mayflower shortly after that had come into the program. And little did he know that night when he drove Bill back from the gate lodge and that that man would be starting a program that would save his life. So we never know.
And what we're doing today is a link in a chain of events called Alcoholics Anonymous. I have many many stories like that I could tell you because I've met the offspring of all the pioneers and many of their children and grandchildren to this day need the program. So, something you're doing today is going to help somebody downstream.
So, this is the man on the bed we talked about. And um you know, Bob didn't have too much sobriety when they called on him, but they knew they needed to work with another drunk. I want to tell you a little bit about the four absolutes that they took to him.
You see the words there? These are the only yard sticks we had in Akran. We didn't have 12 steps.
These are the four words that we got from the Oxford group. That is what we used. We still study these today in Akran in the area.
There are four questions that go with those four words. Is what I'm about to think, say, or do right or wrong? True or false?
Ugly or beautiful? And how does it help the other guy? Now, those were real powerful tools.
What happened though with the Oxford group is that when they started going country to country, they wanted to convert Hitler and a telegram got intercepted that said, "God bless a man like Adolf Hitler or whatever." But the real intent was to try to if they could get him, they could turn the whole thing around. But instead, it caused so much controversy that Bill, who was trying to take care of this new little group, backed away. and you will not it's in the they're in the big book but he's kind of got them woven through but we'll talk more about how important the Oxford group really was.
So after that prayer, this house here, remember I said they said a prayer Wednesday at 8:00 at the meeting here. They will continue to meet in this home until late 39. This is what we call the flying blind period.
We didn't have conference approved literature. The big book wasn't conference approved. Um we had this fly we were just hanging on to the Oxford group.
And what would happen here um uh is that a little squad of drunks began to form and it was called the alcoholic squad and it was like a subgroup to the Oxford group. I mean the Oxford group was there but these drunks were coming in and they were kind of taking over because you know for us it's life and death. So we were kind of out even outgrowing these guys.
Well you know the guidance part I told you about. Well, those drunks were pretty serious lowbottom drunks and they were Jones and man, they were shaken and they couldn't sit still for the guidance. So, Dr.
Bob would take them upstairs into the upper room and they'd have their own prayer meeting. Now, the reason today that some of us use the Lord's Prayer is because in the Oxford group, we opened with the prayer, you gave some testimony, and you closed with the prayer. And then you had a little literature on the table.
We read the Oxford group literature, and then we went and got donuts. So now we're going to go to there's two places that this story takes place in. One of them is Akran.
And now we're going to go to the other stage which is New York. This is Calvary Church. This is Sam Shoemaker's church.
Uh the Oxford Group headquarters is there in New York. This is where Roland Hazard when he comes back from seeing Carl Jung in Switzerland. This is where he will get three months of sobriety.
Um this is where Ebie Thatcher will come and he will get a couple months of sobriety and make a call on Bill. Um so this is very important to us this church. That's Sam Shoemaker.
Bill would say that we got some of the steps from him because um uh Sam uh often spoke of the same principles. We read a lot of his books and this is where they held the Oxford group. Let's go in and see what a meeting there was like.
That is a typical picture of when Bill and Lois were attending the Oxford group there. Now, after Bill gets sober in town's hospital, he gets this idea of primary purpose. When you read his story, he said, "And I saw how my experience could benefit others." So, Bill Oxford Group wanted to be all things to all people.
Bill just wanted to help a drunk. So, when he came in, he just about knock you over looking for a drunk. the Oxford group didn't like that too much.
So they started giving Bill and Lois the cold shoulder. They they didn't like them at all doing that. So that's Clinton.
That's a an artist rendition of Clinton Street. This is Bill and Lois's home. And they start inviting the drunks back to their home.
This is 1937. This is happening. And um you can see they're greeting him there.
And they form a group called the drunk squad. So you got the alcoholic squad in Akran. got this drunk squad in in New York.
Well, one minute Bill's a millionaire, the next minute he's broke. Have you ever seen Bill? You can tell he's got emotional disorder.
He's up, he's down. He's up, he's down. Well, he's making a comeback and he's coming back to Akran and he's on a business trip.
Things have been pretty slowgoing. Um, and he's going to stop in to see the Smiths. This is 855 Baltimore.
This is Dr. Bob's home. And um they're going to be um a lot of failures.
I don't know if you understand how hard this program was to get going because just people were just falling off the wagon. You get somebody get a few, you know, little time and it was a lot of failures and they didn't really know what they had. So they're sitting around the house.
