Bill W., co-founder of AA, talking on the 12 Traditions of AA

Greetings friends out there.

We're gathering together here today, very special kind of an AME, one that was dreamed up by my friends at the headquarters and

thought wise that we would discuss the A, a tradition.

I like this idea because if, you know, it's been impossible for Lois and me to travel

extensively in IA and to contact you as we used to, it strikes us, uh, that films of this sort may be the very best bet. Of course, one thing I like about this a a meeting in particular is that I'm assigned to do all the talking.

I still have some vestiges of Ingo.

Speaking of Angel,

this had a great deal to do with the formation of, AH, tradition. In first place,

as every AA knows, we shall always be threatened by menacing forces within, and certainly in the world of great peril in which we Live Today, by menacing forces without.

So,

a very fine problem, the prime problem of a A is first how to survive and then to grow and prosper

in numbers and in spiritual substance over the years to come.

As practically every error knows, the traditions are the application of A a 12 steps.

The spirit of those steps to the practical problems are living and working together as a harmonious society.

A rightly relating ourselves to those forces

which I so often torrent side is apparent. The problems of money, problems of power,

our prestige, our management of properties and so on.

As I look over the list of conditions,

I am frankly flabbergasted

at the choices, apparently rather successful choices or principles that we have made.

I might remind you that the AA12 steps to recovery first occurring in 1939 in the Big Book, are now 30 years old

and they have served us extremely well. The traditions now approach 25 years since their publication in 46 and they too have served us well. And while there is great room for interpretation of these principles,

and the applications are innumerable,

the solid substance of each remains still about as written. So these are reassuring facts about the traditions.

People, in looking at the traditions, find very clear statements,

and yet, paradoxically, some of them are baffling. Newcomers ask these questions,

they said What do you mean there are no rules, regulations here? What do you mean? I remember if I say so. What do you mean nobody is can run this thing permanently? What do you mean there are no penalties or punishment? What do you mean there's no public controversy? Every society is mixed up with public controversy and once a while to controversy. What do you mean no controversy, etcetera, etcetera.

So the thing that is not so well understood among the A generally and among our friends is why we selected these particular principles

and how they came into being. And two, at this time, now that we are of this age,

remember today

the tremendous struggles that we had among us in trying to come to these decisions.

And because I occupy the place happening to be the number one elder in the same and Doctor Bob number two, we were especially in the middle of all of this. Doctor Bob was in currently a much more

spiritually qualified person than I. And very naturally, because he was a doctor, he took to this marvelous 12 step job along with Ignatian out there,

and he very cheerfully turned over to me and the writing and the speaking and the headquarters in New York and that sort of thing. We had a division of laborers so that I especially was subjected to very great personal temptations.

In other words, most of these traditions actually run counter

in some of my early and sometimes secret

paint. And some of this stuff I'd like to share with you because it is relevant to all who follow our souls.

This is this. These temptations will recur time and time and time again. So I think that perhaps I'd like to share some of this sort of thing with you.

Against this background, let's have a look at the 12 traditions themselves. Here's the first one.

Our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon a a unity.

This is a prudent reminder.

Indeed, it is a strong warning that unless AA continues to live, the greater part of us would surely die and saw the countless Alcoholics that we might have helped.

This is why the general welfare must come forth. Without unity and harmonious action, we shall have nothing at all.

I can make no more effective statement about the welfare tradition

than the one to be seen in our A A publication 12 steps and 12 traditions.

As a suitable preamble setting, the pitching tone of the discussion is followed. Let me share this with you.

Unity of Alcoholics Anonymous is the most cherished quality that our society has. Our lives, the lives of all have come, depends squarely upon us. We stay O or a a die. Without unity, the heart of A A would cease to be our world. Arteries would no longer carry the life giving grace of God.

His gift to us would be spent aimlessly back again in their cave. Alcoholics would approach us and say what a great thing a A might have been.

Every A A member knows that he has to conform to the principles of Republic. His wife actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles. If he deviates too far, the penalty is sure and what

the seconds and finally die.

