The history of AA

Thank you very much and it can you all hear back then. I don't want you to miss anything.

Why is this

leading here? Today has been billed as a meeting of reminiscence. A lot of people have been wanting to know things about the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, how it started and some of the things that happened.

I might say over these years has been a good many changes in our fellowship. And I just I wrote Endeavour because the wind of some of these things and show you this what has happened over the years and what changes have taken place. Some of them are for the good and some of them are for the no good, but

with anything that has growth to it, you have to expect that.

Let me start off this way. I am rather a freak in this fellowship. Often mentioned this that I came to a fellowship that did not yet exist.

And that may sound low,

confusing, or what have you. But here's what happened

during my drinking experience. My family, my wife and all of her

brothers and sisters and mother and I have Kaboodle. They finally threw me out of my own arm for good,

and I wound up in New York City

and without a dime in my pocket and without any clothes, without anything, period.

And I only knew one person in New York City that was another sister of my wife.

And this guy lived out in Yonkers,

and I felt that Virginia would help me because I thought she owed me something. So I made my way out to Yonkers and I remembered where Virginia lives. I came around my honeymoon and she lived way up on top of a hill in Yonkers

and instead of getting up on that hill, I went down the hill and I got into the Italian section down there. And this was in Prohibition days. And all Italian families made wine and they were very searchable with their wine. Some of them sold it and some of them gave it away to their friends. I went down to this

neighborhood and I made friends

and by the time I got up to Virginia's house, I was quite a mess

and I can only remember few details of this visit. I was rolling around on a floor with her two little kids, their little babies, three or four years old little girls, and I was drunk and I was dirty and I smelled bad.

And Virginia said the grim view of this performance. And she put me in her car and drove me back down to New York, where her brother had thrown me out originally and left me there.

I say I tell the story for reasons. I don't know how long I spent in New York City with a long time.

But while this was going on, something happened. Later on, Virginia has a doctor over to her home, stayed by one of the kids, I guess, and they got to talking about drinking.

And Virginia related the story of my visit to her home

and what a nice guy I used to be and what a dirty, stinking, drunken bum I am now. And this doctor said, that's odd because I had that brother alive who was a lush and he was always getting drunk and in trouble. And

he has met some strange cult of people. And since he met these strange cults, he no longer drinks. And he runs around New York trying to fix drums. And he says there's another rummy. He's a doctor, a medical doctor on an Aston, Ohio,

and he belongs to this strange called also an Aston, Ohio. And that doctor spends all of his time fixing drunks.

And he says if your brother-in-law gets back to Cleveland, maybe he can go down, meet this doctor and maybe this doctor can fix him. We used to call it fix things

and we fixed them.

It was a lot different today. They talk about this being a program of attraction, which is the biggest bunch of hot air I have ever heard.

I always just want to ask you, who wants to be attracted to a bunch of drunks?

There was no traction there, and this was a terrific sales job. Well, what happened about this doctor and Akron? I eventually came back to Cleveland and I didn't get in a house, but Dorky told me about this doctor in Akron and asked me if I'd want to sit down and meet him, and I told her I'd be glad to. Nothing else I could do. I have no results to go

so she puts me in the back of her car and took me down to the bus depot

and she brought me a one way ticket to Akron and put me on the bus with Zach Smith's name and address in my report that I met my sponsor.

Eventually Doc put me in Akron City Hospital. This is long before they had Saint Thomas or any those other hospitals we used. We used to put his patients in Akron City Hospital and I was in the hospital for a week

and here are the things that happened to me in our hospital. I was scared of death.

I was sick. I had been drunk a long time. I was not a periodic. I was a chronic. There are two types of drugs. There's a not busy periodic and there's a chronic. Those periodic are the birds that give us a bad name.

But it's kind of like me, a chronic I'm drunk all the time. I'm dependable

and I've always had some resentment towards these periodic

they really screw things up. But we we got people know what they expect to last. Well, anyway, that's a little aside here.

I landed this hospital and what happened was after a couple days of shaking it out, I've been drunk for several years. I don't this wasn't any of this drunk and sober business over several years. I was drunk these several years, I got unemployable. I was sex, I weighed 130 lbs and I was broke. I didn't know where I'd be going when I left that hospital. Really.