By the way, that's photoshopped in. Can you tell? I just wanted you to know that the three of them got together and they started counting noses that should say 1937.
They began counting and they came up with 40 people sober. And this feeling came over the three of them. It was like a moment of ecstasy.
And then they bowed their heads in gratitude because they realized that a light had come into the dark world of the alcoholic. It's the first time it dawns on them. This thing might be catching on.
Well, if you know Bill, the next moment, that humble moment turns into, hey, he's been working on Wall Street. Why don't we get this chain of hospitals and uh hey, we need some missionaries and uh oh, we better get some literature to keep this message from getting garbled. I mean, that's where he went straight.
You know, poor Dr. Bob, you know, he's like, what happened here? And um well, you know, the two of them were best friends.
They were both Vermoners. Um and they um they always got along, but that doesn't mean they always agreed. They agreed to disagree agreeably.
Thank God. I think that was so important to getting this thing off the ground. Imagine if they were fighting all the time.
I mean, I don't know if we'd have made it either. Um so Smitty, Dr. Bob's son said, "If it was up to Dr.
Bob AA would have never left Akran, but if it was up to Bill, he'd have franchised it. So, here you can see the two co-founders. It's a very touching video.
I think it's the only one we actually have. Um, and in a little bit you'll see Anne Smith, the mother of AA. Um, and what they did, um, and you can see the wild ties of Dr.
Bob. He was pretty he that and Argyle socks. And they were both funny, you know.
They both had great senses of humor, as I think you can tell there. Pretty happy in their sobriety. Um, now Anne Smith was kind of more shy.
She's going to be uncomfortable when she comes on here. There she is. Get me out of here, Bob.
Come on. Just stay in the background. But she was sweet and everyone loved her and she certainly earned her title, mother of AA.
Well, Bob wasn't too keen on the idea. He just wasn't quite sure. And they had come up with the idea of a group conscience.
Once before that, Bill had been offered a job at Town's Hospital. And he got pretty excited. You know, they were hungry.
They weren't eating. You know, Bob had hardly wasn't working. And, you know, Lois was supporting all the drunks.
Bill was running around being a missionary. He wasn't working. And so when he got offered this job, he was so excited, but he came back and they said, "Pill, you can't make this into a profession.
You can't take that job at Town's Hospital." So this time they decided to try the group conscience again. And they went over to the house. They had 19 men sober at that time.
Good and true, they said. There's the living room where they said the prayer. And um this is where they're going to hold this group conscience meeting.
And there's Bill there. He's going to pitch it. He's quite the salesman, you know.
need a chain of hospitals. We're going to need those paid missionaries and literature to keep the message from getting garbled. Well, the alcoholic squad says the man of Galilee had no press agents, newspaper, pamphlets, or books.
Keep it simple, Bill. Bill said, "You can keep it so simple, you'll have anarchy." He said, "There's alcoholics dying within gunshot of here." So they took it to a vote and with one vote over they sent Bill back. They said, "Bill, if you're going to do this thing, you go raise the money." So he went back to the big apple.
And he began to pitch to the rich. But you know what? The rich weren't too impressed.
40 drunk, sober, that's not a very big deal, is it? We'd rather give our money to the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. Well, some of you might know that Bill was subject to depressions and he'd get these imaginary ulcers.
So, he was at Clinton Street and he got one of those. Well, thank God his sister Dorothy had married a doctor. So, he trots off to the doctor, Leonard Strong.
Leonard Strong's going to become a trustee in later years, but at this time he's a doctor. And Bill goes doing that whining thing again. Those rich people won't give me any money.
And um Leonard says, "You know, I think I know somebody who was once related to the Rockefellers and he makes a phone call and the and uh to Reverend Willard Richardson. He couldn't have picked a better guy. This guy is Rockefeller's spiritual advisor and best friend." Now, can you imagine Bill's going from an ulcer to the 54th floor of the Rockefeller building?
I mean, this is Bill's life. It it just, you know, it's those slender threads I'm talking about. In fact, he says on what slender threads, our destiny does lie.
And he meets with Willard and Willard arranges a special meeting in uh in December of that year in the boardroom of the Rockefellers. In fact, Bill sat in a chair that had just been vacated by J. himself and he thought, "Oo, I'm getting close to the money." He was so excited when he sat in that chair.