At first in a A he goes along because he wants, but later on he discovers a way of life he really wants to live.

Moreover, he finds he cannot keep this priceless gift unless he gives it away. Neither he nor anyone else can survive unless the A A message is parrot. The moment the 12 step work forms a group, another discovery is made that most individuals cannot even recover unless there is a group.

Realization dawns on the individual that he is but a small part of the great whole, that no personal sacrifice is too great for preservation of this fellowship.

He learned that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silent whenever these could damage the group. It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individual will not.

So it has been with a a By faith and by work, we have been able to build upon the lessons of an incredible experience.

These Live Today in the 12 traditions of alcoholic synonyms, which, God willing, shall sustain us immunity for so long as he may need it.

You see, our original function had to do with people who started group

naturally. Doctor Bob became, you might say, the parent of the Action Group. I became the parent of the New York group. And there was Clarence in Cleveland and there was Earl in Chicago and Clifford Los Angeles. And all of these people became founder of a A in there several locality. And very naturally,

there being no other way, they got a few people sobered up

after a long strenuous hustle. These first people became a team in the structural sense. You might almost call it a local Pope and a firearms.

And this was the top of the a a pyramid comp. The top was built 1st, and as the pyramid grew

in in its base and more and more people came in,

the old timers continued to give spiritual instruction. They either had meetings in their home or tended to making arrangements when publicity turned up 'cause they took charge. In other words, they were actually

managing the affairs of an infant and far adolescent family, and this was just as it should be.

But there was a change in this part, this situation, when a A got further spread and rapidly spread,

but first by The Plain Dealer articles in Cleveland and then by Mr. Rockefeller's dinner, and finally the great smash from the Saturday Post piece of 1941 which brought us 6000 new members within the years time.

Then you had the same phenomena, accepting that local founders, not all of them being models of stability, couldn't last very long. And more and more there was a disposition in these large masses of aids to add, well, these Alzheimer's are all well and good, but are they going to run things forever? And this was a very disconcerting pressure

to Doctor Bob and Ray and particularly to some of these Alzheimer's because we were the 1st 2 on the scene.

It seems that we had a quality of lasting longer than the others. In fact, I only bowed out just in time here a few years ago and that took Doctor Bob. But at any rate, this was the fundamental of it. Saw that you began to develop the group which said in effect you old timers ought to get over on the sideline and those of you that we like and respect

we are going to continue to consult

and those of you who are still like saying someone undeveloped, we shall label bleeding.

Well

just injected a new thing on top of this pyramid of service not caught up across the top there appeared something for each group that whizzed round and round and changed personnel every few months. Less than anybody get too much power. It was called a rotating kinetic

and at the group level this is fine and it was easy for the groups knowing everybody at hand. So two main successful group married that acted exactly in a town meeting fashion. Well, then some years later, it's urban problems got to be tremendous and there had to be some network failure. When they got into that phase,

they found immense difficulty for the all of these urban people or even represented urban to get together

to choose people, a committee, to manage and conduct an intergroup office.

This was a very difficult business. In fact, I can think of one town that where the confusion was so great that you had four or five competing Alzheimer's with telephone numbers, each of which announced that this is a A not the other ones, this one. Now,

when they came to put in an office, the schisms in the town were so bad that they actually had to draw lots to get the first office management out. Well, that wasn't such a a great success because it stopped a political clamor, but at the same time it didn't furnish the office with the best possible top management. But little by little,

the intergroup management still remained basically democratic

and instruction.

The group representatives had all the elements are. But the committee managing the office could nominate this success on the theory that they would know the people of the kind of skills reform it would be necessary and let it see meaning of the group representatives. Local ones didn't agree. They could name their own men. Still they held their own,

but this began to make room for something that we now call the trusted servant in in in the tradition school.

The discovery that you couldn't operate a a in a large urban area on a purely town meeting basis. It was simply too big,

let alone could you operate a a services world one. I mean, you couldn't elect a bunch of trustees. They serve here in New York by putting out some names and a slight to vote on all over the world. If you can see it wouldn't work. So that after a point. Well, the ultimate power always continued to remain in the group.

