The Friends and Spouses Who Became the Real Founders of AA – 1948 – Bill W.

I see that your program committee has me rated as a non-speaker. And confidentially, folks, I would tell you that's just what I've always thought too. I feel rather guilty that I hadn't contributed or attempted to contribute something toward the success of your wonderful meetings here today. I feel perhaps I have not been about my work as I should be. I'm not like the man on the recent Sibba McGee program who was asked, where are you going? He said, I'm going to tend to my Social Security. The other fellow said, do you mean you're going to make a payment? He said no, I am going to get my suspenders fixed. I would be very remiss, my friends, if I didn't take this opportunity to thank you for your kind invitation to Mrs. Smith and myself to come here as your guest. and for the many nights of yours that we've been privileged to enjoy. I have also enjoyed your seemingly inexhaustible battery of excellent speakers, and I'm not unmindful of the fact that you still have ones of whom you would like to listen. And if you'll allow me to paraphrase Gracie Allen, I would say he is good to the last word, and that's good too. At a time like this? He and I sat today in those seminars and I know we would both say that although we might have come into them feeling able to teach, we stayed to learn. The teachers will become pupils. And since this is a time for gratitude and thanksgiving on behalf of Bob and Anne and Lois and Nate we want to renew our thanks for this marvelous hospitality for this great privilege of being among us and when we seek a thank we too should remember our friends who are here and those who are near and dear to us When AA first began, some of us used to think that we stood in a no-man's land with science over here and religion over there. But no more is that true. to say that this world's neurosis has at its foot the conflict between science and religion. But here, surely, we see men of science and men of religion. And we drunk, seated together and happy amity in fact all we have really has come to us through that in AA there is really no need just all things restate and practice so AA is a combination of the contributions of our strength and our own experience and many of us have those who we can call more than friends people very near and dear without whom this thing could not have been and right away nearly every alcoholic in this place thinks of the wife or husband who has seen him or her through I X many one of us would have been dead air now had not someone near and dear seen it through and sometimes these ones are the forgotten people of AA in our haste for recovery and sometimes in pride of our new present. They are forgotten but let them not be forgotten you know I wish this founder talk in AA should be somehow abated for AA has many founders, in fact this place is all loused up with them tonight but it so happens that a couple of them are real handy and just to be sure that no one has missed meeting a couple more of these founders I wish to present Annie Smith and Lloyd the hour is late we shall have more talk together tomorrow so I had thought in parting that you might like to join with me in just a few little sketches little kaleidoscopic things seemingly little at the time but terribly significant I am drunk in Brooklyn at home someone came to me even as someone came to each of you and he was the point and he said if you will become more honest with yourself if you stop this accursed business of living alone and humbled yourself to confess to another if you will go out and clear away the debris of the past and straighten up these twisted relationships if you pray to any God that you know or even experimentally to a God who may be there and then if you will give of yourself to others without the man for reward, then I think you may know relief from this deadly effect. And that was a fundamental message that one alcoholic was transmitting to another, my friend and me. And I, in my turn, thrived for months to transmit this story without success. I feared that I was preaching in those days, so now a little... another little success. Eight or nine months later, I stood in a hotel lobby in the town of Akron, Ohio. I had been defeated in the business field. I had found myself looking in at the bar. It looked awfully attractive. I suddenly realized that I was going to get drunk. And then I remembered. Ah, yes. Though there had been no success in working with these other alcoholics, somehow that had given me a relief and had renewed my original experience. Ah, for the first time I needed another alcoholic as much as he needed me. And I said, I must find one. So I turned to one of our friends. A preacher. His name was on a board there. I guess I picked it out because it was a little odd. His name was Tunk. I said, well, I'll call up Tunk and he came on the phone affably and I explained to him that I was a drunk from New York looking for another drunk to work on. Well, this was rather novel and his picture of one drunk working on another was perhaps not just what mine was. However, by a strange set of coincidences as Clem says in quotes I find myself in the home of a lady in action and the other cyborg I've called many people and all were busy but she said she understood when she come out and she explained I'm not an alcoholic but I know one who has five fries failed and failed somehow I think you might help us." I said, I'm not so sure but I know I need help myself. Said she, I will call up Miss Smith and see what about it. So she gets on the phone says Henrietta and Sister Ann here on the wire. Henrietta explained well he's drunk from New York here who seems to have got over it and somehow I think that he can help Bob well Ann said that well may be but