Well, let's look at who was there. We have um Albert Scott, Willard Richardson, Leonard, Dr. Silkworth, Frank Amos, and Leroy Chipman were there.
The alcoholics that were there were Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, Hank P, Vitz M, Ned P, and Dick S from Akran. And they they don't know what to do.
They're so uncomfortable. They're sitting in the I mean these are just you know these are lowbottom drunks that are cleaned up a little bit and they're sitting in the Rockefeller office and they don't know what to do and they look at each other and they say why don't we just tell our stories. So they started to tell their story and in the middle of it Albert Scott goes why this is first century Christianity.
Interesting isn't it? after I just told you that's what the Oxford group was. So the next thing and you know now remember they want money they're hungry they're looking for money gentlemen up to this point this has been the work of goodwill only no plan no poverty no paid people just one carrying the good news to the next.
Isn't that true? So Frank Amos was from Ohio and he said, "Look, I'm going to go check." Oh, so they didn't get the money. Then they started saying, "Well, we really need some money.
You know, we really need to get this thing going." So Frank Amos comes to Akran and he checks us out and he sees that Dr. Bob's a pretty good doctor and he could probably do the job. And he writes a report that goes back for $50,000.
Uh, and um, they're going to pay off the mortgage at Dr. Bob's home so he doesn't lose it. They're going to start a rehab place.
They're going to put Dr. Bob in charge, subsidize a few people, start a chain of hospitals, and get busy on that book. Well, the paper goes from Richardson to Rockefeller, and it gets held up because he says, "Somehow I am strangely stirred by all this.
Please go back, but this interests me immensely." Let me do that again so you can see that. Oh, I think I had it automatically, so I have to be real quick. But isn't money going to ruin this thing?
I think the thing that interests me the most about that statement is that he's strangely stirred by all this. I wonder who's up there strangely stirring him. He says, "No, I want to hear what goes on, but please don't bother me for any more money.
No, I won't be the one to spoil this thing with money. Thank God. And the $50,000 gets shrunk to $5,000 and they take the $5,000 and they use 3,000 of it to pay off the mortgage at Dr.
Bob's house. And that's going to leave the boys 2,000 that they're going to pinch from uh in the coming months. They're going to take It's an unbelievable story, isn't it?
Um they're going to put the money in the Riverside Church. This is the Rockefeller Church. Fazdik is the head of that church and they'll read a lot of books by him and he is going to write the first big book review that will appear in the New York Times.
Then they're going to borrow an attorney from the Rockefellers, a young guy by the name of John Wood, and they're going to try to put together a charter. They're going to call this the Alcoholic Foundation. But how do you define us?
What's an alcoholic? Well, they came up with this. What is the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic?
That's where we first started using that word. Anda. That's a joke.
Um Oh. Anyway, um Leonard uh Strong is going to be the secretary. And you can see Richardson's there, Chipman, Frank Amos, Dr.
Bob, and they're going to add two more drunks. Now, the problem in the ratio of that, we have class A and class B trustees. They had more class A non-alcoholics because they don't drink and the alcoholics were slipping all over the place.
So, that was kind of difficult. Bill's going to be on the steering committee kind of as an advisory committee and he's going to start writing the book here. Now, some of you I've met have been to New Jersey.
This building is in New Jersey. It is called the Camel Building. Uh Hank P is the first guy out of in New York and he becomes Bill's partner and they start a company called Honors Dealers and they're going to do car products and they're going to be in this building here.
There's another picture of it. And they hire this gorgeous gal here. This is Ruth Hawk.
Uh Ruth Hawk was a very good secretary. And um here she is with Bill. And uh Bill uh it's in Pass It On.
If you read in Pass It On, it says she did not know what she was getting herself into when she took this job. She thought it was car products, but it wasn't car products. She didn't see too much business going on.
She either saw somebody passed out in a chair or somebody down on their knees making a surrender. By the way, if you visit Stepping Stones, this table is in the kitchen. And this is where Bill and Ebie sat when Ebie made the call on Bill and he pulled out the uh pineapple juice.
Uh there's another picture of Ruth. Now, the interesting thing about Ruth is that um when they start this deal up, they don't have any money. So, they start like this stock company up and they get these stock certificates and um they were worth they were worth nothing, but they were supposed to be worth $25 that the book ever got written.
and they would rip off one of these $25 certificates one they'd ration her one a week and um little did she know um and there's the old typewriter now we have word processors today can you imagine Bill's pacing behind her with the cigarette in one hand and he's dictating to her and she's typing up uh the big book and this is Hank who had a terrible crush on Ruth um it was his idea, you know, um he had like an idea minute. So, he's going to be the promoter and um little did she know when I gave this talk for the first time, it was in our international in Toronto and um I little did she know that um the book she was typing would one day save her daughter's life and Lori was my roommate and I asked her to stand. She has over 30 years of sobriety in Chicago.
