You Might as Well Try to Incorporate a Sunset — California AA Before the Traditions Existed – Sybil C.

About This Speaker Tape

Sybil C. tells her story at a 1980 AA convention in Wichita, Kansas, approaching 40 years of sobriety. She was the second woman to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, after Marty Mann on the East Coast. Raised in a strict, religious family in small-town Texas, she started drinking at 15, married young to escape her father's control, and spent 17 years in progressive alcoholism — losing marriages, bootlegging with her brother Tex, working as a taxi dancer during the Depression, and enduring blackouts and hallucinations. One night, drunk in a grape field near Bakersfield, she stumbled into a revival tent and threw up on the preacher — an episode that haunted her for over a decade.

Sybil found AA through the Jack Alexander article in the Saturday Evening Post, dated March 1, 1941. She wrote a desperate letter to Ruth Hock, Bill Wilson's secretary, who told her a small group of about a dozen men met at the Elks Temple in Los Angeles — but warned they had had no luck with women yet. Her first meeting was a disaster: she was told "the women will have to leave," not realizing they meant the non-alcoholic wives for the closed meeting, and she fled in tears. A drunken phone call to Cliff Walker, demanding the "AA ambulance" she imagined from the Post article, became the pivotal turning point. Her brother Tex, himself an alcoholic who denied his problem, loaded 11 winos into his vegetable truck and drove her back the following Friday.

Frank Randall gave Sybil charge of all women's 12-step calls — over 50 letters from women across the West Coast generated by the Post article. That service assignment kept her sober a heartbeat at a time when she could not imagine staying sober a full day. She describes the early chaos of California AA: no traditions, no guidelines, members being excommunicated, and her brother Tex founding the Hole in the Ground — the oldest continuously meeting group that never moved. When Tex died suddenly at a meeting, feeding ex-cons from jail, Sybil went numb for weeks. A letter from Bill Wilson broke through her grief, telling her life is but a long day in school, and it is not what happens to us but what we do with the experience. She speaks with deep gratitude about running the Los Angeles central office for 12 years, her marriage to Bob Corwin, and the simple truth that after nearly four decades, the program has no ceiling — she is still a newcomer, still learning to fly.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Introduction by Jim — describes Sybil as the woman with the longest continuous sobriety in AA, co-founder of his home group
• 4:30 Sybil gives her full name: Sybil Doris Adams Stratton Hart Maxwell Willis Corwin — five marriages catalogued
• 8:00 Childhood in small-town Texas, strict religious family, moving to California at 13, long hair and not fitting in at school
• 13:00 Drinking with brother Tex, bootlegging together, bailing him out of jail 89 times, king of Skid Row
• 19:00 Picking grapes near Bakersfield, a jug comes around the campfire, stumbles drunk into a revival tent and throws up on the preacher
• 26:00 Reading the Jack Alexander Saturday Evening Post article in a Turkish bath at 3 AM, writing a letter to Ruth Hock
• 33:00 First meeting at the Elks Temple — told the women will have to leave, flees in tears thinking she was thrown out
• 39:00 Drunken phone call to Cliff Walker demanding the AA ambulance, threatening to have him fired
• 46:00 Brother Tex arrives with 11 winos in a vegetable truck for the Friday meeting; Frank Randall puts Sybil in charge of all women's 12-step calls
• 58:00 Tex dies at a meeting feeding ex-cons; Sybil goes numb for weeks until Bill Wilson's letter breaks through the grief