today is Mother's Day and Bob is sentimental about such things and he has left them home with a potted plant and the product plant is on the table but he is on the floor so I don't think we'll come today however we will see what we can do about it tomorrow and then said my friend who understood who was not an alcoholic at all won't you come out tomorrow oh would I come out tomorrow oh yes So tomorrow comes And I sit again in their living room There's a knock on the door And Bob's in And Bob looked very Shaky And for some reason or another He said he was in an awful hurry He couldn't stay but just a little while And Henrietta Being a lady of deep understanding. In fact, I think the theologian would ascribe to her considerable Christian prudence. She put the two drunks in a small room by themselves. And I looked at Smithy and Smithy looked at me. And this time I was not preaching. I needed him as much as he needed men. And something transpired then and there the inner mystery of which we shall never know I think in this life and that was the real beginning you know the word Akron means I believe a city set on a hill and for me and for other thousands indeed that place is a limit well couple of more little words and he said you better come over to the house to live for a while I think Bob needs a little looking at I said yeah you bet so do I so we decide we'd better get to work on some other alcoholics and so Smithy, being a doctor, calls up the hospital and he gets a hold of the head nurse and he says, well, sister, he said we think we got a new cure for drunks we'd like to try it on and he said, have you got any customers down there? yes, he says we really have got a dandy he just has been brought in he's found time to slug a couple of the nurtures but now he's trapped he's been in this place six times in the last four months and never has he been able to get home sober how would that one go well we said that'll be fine we'd be right down so Doc had him put in a private room next day he came to we appeared Smithy and I before the man on the bed and we told him our story and the man on the back the man on the bed didn't brighten up very fast not the way they do now the man on the bed said ah he said there isn't any sure for this we used the word sure in those days but that got to be too hot. They dropped it pretty soon. He says there's no cure for this thing. He said, I tried everything. I've tried everything, and I don't dare go out of here. I got drunk every time on the way home. I can't understand it. And then we talked about the spiritual side. Oh, he said, don't talk to me about that. I was once a deacon in a church. Well, we did talk, and we explained to him that this was a fatal and progressive malady. That we were people afflicted by an obsession of the mind that condemns us to drink against our will. And a sensitivity of the body that condemnes us to go mad or insane if we keep it up. But that in our belief, God could expel this obsession when we were ready enough and willing enough and humble enough. And with that, we took our leave. And the next day we came again, and the wife of the man on the bed was there, and she was looking at him. His name was also Bill. And she was saying, Bill, what has come over you? Bill said, I don't know that I can understand it myself. I got thinking about what these fellas told me last night. I've got hope. And somehow I feel that everything is all right. Get me my clothes. I can get out of here now. And that first man out on the bed went into a political play in the town of Akron, and his opponents reviled him as a common drunk. Yes, he did everything the doctors say we can't do. He sat up nice, and he was in and out of the bars, and kissed babies. He did all the things the politicians do, and then he was defeated in the political race. But ah, under the grace of God, what a winner was that man on the bed. He has not had a drink to this day. And that will be 13 years ago this coming. Well, I came away from Akron a month or two later, and I left Smithy and Bill and a boy by the name of Ernie. And I want all of you to know that the first AA group flu started in Ashland, Ohio. And it started through the marvelous devotion and persistency and love of my friends Dr. Bob and Annie. So I came back to New York when Lawrence was working in the department store, and we began to take Alkies into our house. But our brand of sweetness in life didn't seem to work so well in the house. But a few began to get well outside. And among the very first of those was a man I met in the very hospital where I had made my own recovery. I guess a lot of you Virginians know about that. That's Town Hospital in New York. So I was up there one day with my usual acquaintance, the dear old Doc Silver, saying, Doc, haven't you got any drunks to work on? I'm going practically frantic. I'll explode if you don't find me a drunk. Well, he said, an awful nice fellow came in here from down south. He's got one of those real southern names, John Henry Sixteen Lane. So he said he's an awful case that I'm afraid he's badly damaged. and he's in a terribly hopeless state well Fitz and I had a talk and he said well I don't know he said you know I'm an agnostic in fact I'm a I'm not an atheist and I was a preacher's son my father and my sister and my wife they believe but I don' t I can't And we talked, and then I went away. And the next day I came back, and he too had that change of turn that so many of us have seen come, which none can really describe. And he said, you know, Bill, last night after you went away, I fell into a deep stare. and after a while I dropped onto my knees beside the bed and I cried out here am I say there is no God and so he became a founder of AA why as for founders there were at least 20 people without whom this thing