Forty Sober Drunks in Three Years and Bill’s Wall Street Brain Wanted to Franchise It – Bill W.

We have not only Bill with us, we have another that I would like to just for a second pay a little tribute to, and that is Abby. Abby, and those of you who have read the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, know that on page 18, Abby walked into Bill's room, carried a message to him, and in the way, did a 12-step job on the guy that has kept our candle burning. Abby, to stand up just for a second, please. We here in Texas, a candle lighter. A young gal came to us from a boat out over in the Bayou country, and she helped us light a Texas AA candle, and she's been at it now for over 13 years. I would like for Esther to stand up a second. Another candle been lit for the Southwest out of Oklahoma, whom a lot of us will know. If Abby wouldn't stand up, please. Sue is my part of this program. It's been done over here in Fort Worth. Everybody in this area are grateful for what has been done. I have seen badges on people from Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana. There's a badge, I'm told, from Canada here. We're so happy that all of you came. We hope that you will find... That there is something that you can take back to your home group that will benefit them as a result of this conference. I might say, when we're talking about the home group, we're going to hear something from Bill tonight about the home group and their tradition. We're going to find out a little bit about our responsibilities as a group. Not only our responsibility as an individual member of AA, but group responsibility. We're going to find out a little bit more about tonight. And that, too, can be a wonderful message that we can take back to our home group. ... our individual recovery program some 15, 16 years ago in Brooklyn. And he wrote them in quite a bit of context. He wrote them in quite a bit of context. He wrote them in quite a bit of context. He wrote them in quite a bit of context. And he completed them from beginning to end, in about 30 minutes. And he completed them from beginning to end, in about 30 minutes. And he completed them from beginning to end, in about 30 minutes. I don't think to this day he can tell us honestly what kind of experience and dealing with alcoholics. It's true he had talked to Abby about how he had some experience from the Oxford group. Let's not forget this one thing. We're not always going to have Bill. Bill can't be like you and me and live a day at a time. Bill's got to be like you and me. to project 10, 15, 20 years out into the future. That's the way it must be with him. He's got to think of A.A. Unity in 1984. This thing must be held together, and it will be held together, but not until after a lot of people have done an awful lot of work. One of those two alone will not get the job done, and nobody knows that better than our... To each one of you, the untold miles of travel that you've all made to be present, to inspire me, to fill me with the warmth. Of your hospitality with each other. Grateful to the governor of this state that we are again much citizens of the world. We once more belong, so these friends have said. I'm deeply grateful to this hotel that housed us. So superb, and you'd wonder how the hell anybody could stay sober in the affection that I have received in the past. Just as much a founder of A.A. as I, or any of the score. This thing couldn't have been. So again, for tonight's show, with a talk on the tradition, we seized the prerogative of changing their mind. Since this is a banquets tradition, one to twelve would be a little too... It's a matter of fact, traditions, when they were first written back there in 1945, after a few againers who wrote me what the hell mail, so they took a little more. So that today, the average A.A. coming in the door, learned at once what they're about. What kind of an outfit he really had. Cluster around the preparation of the good old book. Seeing the book now, they say, well, this is the A.A. Bible. Because the guys who put it together weren't a damn bit biblical. Sometimes, you know, the drunks have an idea that these old timers went around with this almost visible halos and long gowns, and they were full of sweetness and light. In 1935, he briefly with the first A.A. group in New York. Started there. In 1937, this thing had leaked a little over into Cleveland, and it began to move south from New York. But in those years of flying blind, a flickering candle indeed. At any moment, he snuffed out. Smithy and I were talking together, and he was sitting there. We began to counsel statistics. And we had been taken just as so. By what means? See, we thought. We should go to the old timers in each group, which then meant nearly everybody, and the sum of money, somebody else's money, of course, and say to them, well, now take a sabbatical year off your job, if you have any, and you go to Keokuk and Omaha and Chicago and San Francisco and Los Angeles, wherever it may be, and you give this thing a year and get a group start. It already got evident by then, before we were just about to be moved out. Well, we went to the city hospital in Akron to make room for people with broken legs and ailing livers. But the hospitals were not too happy with us. We tried to run their business perhaps too much, and besides, drunks were apt to be noisy in the night, and there were other inconveniences, which were often mentioned. So it was obvious that, uh, drunks being such unlovely creatures, we would have to have a great chain of hospitals. That dream burst upon me. It sounded good, because you see, I had been down in Wall Street in the promotion business, and