That was pretty moving that uh she was there for that. Well, um by the way, um she got the 5 millionth copy of the big book in Montreal. Uh what are some of the people that influenced Bill?
You know, he he didn't channel it all in. There was William James, Variety of Religious Experiences. That book, Bill said he devoured it in Town's Hospital.
Have you ever tried to read that book? It's pretty hard to devour. Um, and this book, what is the Oxford group?
I have to tell you a quick story about this book. I I showed you the Gate Lodge. Well, there's a big large property there and we have harvest festivals there.
So, I was attending one of those. It wasn't an AA event. It was a harvest festival and they had a tent right behind the uh gate lodge and it was an old book bin.
And I'm kind of a, you know, not a junkie, but a junker. You know, I'm always looking around for something. So, I said, "Do you have any old AA books?" And they said no.
And I said, 'Well, um, do you have any spiritual books? And they said, 'Yes. And so, um, my hand went across a little blue book and it said, 'What is the Oxford group?
And I was kind of newly sober. I had about 3, four years sobriety. And I thought, hm, I wonder, was that the Oxford movement?
Was it the Oxford group? And I opened it up and it said, RH Smith, 855 Ardmore, his book. Please return.
Or should I say the book found me. Um, I want you to know I tried to get them down to 25 cents, but they made me pay 35. Uh, the Oh, by the way, you'll see that in Dr.
Bob's house. I did return it. Common Sense of Drinking.
That's where we got the idea for our stories. This is a big one. The Sermon on the Mount by EMTT Fox.
If you ever get a chance to read that, when we did not have conference approved literature, the uh co-founders had recommended reading lists. As a man thinkketh by James Allen, um Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing, was a another classic that you might be familiar with. And this book, The Sermon on the Mount, heavily influenced both of our co-founders.
Uh and AJ Russell from the Oxford group for sinners only. And I must mention Ebie. Those of you who might read in Bill's story in the big book, you can almost number the steps that Ebie brings to Bill in Towns Hospital.
Um, so they were kind of, you know, Bill puts them into 12step form, but those ideas were floating around. He's going to ask Anne Smith to write a story chapter to the wives. Now, Anne was the kind of woman who was very just wanted to stay in the background and she declines.
Lois got a resentment. I think she might have worked it out in Alanon. I'm not sure.
You know who writes chapter to the wives? Bill Wilson. For some of us, that's not our favorite chapter.
So, Bill's going to get busy writing the book. By the way, this is the document actually that I just received recently where Bill's actually writing to Dr. Bob and talking to him about what they're going to call the program and mentioning to Anne that he'd like to have her write the book and talking about the stories and um how they developed.
Bill starts he's going to write an introduction. He's going to write his story and he's going to write this chapter here. There is a solution.
Now Bill really wasn't a writer. He hadn't really done much writing up to this time. And he's going to get an in to go to Harper's religious editor, Eugene Xman.
And Eugene Xman reads these three pieces. And he goes, "Bill, this is pretty good writing." And now remember, they're hungry. And he says, "Bill, can you write more like this?" And Bill says, "Yeah, well, yeah, I can.
I can. Well, I'll offer you a $1,500 advance if you'll write more." Well, can you imagine Bill's ego? He's up again.
He's up. So, um, wait a minute. Something wrong with the projector.
What's going on here? Uhoh. Whoa.
Wait a minute, folks. Bill, hi, Bill. You know where we are?
We're in Stockholm, Sweden. And I was just telling these folks about the writing of the book. But, you know, a lot of people thought I knew Bill because I talked to Bill and I I never knew him.
That you guys thought I was 75 years old. Is that right? They were so great.
They were so glad I could scoot in a pair of tennis shoes so they could take me around. They were relieved. I don't I didn't I feel like I know Bill.
I' I've read everything he wrote, but I didn't I didn't meet Bill. Um, however, I have the power to bring him back from the dead. So, Bill, would you be willing to uh share with them your perception of the writing of the book?