couldn't have been that very doctor in town who let me come back and work oh there were many many founders and each of us have we not to some founders each in his own right of a new life for the next why talk about founders and then we began to see a good deal of success and by and by we began to talk about having a book and some literature and there is here tonight another person which only other early A.A.'s can remember the book was produced we got some publicity and during the production of the book this dear girl helped us out she was not an alcoholic. She often worked without pay. I suppose that if she and Lois hadn't jolted me, the book would never have got written. You know what damn procrastinators we don't start. And she became the first national secretary. and she was a person who began to write letters to alcoholics in distant places and send that book out to them and then another miracle transpired those people gathered around those books and that letter those letters from that jail and they began to get well at great distances we used to call them the mail orders so I'd like my friend Ruthie who has since married an AA and is of course living happily ever after and who is a guest at the gathering stand up so you can just see who little Ruthie is Christine where is she Well, in those early days I often came to Washington and Fitz came to New York. And I would like to leave just a word about his influence. You know, in those first days we early ones were pretty aggressive self-centered people. This was what people today in AA sometimes call those rare birds called spiritual naturalists. I suspect that he was made of finer clay than most of us, or any of us. And if I could choose one word which would express this, I would select the word chivalry. Because the word Chivalry takes in a lot of territory, Does it not suggest gentleness? Does it not suggest gentility? Does it not suggest kindness? Does it not suggest forgiveness and power and love? And that is what he gave us in the early days of AA. and if you leave that story in the book again our southern spring that spirit shines out through that chapel and may I add because of its influence on those of us who actually were the scriveners for this book that it is also in text and he is embodied in that text as are indeed many people, for I was only discriminated. All so many helped us in those days, those critical days, when we were flying blind and nobody could be sure of anything. Yes, there were other males. One is sitting over here, Agnes. And just let me explain that sister and she saw what had happened. Well, just confidentially between you and me in those days some of us were awful hungry there was a terrible lack it goes. And I can never forget that Agnes Mayo stepped forward and helped us out at a very critical time. Maybe without her contribution, we never would have finished the book Alcoholics Anonymous. She has it back, and with that, our everlasting gratitude. So let us have no more talk of found. Now we come down to the present moment. Having dwelt happily these minutes can pass, and surely again we explain what has God wrought. And now our beloved movement faces its greatest test. That is the test of success. Yes, success is a heady one. Heady one! So now out of this weather of ten years experience of living and working together Alcoholics Anonymous is casting up a tradition. And that tradition is beginning to tell us that as a movement we should remain forever poor, like those early Franciscans of old times. That movement, that tradition is telling us that, as individuals in this movement, we had better never seek for personal prestige or power that in our relations with the world our son it will be better if we let our friends recommend it and may I here pay a tribute to our friends of the place who have brought us these thousands of customers thank you and God bless you amen what our destiny shall be no man may say and it would be a conceit indeed to suppose that A.A. would last forever but you know after we addressed ourselves with this problem of unity the question will someday arise what is to be left in the center of A.I.? Shall it be a government or shall it be a church? Well already we know that it will be a church. We already know that the authority for the movement is the grace of God working through the hearts of the many rather than the inspiration of the church. This too. So if we will remember that success is heady wine observe these simple three steps I am sure that our future will be secure under those conditions it will not be us that's to show our future it will be God ah in moments of imaginative reflection I sometimes think I see A.A. as a great cathedral in the building, a cathedral of infinite dimensions, and like those cathedrals of graceful lime and stone, perhaps our structure of truthful principles will never be quite the same. There will be changes, all erasings perhaps, as we better apprehend the truth for us. But this much we know that on its great floor where are inscribed there are twelve points of recovery, sixty or seventy thousand of us now stand in peace and in security. the side walls which will contain us and guarantee our unity, as we better apprehend the truth for us. And then workmen are on the scaffold of the center of service, which may be likened to fire. And may that fire, may that symbolic finger ever point straight upwards for God. I'm sure you will all join with me and all AA members everywhere in saying thank God for Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, and the other 18 that he's brought in here. We will close in the AA way as usual. Please rise. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And forgive us not our trespassions but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever. Amen.