I remember the great sums of money that were made as soon as people got this chain idea, you know, the chain drug store, the chain grocery store, the chain dry, dry goods store. Why not chain drunk tanks and let us make the dollars? So we needed some missionaries, subsidized. We needed a chain of drunk tanks. That was very clear, awful clear to me. Bob was a conservative type of Yankee. I don't think he was quite so fast for those items. I was very insistent. It would take a pile of dough to finance all this, but after all, with this brand new life shining in our dark world, we'd just squirt it in the eyes of rich guys and they'd up with the dough. Besides, we reflected, uh, we'd have to make a lot of money. We'd have to make a lot of money. We'd have to make a lot of money. We'd have to get some kind of ещё. Up to this moment, not a syllable of this program so far as I know was people joint多少 And it was a kind of a word of mouth deal, you know, There was some other variations according to each man's or woman's fancy. Would use the rich. And you get a huge scam and an obsessive perform and you're hopeless Um-hmm ...ph 홍 you are. You better get honest with yourself and take stock. You ought to talk this out to somebody, kind of a confessional, you know. And you ought to make restitution for the harm you did. You ought to make amends and all that kind of business. Well, you prayed as best you could, according to your life. And that was the sum of the word of mouth program up to that time. But as I say, variations on that were already appearing. How could we unify this thing? Could we, out of our experience, get certain principles, describe certain methods that had done the trick for us? Yes, obviously. If this movement was to propagate, it had to have a literature so its message could not be garbled, either by the drunks or by the general public. So Bob and I reflected that late afternoon in 1937. Missionaries, chain-of-drunk tanks, well, even by then, he and I had begun to learn that we were not the government of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. He, I guess more than I, already realized that the conscience of the group, the opinion of the group, when it was an informed opinion of the group, was that it was not just about the interests of the group, but the interests of the group. And I was worried that the opinion of the group's interest could be better than our own. We had better consult, folks. Well, there was dear old non-alcoholic and his wife, T. Henry Williams, there in Akron. They'd let us meet in their house after it got out of the Smith-Pyler. It got into theirs. And he was a great friend of ours. So we called the meeting of the Akron Group. That is to say, though it had been sober up to the point that we had decided to go. The group had to be on board. We were in the town center, in the town center, in the any great length of time. I think for this particular meeting we scraped up about 18. That evening, I told them that we were within sight of success, that we thought this thing might go on and on and on, that a new light, indeed, was shining in our dark world. But how could this light be reflected and transmitted without being distorted and dark? And at this point, they turned the meeting over to me, and being a salesman, I set right to work on them drunk tanks and subsidies for the missionaries. I was pretty poor then. And we touched on the book. And the group conscience consisted of 18 men, good and true. And the good and true men, you could see right away, were damn skeptical about it all. Most with one voice, they chorus, let's keep it. This is going to bring money into this thing. This is going to create a professional place. It will all be ruined. Counter, that's a very good argument. Lots of what you say. It isn't gunshot. At this very house, alcoholics are dying like flies. And if this thing doesn't move any faster than it has in the last three years, it may be another ten before it gets... to the outskirts of Akron. Now, in God's name, are we going to carry this message to others? We've got to take some kind of chance. We can't keep it so simple it becomes an anarchy and gets complicated. We can't keep it so simple it won't propagate itself. ...up to the utmost, which was considerable in those days. We finally got a vote in that little meeting, and it was a mighty close vote by just a majority of maybe two or three. The meeting said with some reluctance, well, Bill, if we need a lot of dough, you better go back to New York where there's plenty of it, and you raise it. Well, boy, that was the word I'd been waiting for. Scrammed back to the great city, and I began to approach some people of means and describe this tremendous thing that had happened. Didn't seem so tremendous as the people of means at all. It was, what, thirty-five or forty trunks? Sobered up. Sobered them up before now, you know. And besides, Mr. Wilson, don't you think it's kind of sweeping up the shavings? I mean, uh, I mean, wouldn't the something for the Red Cross be better? By most items of invitation, I got one hell of a freeze from the gentleman of wealth. Began to get blue. Well, it ought to be. In bed one night with imaginary ulcer attacks. Used to have them all the time. Twelve steps for it. My God, we're starving to death here at Clinton Street. By this time, the house was full of drunks. They were eating us out. Out of house and home. In those days, we never believed in charging anything for, anybody for anything. So, although it was earning the money, I was being the missionary and the drunks were eating the meals. This can't go on. We gotta have them drunk tanks. We gotta have them missionaries. And