>> Now, then I think he agreed >> as a graphic illustration of how pain and fear and all of our worst motives can eventuate under God's grace for the best. I would like to in a hop, skip, and jump fashion tell you about the preparation of the AA book. >> Well, Bill, I was telling about when you went to Eugene and you you showed him the chapters and stuff and he offered you the money.
Did you decide to take that money? A few of us stood for the proposition, well, this would be bad because control of our literature would be in other hands. And some of us in a more selfserving way, and this definitely included me, we felt that the book might make some profits and some royalties out of which its creators could eat.
>> Well, I think they're getting a sense of your personality, Bill. Um, what did you decide to do? >> Some of us in New York considered the possibility of publishing this book ourselves.
>> Really? Well, nobody knows about the program. What are you going to do about that?
How you going to sell a book when there's only a couple guys sober for God's sakes? What are you going to do to get the word out? So then we went up to the reader digest and told them about our budding movement and I guess we brandished Mr.
Rockefeller's name pretty liberally, you know, as a close friend. He wasn't giving us any money, but he liked us. >> Well, did that work, Bill?
Were they impressed? >> The digest said, "Well, fine. When will your book come out?" By now, it's the fall of 38.
Oh, we said about next spring, they said, "This is just the kind of story uh uh that we'd like. We will do a piece. We'll put a feature writer on this." >> Well, um, Bill, that's a pretty scary deal.
Didn't you have some mean, you know, to write a whole book and and get it published? Did you have any fears? >> Who would publish such a book?
Who could assemble such a book? What should go in it? Supposing it turned out badly.
These indeed for us were great and most natural fears. >> Well, did you have a plan? >> And then a plan came into being.
It was thought there ought to be a text. It was thought these ought to be backed up by stories and this text was in the first edition. Twothirds of the stories came from Akan.
>> Yes. Yes, they did. Bill.
Bill. I we have up there um actually the outline for the book because it was Hank's idea and he wrote the outline. Um, so what happened next?
>> So down east we began to pedal stock in what turned out to be the AA book. But we were pedling stock to drunks. $25 a share.
The purpose was what? To feed Wilson and the gal who helped do the book and the promoter and the collector of the money. >> Oh, I see.
Bill. So this was your plan. One third of it was going to go to you, one-third was going to go to Hank, and you were going to go after the rest of this folks getting sober for the rest of the money.
Well, why did you call it works publishing? >> The title was chosen because there would be a lot more work, you know, after this. >> Well, there's the prospectus that you two wrote up.
Um, can you tell us a little bit about what was in there? So in the prospectus we tatted up what the profits would be. Oh I think we started in with something like a 100,000 books and uh you know the first few car loads and u I think we got as high as a million copies.
Well, of course, if they only cost 35 and you sold them for 350, it was would be frankly a great rise in that $25 stock might go to a,000 bucks a share. We didn't put all this on paper, but it was a part of the promotion. >> Well, then when you went and talked to the alcoholics, uh, what did you tell them?
How did you get them to try to buy the stocks? We would sell these 35 cent books for the sum of 350. We didn't indicate any other expenses, but that seemed a quite a margin of profit to the prospective stock buyer and we pointed out that they couldn't possibly miss because after all the digest piece with millions of circulation >> Mhm.
in which they definitely would mention the new book would simply move these volumes out in car loads. >> Well, that was a pretty absurd idea, don't you think? >> While this job was being done.
In other words, people were asked to buy stock in a book that hadn't yet been written. >> Yeah. >> I think this is a world's record for sheer audacity.
>> Well, um, tell me what was the reaction when you presented this plan? Well, this was heard out in this country uh that this ex Wall Street swindler uh was contriving one of the greatest rackets known to the mind man. >> Well, what was their response then?
Well, when this motivation began to be suspected and became apparent, a quite a violent opposition rose up. >> Um, well, tell us a little about that. What' you do?
>> So, then we had only begun our troubles. Then the book had to be written. >> So, did you start writing?
Well, I wrote another sample chapter and tried that on them. No stock purchases. >> Oh man, the trustees must have been pretty upset.
>> And uh the trustees were very dubious. Uh they had no money at the time. So we were able to face them down and say, "Well, we'll separately incorporate this." And sure enough, by an appeal to the loyalty of the stockholders to the cause, but also by an appeal to the pocket book, the base of nature.
The money began to dribble in $25 per bet. Well, >> I bet you're relieved. Now you can get started writing the book.