The structure always turned out the same,

that servants of the more important services were picked currently by appointment,

always subject to check with the group conscience. And in that way we could get people who were required to do a particular job, add the skills, people of excellence for the position. And that's how the structure evolved. Now parallel to all this and in fact connecting before,

we had a similar structure for World Service down here that finally evolved all over. This took many years to complete it

many as will remember the 1938 were incorporated something called Alcoholic Foundation and among other things the foundation took up over the book Alcoholics Anonymous which had been published in finance separately. And therefore it took the trustees who were compulsive non Alcoholics and a few Alcoholics chosen early by Doctor Bob and me.

They they, they took over the title for our literature

and we opened a little office on Saturday, post piece. Come on. With all this great flood of inquiries, we cleared most of them. And then we began to get into problems of public relations and all of the things that the world office does today. And these were all, without exception, chores that could not be performed in many locations. There had to be some head or tails of literature. There had to be some place and somehow

a lot

of other services you could, uh, there had to be some head and tail to public relations policies had to be devised and all this sort of thing. Well, for many years I suppose, partly because Bob and I had set it up that way way back in 38 before there were any intergroup.

This thing refused at this end here in New York refused to involve evolve partly because it was self that since the groups were having such a hard time,

I don't even have a clubhouse without a furor or to manage their simple affairs. How could we possibly bring traditions to to bear on this situation down here? The operation has been very successful. Our friends in the majority on the board, non Alcoholics as a protection to the vagaries of people like Doctor Bob and me and other trusted alcoholic trustees.

Well, this was

all in front, So what would we do? It took from 1945, just after tradition came out to 19151 to persuade everybody concerned that as an experiment, a conference of delegates should be called, at least from the United States and Canada, properly weighted according to population in each locality, to come down here and to take a look at these services which we who had been.

Up running them all these years felt had been invaluable to AA and might have been accountable for 1/2 of our growth and a great deal of units. So this is how the group conscience came into being. And this is what we mean by a a custom servant. Special people selected for their special abilities, but never people who shall govern.

Now we come to traditions Free dealing with this very important matter of membership.

We Alcoholics have been an ostracized people. Sometimes we have been actual prisoners of society. At all times we have been prisoners of ourselves, you might say.

So when a A propagates handed the alcohol, what does the alcoholic want? He wants freedom.

He wants to belong,

so therefore

we have tried to reduce every possible resistance that he might have.

He is generally sore at religion and sore and medicine. He has sore at this time,

perhaps at a distance. He has heard that A A is another religious organization and complaints that the missions did amend.

So when he run

and finds that it is a fact that AAS only require for members requirements for membership is a desire to stop drink.

There's really is a myth

when he is told that there is a spiritual quality about it. OK, but this requires no theology or religious belief in the ordinary sense that the group can be as higher power.

Then his release and his freedom knows no doubt, and he plunges them to the new stream that comes out into a happier and sober life. So therefore we should keep

this door wide open. We cannot put on instructions, and we bind ourselves not upon it. We cannot compel the new man to believe anything, to pay anything, to do anything. We actually invite him to disagree with everything we say. And still, if he wishes to stay around,

he's an A, A if he says so. This is the charter of individual freedom that is portrayed

in this most important traditional phrase dealing with membership

justice. Tradition 3 is a charter for individuals freedom.

So is tradition for a charter really poor group freedom?

It pauses the question, When is an A a group? Does it have any limitations upon its liberty?

And we say no. HAA group, like the individual, has a right to be wrong.

The only thing that we ask but do not demand

are the group trying for sobriety

who wish to call themselves a A is that they do not publicly mingle the A A name with some other enterprise. Quite obviously nobody would be very interested and it would be a great rule of trouble were we to talk about Protestant groups and Catholic groups and Republican groups and Communist a A groups.