Well, after I did that, a couple days, the men

who had preceded me and his fellowship in the which I was about to enter came in to visit me

and they told me the stories of their life, what had happened to them through booze.

None of our stores were very long at that time. Doctors sober, about a year and a half. I woke it up in New York, though. It's over. Probably a little longer than that. But the fellas in Akron, some of them were just a few weeks and a few months and a couple of them a year. But they were all older men than I was. All of them were considerably older. I was only 35 years old when I landed in that hospital

in February 1938.

And

these men will have 4556 years old and they've been through real terrific alcoholic experiences. And they told me about it and they, these fellas, they, they just hit me right. This fellas, I wanted to be belong to that, but I wanted to be one of them. They were real 24 carat rummies and

they told me that I they had they had the answer to my drinking problem after they told me their stories, but they never told me what this answer was and they told me is that they were leaving. They told me they had the hamster to my drinking problem on that note stage like their excess. After I dinner a week doc used to come in every afternoon this evening and talk to me and there are all the people in that bunch. If I was afraid of anybody. It was really dark. He had my number

after this man, and I had a great respect for him. But I he always frightened me. You frightened me the first time I ever met him because he I went down there to tell him all about my symptoms. You see, I'm a sick man. And instead of me telling him anything, he took the ball away from me, telling me all about myself. I couldn't figure this out at all. And

there's quite a story information of that. And the reason I did fear him. So is this some years ago in Cleveland, OH,

People here from Cleveland? I see a couple of men here now and they'll remember this incident. There was a incident going on in Cleveland. They called the torso murder mysteries. There was a there was a whole world jungle down in Kingsbury Run

a lot of these herbals. This is way back in prohibition times and people slept wherever they could either there was there was an awful depression on at that time

and a bunch of the Jugheads used to

live down there in Kingsbury, run down there in the weeds and they got the finding bodies down there. There were bodies found. Someone was at his body to all cut up and they're dismembered and they're wrapped in newspapers. There's a gruesome thing. To my knowledge the recollection there was at least seven bodies found and only one was over identified through fingerprints.

And the newspapers had more fun with this thing than they had with Watergate.

Every time they find a dismembered body down there, they had headlines. And they were referring to this killer as a Mad Butcher of Kingsbury run. And they were trying to figure out, they, they figured it was either a what you're doing this or a surgeon.

Because as they remarked in a paper, this fella had a fine technique and he knew something about anatomy. He knew how to cut things up. He did a masterful job. So he was a professional man of some kind. And they thought perhaps he was a surgeon going wacky and getting his jollies out of doing things like that.

So this thing was going on. And when I met my sponsor, Doc Smith, Doctor Bob, as people call him,

one of the things that he, after he told me all about myself,

I forgot this rubber got working. I got thing, holy smoke, this guy, something's wrong here somewhere. How does he know all that say? And then the crusher came when he made the remark that he wanted to put me out in a goonie roost out here in Cuyahoga Falls where nobody could get at me. And it came through to me that I have met the Mad Butcher.

He's been following me around and now he is ready to do his little thing

and that's really used business where nobody could get at me. Killed us because about that time I wanted everybody to get at me

and I waited my opportunity. I up and ran out of that man's office. He he had three different doors I had to go through to get out. I never stopped for any elevators. I went down those seven floors and gone. That is my first meeting of my sponsor. So you can see why I feared this man later on. I had to go back to see him. I had no other thing to do.

I was lying around these Jugheads one day and we got to talking about quitting drinking.

I think I instituted this conversation and I can still remember here's what drove me into this fellowship. You we come from all directions that chat last night talking about we all come to some extremity. We come to an end. I come to mind as proven by this one statement I should make. We were lying around there talking about quitting drinking in this final mouth, Irishman.

Everybody's drunk there. You want to remember There's no sober ones around. Some of her past out of there was something around

this Irish When he says to me you quit drinking, he said you'll never quit drinking. He said you don't have guts enough to quit drinking. He says, look at you.