And I know what you did is you wrote it chapter by chapter and you would send it to Akran and have them look it over and then they would send it back. Can you tell us a little bit about that process of writing it? >> However, we were reading a few of us on the stockholders money and little by little the chapters were evolved and we thrashed them around in the AA meetings and we carefully checked them with Dr.
Bob as they went along. And meanwhile, he at great pains and difficulty got stories largely from this town. You know, that's right, Bill.
And um folks today can go visit that table at Dr. Bob's house where they gathered around and Jim Scott got sober just in the nick of time because they were so uncomfortable writing their stories. They they didn't know how to write them and edit them.
So, they got a little help there. Um, well, okay. So, you were having these depressions and out of this depression this night, you're going to come out with the 12 steps.
Would you tell us about how you wrote those? >> In short, here was AA at its worst, but under God's grace coming up with something better. maybe history will say the best.
And so the work went on and I remember one night we got through the first four chapters which were window dressing and I was having an imaginary ulcer attack and it looked like um well things were very gloomy. the stockholders were kind of uh you know falling down or the the the meal ticket was getting in danger and I was very resentful and I realized lying in bed there in Brooklyn Clinton Street that the book had to say what it was all about at some place. So I began to write and out came the 12 steps.
Well, you used the six steps that you'd gotten from the Oxford group and I know that you thought that an alcoholic could fall through the cracks and then after you developed them into 12, you counted up 12 and you thought that was a great number and you couldn't wait to present them to the guys at Clinton Street. Uh what was their reaction? Well, when they appeared, there was a terrific uproar.
And as a result of the uproar, again, the constructive came out. I had had a great spiritual experience. So that I had used God all the way through those 12 steps.
>> Well, there was some um agnostics that weren't real crazy about that. What was their reaction? Our atheist and agnostic contingent said drunks don't buy that.
They're scared to death of being god- bitten. This ought to be a psychological book. >> Well, then what did the religious people think of that?
>> On the other hand, uh the religious people said that it should be a strictly Christian book theologically speaking. So, one had to sort of average these point of views. Well, I know that was really a tough tough time for you trying to get through that conflict.
In fact, you began to say that you really didn't uh write the book at all. You umpired it. Um and when you finally agreed to God as you understand him, you called that a 10 strike because that's one of the reasons today that so many people from all over the world can come into Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, do you think you had God's help? >> Sure. We must have had God's help.
We never could have produced it ourselves. >> Well, um, can you kind of sum up what the writing of the book was like? >> So, this is the unholy way in which God nevertheless graced us in the days when AA was very young.
>> Well, the book got written, but it needed to be published and that's a story in itself, too. Tell us a little bit about the how you got the book published. >> Well, finally the great day our publication approached.
We had pre-ublication copies of the book made, circulated, run for criticism and with the last of our money, almost the last. We persuaded the printer that this was such a terrific venture that uh he certainly ought to accept a 10% down payment for 5,000 books which were going out with the car loan first installment. >> So we paid him $500 for 5,000 books.
>> Wow, Bill, what a salesman you are. Um well, it was uh a woman's recommendation that you add a doctor's opinion. So, you asked your own doctor, Dr.
Silkworth, to um write a letter, and he did, and we have that today. And then you asked people to send back that manuscript copy. And there's the copy that you and Hank worked from when you took the book to publication.
And you can see that it's all marked up. You were asked to take the eye out and put the Wii in. You were told that there was too much Oxfordizing in there.
And uh in fact it was so sloppy and so marked up that you and Hank and Ruth and actually Dorothy Snyder had to take it to Cornwall Press and help them type set it because you didn't want to type it again. Um and then there was the thing about the name. Uh the 100 men corporation was one of the ideas and um then a woman got sober by the name of Florence and she said you can't call it a 100 men.
You have to call it 100 men and one woman. >> >> And then you and your ego, you wanted to call it the Bill W movement. We already had uh out a nameless bunch of drunks.
Dry Frontiers makes me thirsty. Empty glass. The way out.
And uh there was a guy that came in that kept saying, "Anonymous alcoholics, Joe W. Anonymous alcoholics." and he flipped it around and he f he got out of the nut house just in time to make that contribution and he says alcoholics anonymous and that name took Did you like that? >> We'd been calling ourselves out there a nameless bunch of drunks and from that the anonymity idea had come in.
In fact, the the book title as voted by Akran New York and the few Clevelanders was chosen as the way out. But in the Library of Congress, we'd found that there were 12 books by the name of The Way Out. So for heaven's sake, we couldn't make a 13th.