This would be absurd and trouble making on the face of it. So long as their primary purpose is directed towards sobriety and they don't get us married to anyone else,

this is our only car. Otherwise they can have it just the way they want. And the group itself wants to remember from position two is the ultimate seat of authority for the whole movement, so that even in a town meeting democracy,

the scriptures upon such bodies are much greater than they are upon the eagle. It is a vast expanse and charter of liberty indeed. And we know that we are safe and granted because too much departure from our traditional principle far from the 12 steps brings its own pressures and punishment. Leave it to John Barley Corn to take care of

the foolish descent. Meanwhile,

let's try our group for liberty as well as the individual. This is the time

now that we've considered group autonomy or self direction,

and we have said that every group has a right to be wrong. Strangely not. Tradition 5 centers on the single purpose of the ideal A a group,

and the single purpose condition has had a long history of conflict. You'll remember that back in 1938 when our trusteeship was set up, the original incorporation empowered A A and its trustees to participate in any and all aspects of the alcohol field, accepting, I believe, the lobby for Prohibition.

At that time,

it was supposed that we should have our own chain of hospitals and that we should have halfway houses financed by a A as such. And we needed rest farms and we needed to get into education because after all, we know better about these matters than our strong.

But long, long experience has told us that for practical reasons, reasons of safety, reasons are protection against compromising our energy, and for reasons are self protection and for reasons of love. For all of these reasons,

EJA group ought to confine itself to its single purpose, to read the tradition. Each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic, who still suffers

immediately. Person people will say, but why shouldn't we be any other enterprises? The fact is that each of us needs a a work for his own survival.

We need to avoid complications and distractions. So we continue to point at the single purpose to carry this message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Now another reason for the single purpose is our unique value to the alcoholic who still suffers.

This cannot yet be duplicated by any other group or any approach, and thus far it is what sobriety

in 15,000 groups to maybe 500,000 a A members? Our assignment is still enormous just on this single purpose, one with our present membership. If only we could get Alcoholics to approach them. If only professional people having Alcoholics in charge would allow us to assist

instead of sobering up 20,000 drunk a year,

when the 12 step work that we do, we suggest as well be sobering up 100,000 Alcoholics per year. And God knows this is an assignment big enough and we are uniquely fitted to do this by ourselves or still better by cooperation with other agencies. So I think that now there is no doubt that every A A group will choose to stick to

and members participate in other activities. As members, as citizens, this is fine too. But as groups, as a fellowship, national and international, let us claim to our single purpose. Let that old fashioned adage Shoemaker stick to Thailand.

They are primary direction in this matter. Here at School 1940s, we still thought that for good enterprises

the A A name ought to be available if they were primarily conducted with A by a members. And so, with my full consent, we lent the A a name to an educational enterprise carried on by a great friend of mine. And the first effect of this was very good in those days. Of course,

we hope for more and more publicity and when she went on the road

educating the public,

opening other facilities, she got a great

lot of publicity

which brushed off on us because she had declared herself publicly as a name member. Now there were other instances of this, uh, which were really managing were people born of the a a name broke the anonymity at public level and therefore were in full cry to get us married to all sorts of other enterprise.

And so by 1950,

we have seen extreme power of giving endorsements to the public level or are they aimed members breaking the anonymity to public level and trying to draw the AA endorsement over on the enterprises of their own for purposes of raising money and all that's publicity.

So that came crystal clear.

Now we have a tradition 7 called every. A group ought to be fully self supporting declining outside contribution.

Well, let's look at It took a long time for us to change our minds about

when our foundation, now the General Service Board, was first set up. We thought in terms of very large funds and thought ourselves very fortunate in getting some of Mr. John D Rock College friends to serve on the board, not only because they were deeply interested, but because it seemed on Ave.

two funds, which certainly Mr. Far with the fund. For a while, it looked like he wouldn't supply our newly formed foundation fund, especially one in the spring of 1942, years after it started. He suddenly announced that he would like to give it dinner and invite his friends to hear the story of Alcoholics Anon.

And sure enough, the night came,

Nelson color represented father who turned out to be sick. Uh, Harry Emerson phonetic appeared and a great many notables in finance and in other activities in and about New York. And there were in the room at least a billion dollars of capital. And we, who are still very broke, of course, expected that,

you know, we could make even a tinted bid for contributions,

and got everybody considerable return.

