The Serenity Prayer as a Litany for Every Problem – Marty M.

Marty Mann. Marty wrote the second edition Big Book story, Women Suffer Too. She was the first woman AA member to achieve lasting sobriety. She attended meetings at Bill and Lois' home at 182 Clinton Street in Brooklyn, New York. Marty was a patient of Dr. Harry Tybout at Blythewood Sanitarium in Greenwich, Connecticut. Dr. Tybout had given her a Maltoth copy of the big book. She pioneered a group in 1939 in Greenreach, Connecticut She was part of the original group of members involved in publishing the AA Grapevine. She became a personal friend of both Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob. Marty broke her and became a great pioneer in the field of alcoholism education. In 1943, she attended the first session of the newly founded Yale School of Alcohol Studies. On October 2nd, 1944, Marty founded the National Committee on Education of Alcoholism, NCEA, which later became the National Council on Alcoholism. She introduced Bill Wilson to Dr. Harry Tybalt. Marty was present at the 25th anniversary of AA in 1960 in Long Beach, California. Her story, Women Suffer Too, Margaret Marty Mann, New York City and Connecticut, found on page 222 in the second and third edition of The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Despite great opportunities, alcohol nearly ended her life. Early member, she spread the word among women in our pioneer period. Marty's date of sobriety is uncertain, but she attended her first AA meeting at Bill Wilson's home in Brooklyn on April 11, 1939, and was an enthusiastic member of AA from that day until her death. She was not the first woman in AA. The lady known as Lil in Akron, who probably never got sober, and Florence Rankin, a feminine victory in the first edition, preceded her. A recent biography of Marty reveals that there was still another woman ahead of Marty Mary Campbell. Mary visited Marty when she was still at Blythewood Sanitarium in 1939. Mary would have been the AA woman with the longest sobriety had she not slipped in 1944. Thereafter, she stayed sober until her death in the 1990s. Marty was the first woman to enter AA and gain long-term sobriete, but she had several slips and thus other women were able, at one time, to claim longer uninterrupted sobrieti. Marty grew up in Chicago in a wealthy family. She had every advantage, the best boarding schools and a finishing school in Europe. A popular debutante, she made her debut in 1927, after which she eloped with John Blakemore of New Orleans. Marty said of him, He was one of the most attractive men I've met, interesting, traveled, with a keen mind. His family was prominent socially, and he was the town's worst drunk. They were both high on alcohol when they eloped. Later, a church service was held in New Orleans. Marty, whose alcoholism was not far progressed at the time, could not put up with John's drinking behavior and they were divorced in 1928. She resumed her maiden name and sometime thereafter started to identify herself as Mrs. Marty Mann. She never remarried. Her divorce coincided with her father's bankruptcy and Marty went to work. For the next ten years, she did whatever she wanted to do. For greater freedom and excitement, she went abroad to live. She ran a successful business. Headstrong and willful, she rushed from pleasure to pleasure. But her alcoholism got out of hand, and soon she was in real trouble and attempted suicide twice. She came home to America broke and desperate. Things got even worse. She entered Bellevue Hospital's neurology ward under the care of Robert Foster Kennedy, M.D. Eventually, she entered Blythewood Sanitarium as a charity patient under the chair of Dr. Harry Tybout, who gave her the manuscript of the big book to read and arranged for her to go to her first meeting. She said, I went trembling into a house in Brooklyn filled with strangers and I found I had come home at last to my own kind. There is another meaning for the Hebrew word that in the King James Version of the Bible is translated salvation. It is to come home. I had found my salvation. I wasn't alone anymore. In a July 1968 grapevine update of her story, Marty said the 12 steps were still very important to her. They gave her more than sobriety. They give her a glimpse at something she had never known. Peace of mind, a sense of being comfortable with herself and with the world in which she lived and a lot of other things which could be summed up as a sense of growth, both emotional and spiritual. Marty was a visionary and a pioneer who took on an unpopular cause during an era when women were supposed to remain silent. With the encouragement of Bill Wilson, Marty founded the National Council on Alcoholism through which she educated the general public about alcoholism and helped shape the modern alcoholism movement. She wrote two authoritative books on alcoholism, Marty Mann's Primer on Alcoholism, 1950, which was rewritten and published as Marty Manns New Primer On Alcoholism in 1958, and Marty Mann Answers Your Questions About Drinking and Alcoholism 1970. Marty influenced alcoholism legislation at the state and national levels. She is considered to be the mother of the Hughes Act, the