So it became Alcoholics Anonymous. >> And New York got its way. And if we'd have had our way in Akran, we'd be the Way Outers today.
Can you see the T-shirts? >> Then we went up to the Digest and said, "Now what about this piece? We're all ready to shoot." And the editor at whom we had talked vaguely remembered us and he said, "Shoot what?" >> Oh, you're kidding.
Oh, that must have been a horrible shock. Well, what'd you do next? >> Well, we reminded uh our friend that a piece was due and he said, "Gee, Mr.
Wilson. He said, "We, you know, after you were here, I went to the rest of the staff here very sure that this would be great peace, but they didn't think so." And I forgot to tell you. >> Oh, Bill, man, what happened?
I mean, what was that like? I mean, you had everything set up, all the stock certificates and everything. What was that like?
>> So, we had 5,000 books in the warehouse. There were 100 AA members. There were about 30 stockholders and they each got a book.
There were there there were about 30 guys who put stories in the books and they each got a book and that was 60 books. So we only had 40 books to sell the rest if they had bought it. >> Oh, Bill.
Then things really hit, didn't they? Well, at that time things folded up in a big way. We were about to be evicted from our house in Clinton Street.
Stuff go into storage. The book was bankrupt. And we made one last great gasp effort.
>> Oh my god. What was that? a drunk came along by the name of Morgan who had been in the ad business and he said, "You know, I know Gabriel Heer, you know, the guy who puts on those wonderful Saab talks." And he said, "I think Gabriel would put this on the air." So, we scared up a few dollars more.
And to get ready for Gabriel, we decide Well, um, you started sending those postcards, didn't you? Tell us about that. >> Well, we picked out a hard class of people to advertise to in those days.
We picked out all of the physicians east of the Mississippi Mississippi River. All of them. And to each one we sent a postal card which said, "Listen to Gabriel Heater as he talks about the new society of Alcoholics Anonymous and buy the book Alcoholics Anonymous, a cure for alcoholism." >> Well, wasn't there a little problem with Morgan?
Well, one great trouble with Ryan was that he wouldn't sober up and he was supposed to be interviewed on the air. My god, our last scent was in this thing and all these proposal cards. >> But what did you do to solve that problem?
So, just as a precaution, one of our friends who was a member of the Down Athletic Club said, "Well, now uh you you can have my room over there. I don't use it much." And why doesn't somebody live with Morgan in there the week before, you know, to just stay with him and be sure he gets to heater? All right.
A little codependent. Okay. Um, so did he did it did you guys pull it off?
>> So the great day came. The postal cards was out in a New York Cleveland. The ears were to the radio.
>> I bet >> we visioned the books going out in car loads, orders flooding in. Biggest profit of all in direct mail, no commissions. And sure enough, Heater pulled out the tremolo stop.
Ryan was sober. And boy, we were amazed. Well, it went so well.
And then, as I recall, um, you had a post office box. >> We gave a post office box, old 458 in New York, I think. >> 59, >> where we had a one room office.
Little Ruthie Hawk, who helped me with the book, Bless Her Soul, my promoter friend Hank Park, and I just couldn't wait to get over to see what was coming into that box. >> You know, you held back for 3 days and then you actually put luggage in the car to go get those cards. And when you got there, you were a little disappointed when you looked in that little glass box there because there wasn't too many in there.
What was Hank's reaction? >> Hank was an encourageable optimist. He said, "Well, he could they couldn't put them all in the box." He said, "They got several mailbags full out there." So, the clerk came with the cards.
Hank said, "Ain't there any more?" No. We took them over to the desk and we counted them and there were 12 and 10 of them were from doctors obviously stewed themselves who lambbasted the hell out of us and we had exactly two orders for the book Alcoholics Anonymous. >> Oh man, that's some hard times.
But you know, Bill, when there was hard times, you always pulled something out. What'd you pull out of that? >> For us, almost more than any other society, pain has been the touchstone of our spiritual progress.
So we can say thank God that we have suffered such pains that such a spectacle as this has been brought into view and being >> I agree Bill. Um hey Bill hey hey say hello to Dr. Bob for us.
Um I'm going to finish up. There's one little story here in case when you read that book, you may have ever taken it for granted that it's even in your hand. Um, things are pretty bad at this point.