To our utter astonishment.

Following the meeting, Mr. Rockstar wrote a letter to all who came, and all were invited and had said what a remarkable thing, this one, how much it represented first censured Christianity, and now in the interest of simplicity and spiritual values, it needed no money.

And then he

staked out a little exception, saying that a couple of the originators were still needful of a little help. And because of this, he was giving the movement $1000. So each of the contribute, each of the people present were impressed with the idea that no great amount of money was needed. One gave us as little as $10

and I think the highest contribution outside of Mr. Rockefeller was $300.

Subsequently met the Rock College friend word Richardson, then on the board call on Mr. Rockefeller and again raise his question money. And Mr. Rockefeller said, Dick, money is going to spoil this thing. It ought to stand on its own feet. So we can certainly credit Mr. John the rock color for providential wisdom on behalf of a A

and he senses told the story many times as though his Nelson how this is the only organization that paid back money that he he loaned us at one period

an organization of this sort. So this is the taproot of our tradition of every AI group should be self supporting declining outside contribution. We have made a rather stringent rule or custom about contributions from individuals inside the area,

our rich people, and they anger by enormous a lot of them to be disposed to send general headquarters a lot of money. But they and the rest of us feel that we should not pass off our financial responsibility

on the people That's fortunate. We should share the financial responsibility and we should not accept gets large enough so that they would tend to buy favor before trusteeships and whatnot. So the utmost that any individual can give a a today that is any a a member is $200.00 a year. All other contributions come from the groups themselves

and we have to climb large sum of money from the outside

and it is my prayer that we shall always do so.

Well, let us jump down to Tradition 10.

The professionalism and a is such should never be organized have been pretty well covered directly and by entrance. But here we come to Tradition 10, which says that Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues. Hence the a a name ought never be drawn in public controversy.

Well, we've never had any great trouble along this line. And of course the anonymity tradition is tend to keep the lid on it. We have managed fine litter replying from endorsements or from being compromised by our own people in that direction, so that actually this issue is never arisen. And in this sense, we are very unique among

societies and nations that we're not in it. We're in a position of

absolute neutrality as far as world and the problem, problems and problems of our community are concerned. As a society, as individuals, we take all sorts of positions on these things. But as a society, we express no opinions on these issues and therefore we don't get into arguments. And that would, of course, be a potent source

of tremendous trouble if we ever got into such arguments. And we have been

historically

a situation was drawn by attention, I think by nothing. Maxwell or go to a friend. And it's such a sociologist who once wrote up a series of pieces on the so-called Washingtonian movement. This flourished in the 1840s and it was a society composed

of Alcoholics trying to help each other, personally encouraging me, taking acquitted and they had the benefit of the identification

and some of the other attributes of AA and I think they signed up in the first two or three years of their existence. As many people as we now have an A, a as recovered active members. Something like that happened to me.

Well, this was very sensational. The Prohibition movement was getting under the head of steam at the time, and there were lots of other public issues. The Civil War was banned. Slavery was an issue. This was an issue. That was an issue.

It was not long before the Washington Ends had great torchlight recessions, notably in New York and Baltimore.

They filled Samuel Paul and this was truly a great sensation of the time, an extremely newsworthy. That was great pressure upon a Washingtonians to speak. Some turned out to be very good speaker. I believe some of them were paid speakers, but the speakers in the South were apartment to get into

other matters than drinking, and so were they in the North. For example, the Southern speakers didn't like the abolition idea and the Northern speakers did. So they managed to hook the poor Washingtonians into that tremendous controversy before the war.

Likewise, they got the Washingtonian name and all sorts of enterprises. They were on both sides of the wet, dry controversy. And so on.

And then the process of disintegration started,

probably because in part they're spiritual force generated by signing of pledges and getting together wasn't so great as ours. But very largely it was a disintegration because they had done things that were very natural to do.