how we gotta have them missionaries? And we gotta have a look. Well, the next morning, I crawled into my clothes and I saw my front-in-law. He's a doctor and he is about the last person who's disgustingly the one who's just, you know, way, way dumb. The only one save, of course, dear Lord. Well, I said, I'll go up and see Leonard. See my brother-in-law, Leonard. A little time between patients coming in up there. I started my awful bellyache about these rich guys who wouldn't give us any dough for this great and glorious enterprise. So, well on its way. Seems to me that somehow he was tied up with the Rockefeller family and their charity. And if you want to, we'll call up the Rockefeller offices, see if there is such a man. And if there is, is he alive? And will he see us? Would you like me to do that? I hadn't tried the Rockefeller offices, so I said, well, sure, give him a raise. On what slender threads our destiny sometimes hangs. Remember, my brother-in-law said I knew a girl and I think she had an uncle. The call was made. Instantly, there came onto the other end of the wire the voice, dear Willard, one of the loveliest Christian gentlemen that I have ever known. The moment he recognized my brother-in-law, he said, why, Leonard, he said, where have you been all these years? Well, unlike me, he's a man of very few words, so he quickly said to dear old Uncle Willard that he had a brother-in-law who was apparently having some success. He was sobering up drunk. Could the two of us come over there and see him? Why, certainly, said dear Willard, come right over. 54 flights, 56, I guess it is, plumped into Mr. Rockefeller's personal offices, asked to see Mr. Richards. Here sits the benign old gentleman. The lads told him about our, said it just hit the world. We had done it. This was the first receptive man with money, or access to money. Remember, we were in Mr. This was Mr. Rockefeller's closest friend. Lunch with me, Mr. Willard. Mortar, that sounded pretty good. Gonna have lunch with best friends of John D. Things were looking up. My ulcer attack disappeared. So I have lunch with the old gentleman, and we go over the thing again, and boy, he's so warm and kind and friendly. Goes to lunch, he said. Said, wouldn't you like to be some of my friends? He must be. He was not a good guy, he was not a good guy in business, but he was on a committee at Riverside Church. He said a number of people like that are. I believe they'd like to hear this. So a meeting was arranged. Winters night, night 1937. Paul Page, a couple of drunks, Macrons, Smithy included, of course, having the protection. I came in with the New York contingent, four or five. We were ushered into Mr. Rockefeller's personal boardroom. right next to his office. I said to myself, well, now this place is really getting hot. And indeed, I felt very much warmed when I was told by Mr. Richardson that I was sitting in a chair just vacated by Mr. Rockefeller. I said, well, now we really are getting close to the bank room. Mr. Rockefeller was there that night, too. And he testified what he had seen happen to these new friends of ours. Well, each of us told our stories. These folks listened. They seemed very definitely impressed. So I could see that the moment was a big touch. So I gingerly brought up the subject of the drunk tanks, the subsidized missionaries, and this question of a book or literature. The serious way is wonders to perform. But it didn't look like a wonder to me when Mr. Scott, the engineering firm and chairman of the Riverside Church, looked at us and said, but the gentleman said up to this point, this has been the work of goodwill only. No plans, no paid people, just one carrying the good news to the next. Isn't that true? It may not be that that is where the great... The great power of this society lies. Might it not, Oliver, we're gathered for that. But would it be one? It's taken three years. Why, millions, Mr. Scott, will rot before this thing ever gets to them unless we have money and lots of it, these gentlemen. For the missionaries, the drunk tank, Dr. Bob, since the first group and the typical community situation was in Akron, we directed their attention out there. Bill, the trustee in the foundation, made all sorts of preliminary inquiries around town except that he was a drunk and recently got old. He visited the little meeting out there, he went to the Smith's house, and he came back with what he thought was a very modest project. And he recommended to these friends of ours that, well, we should have at least just a token amount of money at first, say $50,000, something like that, that would clear off the mortgage on the Smith's place, it would get us a little rehabilitation place, we could put Dr. Smith in charge, we could subsidize a few of these people briefly until we got some more money, we could, you know, it would start the chain of hospitals, we'd have a few missionaries, we could get busy on the book, all for mere $50,000. Well, considering the kind of money, we were backed up against, that did sound a little small, but, you know, one thing leads to another, and it sounded real good, we were real glad. Mr. Willard Richardson, our original contact, then took that report in John Day, Junior, as everybody called him, heard what went on in there. Mr. Rockefeller read the report, he came back, and he said, somehow I am strangely stirred by all this. He met his friend Willard, he said, but isn't money going to spoil this? He was really afraid that, and he said, what? And yet I am so strangely stirred by it. That's the thing, when that man who said to Willard Richardson, no, he said, I won't be the one to spoil this with money. You say these