I said I'm going to quit Britney. You don't have guts. And obviously you know that. Quit drinking takes determination. And he says to have determination, you need a chin. He said you got a chin like Andy Gump. You're no damn good.

Well, you know that man. Go to me to the extent that what a little bit of of left in me, but little spark I had left. I had to make the best good. I said I'm going to quit. I know a doctor actor can fix me.

He says nobody can fix you. You're no damn good. I said I'll show you. So you show me. And you know that I got ahold of someones telephone. I don't know whose phone because we didn't have those facilities where we were. And Scott told me. I called it numerous times. I only remember calling him once and he told me to meet him in the City Hospital the next day in Akron, OH the next morning and I was there

and he put me in the hospital. That's how I started

when I met these men

from the day that we left the hospital. The night we left the hospital, Doc took me to a reading, a meeting of the Oxford Movement in Akron, OH. I didn't know what it was that I knew. There was an awful lot of people there, and I saw these rummies there who would visit me in the hospital,

and I knew these people, these fellows with the rest of these people I didn't know. And there were a lot of ladies there, a lot of women, and they kind of scared me a bit. They I'm glad over the years I've gotten over that

making up for it,

but I didn't know what I saw, what I think to and I watched the format of these meetings and I I couldn't catch on what was going on much at all as the week went by. Why it finally got through to me that I belong to the Oxford Movement

and that's where I was born, is in the Oxford Group.

Doc Smith had been in the Oxford Group before he ever met Joe Wilson, but he never stayed sober. Joe Wilson was brought into the Oscar movement by Heavy Thatcher in New York at Calgary House

and that's what Bill Gates died. So Bill was meeting with Oxford Group people as well, and whatever Romney he picked up around the way they were attending Oxford Group in New York,

Then something else happened. I want to show you what happened to the development of this fellowship. Something had to happen,

I thought, You know that My sponsor told me I'd have to spend the rest of my life fixing drunks as an allocation, not a profession, an avocation. I suppose if I make my own living some way and fix drums along the way, and First things first, the drunk should be fixed first. I've always if I depended on God, I'd always find a way to eat

and this is so true. I didn't have any single offer an employer

and I had to eat. My wife let me come back home for a while and I was one of these unfortunate people

that the marriage didn't workout after I got sober for too long. I got back home and where I got busy paying her, chasing drugs all over the creation and spending all my time chasing them And

Dorothy. It all has been accustomed to being the the social secretary of the family, taking care of those matters. And everyone coming to the house used to be coming looking for her.

They weren't looking for me. And this situation changed and I start chasing all over, making contact where I could find rummies. These people were coming to the house looking for me and some of them were pretty important people

and she just couldn't take this. She couldn't get with it. And I don't blame her because after all I've been drunk so long she had to run everything.

So finally she said to me, this is worse than when you were drinking, we better try this apart again. So she packed my little suitcase and the way I went, I never did go back.

But that's just what happened. This happened to some people in this fellowship that married don't work out after you're sober.

But I suppose every case is different. That is mine anyway.

So I had to go out and send my for myself to find a place to live and something to do and I did. I lived in a cheap boarding house down on Euclid Ave.

I pay $20 a week room and board. In this boarding house I got two meals a day and 1:00 on Sunday so I had other. I had a few meals I had to buy on the outside and I had closed the buy and other things and on 20 bucks a week for whatever I had left. I used to squander on women.

It's for some deal,

but let me tell you that Boarding House has some stories to it. We talk about what happened there.

I was living there. There were probably a half a dozen other rummies living there, sober ones, and there's a lot of other people, about 35 people living there. We used to always eat together in the basement. We had a big table in the basement that was a kitchen in the dining room combined.

So we ate at certain hours there, certain hours for breakfast, at night, for supper. And if we were good and we didn't start any fires in the place or anything like that, it wrote a lot of the O'Reilly Slam, right? He would let us bring a guest to dinner. It would cost us $0.50 to do that. I tell you this for another reason. I invited a guest one night. I was going with a gal.