But what it turned out to be so utterly destructive, and it was this spectacle of the pen

brought before us as our traditions were evolving, that confirmed that we were probably very much on the right track in this matter of no public controversy, in this question of paying our own bills or this question of not becoming involved with other enterprises, and so on down the line. And above all,

it confirmed the great protective guide of our anonymity tradition.

Now we come to Tradition 11

and highly important one, which says that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintained personal anonymity to level of press, radio and films.

I might remark right here that this film, by the way, is for the benefit of a AS and is not the public police.

We had no public relations policy accepting the fear of public relations

for the first two or three or four years of hanging. Our society is particularly in the West, uh, our groups, of which there were only two or three, uh,

were almost synchronic design, uh, in those days, if you pose the question of attraction versus promotion, the idea of attraction would be to sit on the front porch and wait for some drunks to come along asking for help.

Uh,

for example, a severe condemnation are the people in the Philadelphia group who had gone to Curtis Bach, the owner of the Saturday Post, and had asked him

would he be interested in taking a look at a Well, he did take a look and call Jack Alexander to be assigned to do the famous March 1941 peace.

Well, then of course

the arena was wide open

to all commercial standards and soon we began to get a aids who were rushing to microphones using the a name breaking anonymity, all for the go to the movement because even these broken anonymity situations brought in constant and so therefore they were doing good work. I remember too that they thought that very often they should be a dual purpose here. This would be very good.

I remember

one some somebody ran down South the public office on what he called the AA ticket. I believe he wanted to come, I guess people turning while he publicized that and his good intentions politically decide. And another fellow rushed to the microphone and announced that he was soon going to produce

a series of talks on A and the things would be sponsored by his employer, the golf insurance company,

et cetera. Now we had a great time finding out where

attraction left off and promotion began. Right then it began. It started to be evident that this attraction and promotion business represented 2 poles and taken at their extremes. The conservative rabbit on the attraction thing was so conservative

that is do nothing policy would rot us for lack of action under promoters have given their way would publicize us from hell to breakfast with all of the panels they have the media plus probably soundtracks too. In other words, the conservatives would write us and the promoters would ruin, so that the line between

attraction and promotion got to be a matter of common sense interpretation.

So this is finally settled

now. It was seen to that anonymity was the the prevention

of most bad publicity because the people didn't scramble in the microphone with these mixed motors and we didn't go too far in the way of promotion or too far in the way of doing nothing. Then we'd have a public relations policy that would include ever widening stream of people coming in today and getting well.

And now we come to Tradition 12 and this one comprehends all of the traditions up to now. You have been listening to a recital, perhaps all the long

of the perspective value of the traditions to our society. We have been talking very much in terms of simply avoiding calamity

by thanking prudent and unusual means and courses to do so.

So now the question is posed by the listener, is there no more

constructive or spiritual content

to our traditions than simply the sum of our fears and anxieties and our efforts to protect ourselves from untore evils and circumstances? Well, there certainly is. And all of these traditions

have in them the elements of sacrifice. Sacrifice either by groups or by a a members. As we look back here, the Commonwealth tradition, people used to say, well, the drunk is the important guy. What surely is

But how is he going to get well in any number if there is no fellowship? Therefore, the common welfare has to come first and our individual welfare segment,

uh, likewise we who have been prone to car driving after you to the idea that we may be instructed by the group conscience.

We have thrown aside all ambition

to be prominent

in the alcohol field as is shine. Our members go into these fields as individual citizens and there they should be. But the society says no, we will cleave to a single purpose.

We have sacrificed the opportunity of raising very large sums of money for this society and for this by adopting the tradition, declining outside contributions,

those of us who had special ambitions to be professional workers. I don't mean service workers in an office, I mean face to face therapy for pay.

These are legitimate ambitions,

but not good enough.

A professional class in a A might even lead to our destruction and certainly to our compromise. So professionalism now is out. Those of us who are power ridden would like to unconsciously perhaps, and sometimes consciously,

be more or less permanent governors of the destinies of IA.

But now we see that our strengths lies in letting go on our time. Come on. This I recognize in myself.