But they um uh they go ahead and this is the book and um there was uh that's the jacket by the way. It was designed by an artist whose stories in the first edition. Can you imagine trying to be anonymous and carrying that big thing under your arm with that circus jacket?
What were they thinking? They used to turn the cover inside out. Um, that was one of the possible book jackets they found at Stepping Stones.
Later, uh, the first copy of the big book that came off the press was Bill's. And in it, it says, "Note, this was the very first AA book off the press. We used thick paper to make the alcoholic feel they were getting their money's worth." Bill, I'm going to ask you, do you guys think you got your money's worth out of that book?
I sure hope so. And then to Lois, he writes, "One whose loving care and fortitude in our dark days together made these pages possible. So to her, this first book of the first edition is lovingly and thankfully given Bill in memory of the fifth Christmas." So they're down and out.
They're broke. The books, they're all sitting in warehouses. Nobody, not too many people know about Alcoholics Anonymous.
at a magazine called Liberty Magazine. By the way, these magazines were only a nickel, so think how expensive that big book was at $3.50 at that time. Anyway, Morris Marky is going to do an article, but they don't have enough money to make it.
So, they really want that article, and they go to Bert the Tor, and that's his tailoring shop on Fifth Avenue in New York. And they ask him for money. Only Bert doesn't have the money to give them.
But he calls Mr. Cochran who was a great benefactor and they said, ' Mr. Cochran, we'll sell you these books for a dollar off and you could put them in libraries.
Mr. Cochran says, "Send me your books and I'll look them over." So he looked our books over and he said, "I don't think so." So Bert said, "Well, Mr. Cochran, would you lend me the money?" And Bert hawkked his business to save the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, so we could get to that article.
September 30th, 1939, it comes out was quite a big deal to those early members and we got 600 inquiries. And another thing that we did not know was that Mr. Rockefeller had been watching us and he wanted to introduce us to his friends and in 1940 he holds a big dinner and um the a lot of bankers and a lot of important people were there.
I mean the the list was any of the the who's who in the United States at the time. Uh Mr. Fosdic would be there.
Dr. Kennedy would be there. Bill Wilson would be there.
Bankers and there he is. Morgan Ryan, the guy that was on the the show. Um and Nelson is going to provide preside over it because his father is sick.
Now what they did is they put an AA member. They all got cleaned up and they put an AA member at each table. Now Morgan was a good-looking Irishman and he cleaned up real nice and he had his suit on and he was at his table and one of the bankers looked at him and said, "And what institution are you with?" And he said, "Well, I'm not really with an institution, but I just got out of one not too long ago." Now, Mr.
Rockefeller never gave us any money. I mean, yeah, very little. He did give us a little, but it was the prestige.
And he after that was over with, he wrote a letter to every single person and those that were at the dinner got a first edition big book in a crate. It was pretty fabulous. So he really endorsed us.
And uh but what happened is his son stood up and we thought we were going to get money again. See the Rockefellers had joined us to help make our foundation. Imagine that.
The foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous was built by the Rockefellers if you look into the history that I just told you tonight. And uh his father uh Bill never met JD. So Nelson provides us uh over the dinner and of course Bill's looking out at all this money and he said, "My father thinks this is a work of goodwill and money will ruin it." And Bill says with that a couple billion dollars got up and walked out the door.
We did pay the Rockefellers back and here's some of our canceled checks and we took an oath of poverty and today we don't accept contributions from outside organizations. But this was a hard lesson one. Jack Al, we're still in trouble though, folks.
We're still in trouble until Jack Alexander shows up and he's just finished writing a story on rackets and he gets the story to write on Alcoholics Anonymous and he thinks we're a racket and he comes to Akran to bust us and he goes to I think he went to Chicago and a few other cities, but that's not what happened. You see, the press can be our friend. and he wrote a beautiful article in the Saturday Evening Post March 1941 and in that article 6,000 requests came in and that really helped establish us.
So after telling you that pretty tough story really slender threads, right? Can you imagine what this couple after going through being homeless, living in the club, and um uh you know, just going through so much hardship, losing their furniture, having it be out on the curb. What do you think they're thinking as they watch big books be sent out all over the world in so many different languages?
And Bill says, "It transcended the mountain and the sea and is even at this moment lighting candles in dark caverns and on distant beaches." Now, I'd like to have you just take a moment of quiet while we take a look at the credits of all the slender thuds that went into this story. And I challenge you to remove one of them and think if we would actually have Alcoholics Anonymous today. Thank you.
>> >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.