And I wanted her to come over sometime to this boarding house and meet somebody's inmates,

see where I living and how I was living and all about it. And

I paid my $0.50 to get her her meal, which is a big investment for me at the time. And there's been a call that came along there. Now let me tell you about this fella I want to tell you about some miracles happened.

The lad came into that grooming house one day. I happened to be there when he came in. He was all dressed up, handsome fella, wonderful looking chat. He didn't have a hair out of place in his head. He was wearing a heart shop in my suit and he looked good out like a sore throat in that bunch of of inmates where I was saying,

but he moved in there and why I still have to. You have to give me the answer to this one.

He was a salesman as a develop

and salesman don't come out and deliver a cheap boarding houses in cities. They stay in a downtown hotel where they can show their merchandise and call on the stores that they're working with. But he came into that place way out there, 87th and Euclid Ave., and walked into that boarding house where I was living at a half a dozen other colors

as I was. Rummies

had been up in Detroit at the Book Cadillac Hotel,

and he told he got talking to the assistant manager he had an alcoholic problem. And this persisted. Magic has said, you know, there's a bunch of guys down in Cleveland, OH,

have some way of fixing drunks, he says. You the down there, maybe they can do something for you

now. This father knew nothing about Cleveland, OH outside of the hotels downtown. And that

came to Cleveland. And instead of staying at one of the downtown hotel, he walked right smack dab into that boarding house where I live.

This fella's name, and you recognize this fellow, was Willis Kilgore.

Well, it's Kilgore is a guy that first rummy has ever started up for the Atlanta area.

I noticed all Willis when he moved in because I was too busy with rummies to pay attention to this bird. He was too handsome for me and

day or so later, two or three or four days, I noticed Willis hair is not combed. He still has the same shirt he had on when he moved in,

he hasn't shaved and he smells awfully bad. And it's the Don for about a week. And by this time he's a total disaster. He's a practically a practice case.

So I had invited this girlfriend of mine to suffer one night and I brought her in there and I introduced you to some of these birds and all of a sudden here comes this apparition and through the car

as well as and he is a bloody of mess you have ever seen. And where does he sit? He punks himself right across the table from my child friend who I'm trying to make time with it myself,

and boy, I hit the ceiling. See, I says, boy, oh boy, oh boy, I'll kill that guy, you know? And this couch is no fetch. You can't do anything like that. You got to fix him.

So this is a good way to say tarot resentment.

So I'm on the spot. So I take all this out of there, take him up to his room and I find out that he has two or three other card chapter March suits with him. He's all set for clothes. The clothes he has on it awfully, so he would, he has plenty clothes. He hasn't got a nickel left in his pocket. I tapped him out for money and nothing there, Nothing. So I found out he's from Atlanta

and his folks there were pretty well to do. They owned the lumber company and a toy factory. He used to

sell these little panels with a with a rubber ball out of, you know, with, with that that elastic on it. He was a marvelous because he was using that paddle,

so he was selling that thing and some of the other wooden toys and their mother answered the phone at home. He gave me the mother's phone number. She was glad to hear from him.

I know that somebody adding in tow apart the old Willis used to do this every once in a while. And so over the telephone I called her collect incidentally and out of this way I asked her to spend $50.00 and I put Willits in a dry off place

and getting sober. So she wired me the money and I put Willis in Post Shaker Sanitarium.

Now there is a miracle. How did that man ever? He had no knowledge of where I was. He didn't know me. He'd never heard of me or any of these stars. Some fell in a hotel up there, told there were some fellas in Cleveland that had a way of fixing drums, and he walked right smack dab into where I live. How do you, how do you answer that?

So you answer the same way, answer the way that I got into this fellowship.

Funny, Virginia had this doctor over. This doctor's name was Leonard Strong, and he happened to be Bill Wilkins, brother-in-law in New York. And the doctor he's talking about a Doc Smith on an actor. Here I am getting involved in the two main honchos of this deal

and I'm all I'm all innocent of the whole thing. Say our Wallace walks in down here and walks into my house. That's just one guy that's these miracles happen. Let me tell you some other miracles. Let me tell you something about this color that

Kenneth mentioned this X delegate and he is one time with the editor of our Grapevine, right, Right.