comprehensive alcohol abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act of 1970, which greatly enhanced the federal government's role in alcoholism treatment and prevention. Mel B., in my search for Bill W., described Marty as one of Bill Wilson's closest friends and allies. A refined, attractive woman, she impressed me as being the kind of person who can handle great responsibilities with confidence and ease. While some men may have felt threatened by such a strong woman, Bill supported her work and went out of his way to encourage her. To protect the work she was doing during a period of heavy anti-gay bias, Marty never revealed her lesbianism except to Bill, her sponsor, and other close friends. Her longtime lesbian partner was Priscilla Peck, once a glamorous art director at Vogue magazine, the fifth woman Marty brought into AA. In her last years, Marty was deeply troubled by Priscilla's Alzheimer's disease. Marty made her last public appearance at the AA International Convention in New Orleans in July of 1980. She arrived in a wheelchair, but after she was introduced, she rose and walked to the podium to thunderous applause and a prolonged ovation. Two weeks after her return to home in Easton, Connecticut, her housekeeper found her unconscious at the kitchen table. She had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage the night before. Priscilla slept through it all. She was rushed to St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she died later that night, July 22, 1980, at the age of 75. The New York Times ran a major obituary and her death was widely reported around the nation. A long tribute to her was read into the congressional record. When Priscilla died on November 9, 1982, Marty's brother tried to make arrangements for her to be buried next to Marty in Chicago, but Rose Hill Cemetery ruled that the family plot was reserved for members of the family only. Priscilla was cremated and her remains spread on the waters off the coast on the shore of Connecticut. The following A.A. Grapevine article was originally published in the July 1968 issue and reprinted and the November 1999 A.A. Grapevine under the category of Big Book Authors. After 29 years, the author's story, Women Suffer Too, was the first woman's story in the big book. Today, as in April 1939 when I attended my first meeting, the 12 steps are to me the heart of the A.I. program. By the time I gathered up the courage to attend a meeting, I had read the big book three times, and I had studied several hundred times the pages containing the 12 steps and the suggestions on how to use them. They didn't seem easy to me. They didn't even seem simple, in spite of the clarity of language. But I was eager to go to work on all of them, for they seemed to me the key to that which I so desperately needed, assurance that I would be able to stay away from drinking. In 1968, I feel no different about the 12 steps. They did give me what I needed to stay away from drinking. Within a few years, I came to realize they had given me far more than that, a glimpse at something I had never known, peace of mind, a sense of being comfortable with myself and with the world in which I lived, and a host of other things which could be summed up as a sense of growth, both emotional and spiritual. Always to me, meetings have been important. they renew the inspiration I felt at my first one. They remind me of whence I came and how near I will always be to that twilight world of drinking. Most of all, they bring me in contact with my friends and introduce me to new ones. In my case, because I travel a lot all over this country and outside it, the feeling of warmth, of understanding, of acceptance and belonging that I get at a meeting is to me one of the great rewards of being in AA. It is a rare thing we have which the non-alcoholic world rarely experiences. It makes me know how lucky we are and my working life, my personal life, and my spiritual life which I last owe to AA for I did not have it before. I find the 12 steps a nearly constant guide. I carry them in my wallet. I refer to them to particular steps that meet a particular need with regularity. The serenity prayer runs through my life like a litany. I find myself using it on a vast variety of occasions to meet a vast variety of problems. Perhaps the greatest thing I have received and still constantly review from AA is the knowledge of where and how to draw the strength and flexibility to meet problems. My life seems made up of problems, but I have learned that I am not unique, that life in general is just that. Problems and strain and stress are the stuff of life in our times, and my AA-given philosophy helps me to accept this and to live with it. Each day is a new one, and I try to meet it that way, as if each day too were fresh and new. The 24-hour plan gave me this outlook, and each day it confirms me and my effort to make it real for myself. 29 years later, I feel as deeply immersed in AA thinking and the way of life as I did at the outset. For me, it is increasingly necessary as I grow older, and it is always there for me, just as it has been since I first found it. For this, I daily thank God. Marty M., Manhattan, New York. Thank you.