two men who are heading it, or $50,000 in the Riverside, you folks can form yourselves into a committee and draw on it as you like. But please don't ask me for any more. But I want to hear what goes on. The $50,000, and then shrunk to $5,000. We raised the mortgage on Smithy's house for about $3,000, that left $2,000, and Smithy and I commenced chowing on that $2,000. That was a long way from a string of drunken tanks, books, and thunder would we do on Frank. To this day, some of it has now been gone. To Mr. Rockefeller's advice, we again convinced him that this thing needed a lot of money. What could you do without it? Well, why don't we form a foundation, something like the Rockefeller Foundation? I hope it'll be like that with respect to money. A free lawyer from Ely Hillruth's firm who was interested in the thing asked him to draw an agreement of trust, something to be called the Alcoholic Foundation. The foundation was alcoholic. It was the Alcoholic Foundation, not the Alcoholic Foundation, because the foundation made it very plain that we drunks did not wish to be in the majority. We felt that there should be non-alcoholics on the board, and they ought to be in the majority of one. Well, indeed, said the, what is the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic? The drunk said, well, that's the same. A non-alcoholic is a guy who can drink. A non-alcoholic is a guy who can't drink. Well, said the lawyer, how do we state that legally? Well, said the lawyer, how do we state that legally? Well, said the lawyer, how do we state that legally? Well, said the lawyer, how do we state that legally? So I said, well, it is also a non-alcoholic. And you need a foundation. A board, which I think then was of about seven, consisting of four of these new friends, including my brother-in-law, Mr. Richardson Chipman Hamish, and some of us drunks on the board, but I kind of coyly stayed off it, so we have this wonderful new foundation. These friends, unlike Mr. Rockefeller, were told that we needed a lot of dough. Salesmen around New York started to solicit the money. Again, from the beginning, Again, from the very rich, and we had a list of them, and we had credentials of Mr. John C. Rockwell. The association has been formed in the spring of 1938, and all summer we solicited the rich. We didn't get one damn cent in the whole summer of 1938, praise God, and a whole trustee meeting. And they were commiseration sessions on getting no dough, mortgage, and what was Smithy and me eating away at us, the five grand that had about gone up the slew, it only broke again. Smithy couldn't get his practice back either because he was a surgeon, and nobody liked to be carved up. Things were tough all around, but what did we do? Probably in August 1938, chapters of a proposed book in rough and in mimeograph. As a matter of fact, we'd been using chapters of this document. There were a couple of doctors down at John Hopkins to try to put the bite on the rich, and we still had these two book chapters kicking around. And we said, well, now I know the religious editor down there at Harvard, an old friend of mine, Gene Exman. He said, why don't you take these two book chapters, the introduction to the book, down there and show them to Gene and see what he thinks about it. Gene, who has since become a great friend of ours, looked at chapters and said, why? He said, why? He said, Mr. Wilson, he said, could you write a whole book like this? More talk about him and show that Mr. Canfield, the big boss. Now, the meeting was handed. The upshot was that Harper's intimated that they would pay me, as the budding author, $1,500 in advance royalties on the end to enable me to finish the book. Awful good, you know, about that. It made me feel like I was an author, a comer maybe. Because I... I began to reason, and so did the other boys. Well, if this guy Wilson eats up the $1,500 while he's doing this book, after the book gets out, it'll take a long time to catch up. And if this thing gets some publicity, what are we going to do with the inquiries? And after all, what's a lousy 10% royalty? And even the $1,500 still look pretty good. Then we thought, too, now here's a fine publisher like Harper's, but if this book, if and when done, should prove to be the main textbook propagation in the hands of somebody else, shouldn't we control it? It really began to get positive. It began to take off. We said, I had a stock of $1 shares, only $5 notes that you ain't written. Why shouldn't you? Harper's said it's going to be for $35 collecting the money. And so Lois would have some groceries, although she was still working in that department. I worked with these chapters in the rural pool of Argy. I didn't do much with drugs in the missions, so I get you'll have to leave. Leave me just to be the umpire. I'll screw you and let's get the cost bled and dyed our way through one chapter after. I dealt with the agnostic, and we described alcoholism, but we really had to say, see it'll work. I was really wondering what to do with this next chapter. The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement, a concrete principle that these drugs can't wiggle out. Harper was painting me a monolithic or a mimeographed copy of this text and a few of these stories of the diatrix, policeman, fishwives, housewives, drunk. Everybody. Just to see if we got anything that goes against the grain any play on publication during the book. Promising people something later on. The book had passed months. It came in, somehow we got them edited, got the galley together. It had been kind of slow on through the alcoholic. So Bert hocked the business that changed the interest a million dollars.