Let me tell you about him. I want, I want to talk to you about miracles of things that happened.

Hey, early in our experience in Cleveland, we got a lot of terrific good newspaper publicity.

1939 we got this publicity and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of inquiries came in

and I got all the inquiries in our publicity in the paper. We had a post office box in Cleveland. We had a we had to put in a telephone answering service and we had a post office rocks in New York and they all appeared in our publicity. Some of the encouraged to go to New York. They'd send them to me. All I want is a Cleveland Finder Jedi get all this is always left in the minister who preached the sermon about this that I got.

We had a limited number of people of men in a A at the time. I give each one a handful of them on Monday morning

and tell them to go out and call on these and report to me by Wednesday evening what they had done. Just like a sales manager does it. Give them prospects, send them out. And don't you know, all of these people did this and they didn't think there was anything wrong with this idea.

Today, people will call up some of these closet hell. Nobody's lost to you. They'll find out 4011 reasons why they shouldn't let it come down here, fall that fluid. As soon as that this is strictly a promotion, I want you to notice that this were not promoted. You wouldn't have an AA today. And I'll, I'll prove this to you. Another thing when they talk about cannonymity, they don't know what they're talking about either.

It's another thing that strikes me Somebody don't think they're trying to make a secret society out of this A, A

they don't even want to tell you their name. My God, these are our friends. The first thing I want to know. My friends are hard sometimes to tell

no. We never worried about this. Let me tell you what anonymity means to me. I've gotten a nor damn trouble with some of these birds about anonymity, and here's all it means to me.

What I want to do with my anonymity. That's my business. If I want to get out here on the public square and make a speech and tell everybody I'm a rummy, that's my business. Strictly. That's nobody else's.

That I have no right to go out and tell that Joe Blow belongs to a without Joe Blows, its permission. Now there's a lot of Joe Blows that don't care. They give me the permission if I need it. That's what anonymity means. Me. I'll protect yours,

but some people need that. Most of us don't. You know, people, there's been a, a

element of fear that has been brought into a A I told you there's something good to come in some things that stick. And we have an element of fear pervading a, a in a lot of places, people are and this thing of anonymity that is dismissed calls is a matter of fear. And we shouldn't fear anything. You and I shouldn't people say Jesus is that if they're probably not, I'll lose my job or I won't get a job if they know I'm an alcoholic.

Did it ever occur to you that if you want a good job, don't you think that company is going to check you out?

And don't you think they have plenty of ways of checking you out now, today, with all these computers and everything? I worked for an insurance company since I've been sober. I worked for them for 11 years and I was way over age to go to work for the insurance company when they hired me. And do you think that they didn't know that I'm a rummy? I told him I was If an insurance company knows more about you than your own mother does,

really, you can't kid those people. They've got cards on everyone.

You know when you had your last cold, I hit your mouth. I went through this, this

Department of Eyes and that lightly Brightford Church than I work for and they have all those computers and all this stuff and they have millions and millions of cars in there. Anybody who's ever applied for insurance of any kind or been in any kind of trouble of any kind, any kind of divorces, they've got records that I do. People don't realize what records is people have on us. And if they want to run a check, I do, it's for

for moral purposes. You're just kidding yourself, these Rod Fellows people. Or try to hide something from because you're not going to hide it from. They know. So I have never gone and I've gotten a job with anyone with that. I hadn't told them that I'm a rummy.

If they don't like that I don't need their damn job, 'cause I'm going to be busy sometime. I'm going to have to have some time off and they going to have to understand that.

Just for an example of Grace and I just came back from a three month trip around the country. What started this trip? I don't go out three months business trip. I go out three-week business trips, but three months. This is ridiculous. I had commitments to speak at a A groups around the country, so I had the company to schedule me in those areas.

Isn't that great? Go on and work your way around and have enjoy yourself and go to a A and the whole thing.

The company does it. They know I'm a rummy. They know all about it and they know why I wanted it. They know I'm here. They know they know where I'm at all the time. They don't. They're a big hospital, very, very progressive company. They're glad that I'm a rummy that's not drinking anymore.