My time came some time ago, and our affairs have been under the management of our trustees almost without an appearance by me for these several years. And that's how it should be. But it represents a giving up the sacrifice of ambition, as many of which would be legitimate in the world around us

all in the interest not only of the survival, but in the effectiveness and the joyousness of the life that we find in it and cherish so much

in our public relations. We have run contrary to all

experience in modern world. In the modern world, everything is proceeding

upon

the merits or demerits are highly publicized figures. Everything was working in terms of friction and controversy. Everything is working in terms of haves and have nots of large sums of money being transferred one class to another. We do not decry these developments. We say that for our particular purpose there are perils,

and so we think that it would be frozen to leave them alone.

So there is a sacrificial quality that we do not conform to our traditions merely because we must avoid personal clarity.

We defer to these predictions because they seem light in principle, and because we actually want them for ourselves.

That while other courses might be good for us, this would be the best in our case. The good could be very often the actual enemy of the best.

Now then, I'd like to tell you a final anecdote,

uh, which is a bit self-serving. I've had a certain amount of reluctance to speak about it, but I would like to draw attention to the fact that Doctor Bob and I began to recognize in the late 1940s

that we had a special responsibility

to set an example

in the matter of the anonymity. The anonymity, the conformity with anonymity, was not merely a compliance with the injunction that we should not have our full names and pictures published throughout the world.

It was more than an avoidance

of our names being made public

that it would extend also to the acceptance of

special distinguishment and honors.

This came up

and this sort of conversation between Doctor Bob and I began.

Ordinarily the close of his life. He was fatally afflicted. This is well known. I was back and forth between here in Akron a great deal. He was, however, much up and around much of his time

and on this day we sat talking and he said, you know, I want to show you something, something that moved me very much and why

and something of course, which to me I wouldn't say so to the would be donors as a sort of the comical aspect.

And anyway, let me let me get you react. So he came and spread out on the floor

a blueprint which was a drawing of a medium sized mausoleum in which he and Anne could repose when they were over the hill.

And Doctor Bob looks at me and told about some of the people coming up and thinking that this sort of thing was needed because this occurred with other celebrated people and so forth. And of course he had declined. And he turned to me, and with that priceless grant of his, said Bill. I think you and I are to get buried like other folks.

Well, they started speaking. Did we have some further obligation to this tradition of anonymity?

And up to this point there had been little nibbles that being had some I had some lesser universe, this small one that offered degrees of various kinds. And well, we kind of turned those down as a matter of course. But then we began to think,

doesn't the tradition

extends to this public honor business?

Doesn't it expand

to the acceptance of no rewards, even customers

and then drive bomb

Don and he and were then buried like other folks. She had been for a time

and pretty soon I knew sad attempt Tyson began to develop with me.

Time magazine some years ago asked for a number of us to come over from the office, and I was included, of course. And they took us upstairs for a long, long lunch.

And these people were trying to figure over there and they listened to the another story

and they said, well, no, we've given you both spread treatment and we propose to keep it up. But now we would like Bill to have a biographical sketch

argue, and we would like to make this a color paper.

And let us tell you before you say no that if you make it a cover story,

if we make this a cover story,

it will enormously increase the impact of the Prince a dozen times maybe over what the same things without the cover

and that our circulation is something like 12 minutes.

Now we would like to do the story of a a hung on a biographical stitch of you and I thought about the anonymity. Oh no, we're quite aware of that. We'll agree to keep that. You just have your head turned away from the camera. You're you'd be hardly side view that balls might show a little, but we'll stay within the rules and regulations.

Well, I must confess, because Proposal was

a puzzler,

I can honestly say that I didn't feel especially a person attempted by the law of the flesh and blood, the biographical sound of myself.

They said it was didn't seem right that this that I should cooperate in such an effort As for the anonymity, as they keep that. But then I began to wonder what the effect would be on the future if I began giving sketches of this sort of myself to public media.

Even with my head turned I once said Apple was out of the way and gone West.

Wouldn't other people say well the old man off almost did it so I'll give him my biography and full face on computer. In other words, it would open the door. Exactly.