I work for a steel company. One time, for several years in personnel work, I had to take care of all the birds that got drunk in that steel company. So they turn them over to me

when I went into the lodge and the order. Nobody in Cleveland ever if a fella had any Alcoholics experience or or black marks on them, they always called me no matter what large it was in the town and they get my opinion of the guy. How do you like that? How are you going to hide things like this for people? I just want people overcome fears of these things.

I realize that if a fellow that doctor or surgeon, you don't want everybody to know he's a rush because the general public has

still maintain some very odd feelings about rummies and they don't want any drunken Dr. cutting them up. So I can understand that. But most of it, it doesn't mean a thing.

Let's not say anything. We come down here and turn our world, our life over the care of God. We don't have to fear anything. How can we be full of fear? You and I are supposed to live our faith. Let me talk about some of these people.

How do they start?

This is something a lot of people don't know.

I told you I went to this Oxford group meeting in Acton, Ohio. I spent I went there 15 months

forgot me for 15 months

and in that length of time I was chasing around all over Cleveland and Cuyahoga County trying to get some drunk fixed. And believe me, there's no scarcity of them. But I couldn't sell the idea to any of them. Remember, there was nothing set up as those days. We had no book. There was no way it was nothing like that. I went around with these rummies were and I would

try to convince them they ought to quit drinking and be like me.

And they didn't want to be like me.

Unfortunately.

I talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rummies before I ever got my first one in the hospital. It took me 7 months, 7 long months

and the first fell I got was a Polish fellow. He had been an auditor for Sherwin-Williams Paint shop in Cleveland for 30 years and was fired for being drunk and lost his family and all this and he was on the bum and he was living. He was existing, I should say, with a bunch of other Jugheads in a, in an abandoned house over on Fleet Street in Cleveland, Fleet Ave.

Those depression days, people used to just move out of their houses and leave them and the rummies would move in. It's it's better to sleep in under bridges, you know,

they just take prodded rights. This is a desperate tire. And Bill Heads was lying there in one of those on the living room floor, one of those houses. That's where I found it. I have never seen a color in his type of condition before. He was drunk, paralyzed, drunk. He couldn't get off of that floor. But he knew everything that was going on. He could talk to me

and understand what I'm saying, but he couldn't move. He couldn't move a muscle. He was just black

like he was flew to that floor. He was a big man. I propped the builder by quitting drinking. I got right down on the floor with those, Carol.

And so with all parts for asking the foolish question whether he had any money so they could get ahold of 50 bucks. Of course not. But he had a mother

out in Madison, OH it, which is 50 miles east of Cleveland. And he said his mother, if I went out and met her, she could probably raise A50 to get him in the hospital.

I fathered an automobile and went out to Madison. OH,

I found that prime where this little old lady was living, and I went up through this long lane up to the home, and, boy, I got my next jode up there. His little old lady came to the door, and as I say, door was Polish, and his mother was very Polish. She knew nothing about English, and I knew true words of the Polish language. Josh Siobhan Garcia

So how much can you ask? Your mom does say in a place, you know,

so she got a little grandson about seven years old

as an interpreter of Judas Kiss. I told this old lady the idea is giving me 50 bucks so I could fix her boy. And she went back there and cut the lump out of the mattress and gave me these fifty big dollar bills and I was the happiest man in the world. I headed back to Cleveland. I called back and told him I was coming with a rummy. You know, I thought if I ever sponsored one guy, I'd really be, I'd really be a member. I'd never thought

so. I've done something like that. We're all out. Enthusiasm. That's why I talked to each other. Rubbish. Well, I went out, went back to Fleet Ave. and Bill still lying in the same damn place he was and I left that morning

and I got a couple of these other Jugheads to help me and put him in the back of the car. And the way we went for Akron and down to the hospital, that was my first baby.

I know now why it took me 7 long months to get that first running. Have you heard it read here In that and it's 5th chapter it says having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message

or other Alcoholics. I just didn't have a message after that time. Apparently I finally got the message that I could deliver because after that they start coming in quite fast. After that.

They start coming in right back after that,

as you know that there's a girl sitting right over here, her husband, she used to call, he used to call me his grandfather. And because I sponsored his sponsor, right? Oh, George McDermott, these people are all dead now, but

I start going after rummage with a vengeance. Then now that I scored, you know how a sales of that you feel blood, you taste that blood. And the first thing in all, we had a dozen rummies going down, a acronym from Cleveland,

and a strange thing about it. Eight of these fellows were calculated.

They had no Catholics in the Oxford Group. A Catholic could not belong to the Oxford Group.

It was a partisan deal and they they wouldn't keep the conference out, but the Catholic Church kept them out. They could not accept the premises and the things in the different powder all the Oxford Group went through.

So I told all these fellas that this would not interfere. This plan would not interfere with the religion if they had any.

But I'd like to them I didn't do this knowingly. That's all in ignorance. But they went down there that couldn't. They watch this performance

and they look at these leaders, what he's doing for us, the rest of people are doing and saying what's going on. And they look at each other, look at me, and I just get ecstatic all the way back to Cleveland. So we had to do something.

So I went down to talk to my sponsor. That's the only smart thing I knew to do. I told her what our situation was. She says, wow. He says, we're not keeping them out of the Oxford group, they're welcome. Says no, yeah, keeping them out, but their church keeps them out, which is this all the same thing? He says, well, that's that problem. I said no, that it's not their problem, it's our problem. So what do you mean it's our problem as well? I said, after all,

we have now written the book. The book was written up in the fall of 1938

and this was in May of 1939. That I'm doing all this stuff into my process. See, I'm sober 15 months. I know everything by now. I tell her, my sponsor, how to do it.

Well, anyway, I haven't have been correct on that at that time anyway, once I didn't make the mistake, all right. Anyway, Doctor, you can't do that. I says why not? He says, well we owe our lives to these people weak due to the Oxford Group. We can't split out of here and bust this thing up because we'll have to do it

because you can't do it as all we can

at that time.

Al Gore, Rich funeral, he was in the hospital.

I'd worked all with her now, and I never could get that guy to get down. After that hospital, I go pulling a lot of salons and take him home and all this kind of stuff.

Bell Ripson came over to visit me one time and I was just leaving to go out to see how last night I said the bill, come with me, we'll talk on the way. I got to see this guy tonight. He's about ready to crumble. We used to work out of money, overpower him, really any way we could get him

the building, want to go over, He did. He's finding her OK. So he went out with a good thing, he cared. So Bill said something, this guy to push him over and he agreed to go to the hospital. And I say so I didn't even drive him. Bill and Farty took him down to the hospital the next day and he was down.

He was in the hospital and all this is going on with between Doc and myself,

Power or not. At the same time, Roddy Humphrey, the ballplayer, was there. So I went out to see Grace for his wife

about using their house for meeting place. They had a big home up on the height. Beautiful home, plenty of room.

I was losing the heart at the time, but he still had it. And he couldn't kick out his law firm at the time, but he was still. And I talked to Grace about having meetings and she'd be lighter, the idea of having a meeting in her home.

So went down to Akron the next week and made the announcement. That's the last time that Cleveland contingent will be down here. This group, we're starting our own group in Cleveland, OH. And I listen to this, and this is not going to be known as an Oxford group. This is going to be known as Alcoholics Anonymous. We're taking the name from the books

and only Alcoholics and their families are welcome. Bingo. Well, you know what happened? The roof came off the house,

right? You can't do this. It's been done. You and Madonna talk about it. Nothing to talk about. It's done. There was an awful riot going on. I always say hey was born in a riot and it grows in riot. We never grow peacefully. There are the riots and it started way back there in 1939,

so I thought we had a problem and a riot and actor not at night. I wish you to see next Thursday night up in on on

Cleveland ice. I had made the mistake of telling these people the address. I thought it was going to be a 2345 Stillman Rd. Cleveland Heights. And that, you know, that whole caboodle, that whole lot you want to go along with this year. We didn't have your nano's opinion on this at all. They came up and tried to break up our new way. And I tell you this with some rowdy doll. One guy was going to whip me, Dave. Now I say this is all done in good Christian love,