Tuesday   7:00 pm 12th Step Al-Anon Group

Triumphant Cross Lutheran Church                

26543 Murphy Mill      

Dothan, AL
Tuesday 8:00 pm Level Plains Al-Anon Group                    

Wiregrass Club              

Dale City Hwy 1, 1/2 mile off US 84                             

Level Plains, AL
Saturday 8:00 pm 1st Step Al-Anon Group 

Salvation Army  Church 

1001 S. Bell St.             

Dothan, AL

                   

In AA's First Five Years
And How Al-Anon Was Started

 
Lois Wilson

Lois Wilson, wife of AA's co-founder, Bill Wilson, recalls the time in AA when there were few members and no Big Book. From the January 1967 AA Grapevine.

 

In the early days of AA things were really different. For five years there was no Big Book. The only way to communicate with other people was to go and tell them, so that's what we did. Of course, all of the meetings were held in people's homes, the homes of those who were lucky enough to have them. Anybody who had one made it wide open to whomever the boys brought in. Our houses, Dr. Bob's in Akron and ours in Brooklyn, were just filled with drunks, either drinking, or stopped temporarily, or well on the way to real sobriety.

Yes, AA was quite different in those days for many reasons. One was that there were no people in AA except those who had gone to the very bottom. Only these would listen to the story that one drunk was telling another. When AA first started, before there was a book, it was more anonymous than it is now, because even the Fellowship was without a name. AA didn't have a name until the book was written. Before that it was just a bunch of drunks trying to help each other, a bunch of nameless drunks. They had to be worked with over and over; families and everybody did what they could to help.

There were many, many sad things that happened, many very humorous things, and inspirational things, too.

Several are coming to mind right now. Bill, as you know, came from Vermont and someone sent him some maple syrup from there. It came in a whiskey bottle. One of the boys saw this attractive container in the kitchen and he was so drunk at the time that he gulped the whole bottle of syrup, thinking it was whiskey.

We had a rule that no one could come into the house when he was drinking. One night one of the boys came home drunk. We wouldn't let him in so he pried open the coal chute and slid into the cellar. Since he was very fat it was surprising that he could slide down it, yet somehow he made it. But this same fat man did get stuck one night in the washtubs. He lived in the basement apartment. Old city houses used to have stationary tubs in the kitchen. He thought he'd try to take a bath in one. But after getting in he couldn't get out so one of us (and I think it was I) had to pull him out.

There were many other things...a man committed suicide in our house after having pawned our dress clothes, left over from more prosperous days. These included Bill's dress suit and my precious evening cape. We have never owned such articles again.

AA was always thrilling. The families were included in all of the meetings; wives and parents (there weren't many alcoholic women then), and the children came too. The children were vitally interested in everything that went on. They would inquire about all the members and want to know how they were. They'd learn the Twelve Steps and really try to live by them. I don't think youngsters can be too young to be thrilled by the AA program and be helped by it.

One of the first women who came in was the ex-wife of a friend of Bill's. She had been in Bellevue and had come from there to our house. At that time there was a wonderful man - I think he was the fourth or fifth AA - who was trying to start a group in Washington, D.C. This woman went down to help him and she stayed sober for quite a long time. Then she married a man they were trying to bring onto the program. He really didn't go along with the idea himself and used to say to her every once in a while, "Florence, you look so thirsty." And so she did something about that, Florence disappeared. Everybody looked for her everywhere and couldn't find her. After a couple of weeks they found her in the morgue.

At that time each group used to visit every other group. New York members would go to New Jersey or Greenwich, Philadelphia or Washington or even Cleveland or Akron. Those were the groups I recall were in existence in the first five years.

If anybody had a car a bunch of us would pile in and we'd go wherever we knew there was a meeting. Families were just as much a part of AA as the alcoholics and we did feel we belonged.

But after a while the AA's thought that they should have an occasional meeting - at least one every week - of just alcoholics so that they could really get down to business. When this occurred the wives thought they'd meet together, too, at the same time. At first these little gatherings of wives didn't have any particular purpose. Sometimes we'd play bridge and sometimes we'd gossip about our husbands.

Then a few of us began to see that we really needed the AA program just as much as the alcoholics. The famous case of my throwing a shoe at Bill started me wondering about myself and realizing that I needed to live by the Twelve Steps just as much as he did. He was getting way ahead of me. I always thought of myself as being the moral mentor in the house, but Bill, who never was a mentor, was certainly growing spiritually while I was standing still. Or perhaps there is no standing still - if I wasn't going ahead, I must be going backwards.

I decided I'd better live by the Twelve Steps. Annie S. and a number of other people had come to the same conclusion. So, whenever we visited another group, we would tell the wives and families how we found that we, too, needed to live by the Twelve Steps of AA. Little groups of wives and families all over the country began to feel the same need for something to help overcome their frustrations and help them become integrated human beings again.

That's the way Al-Anon started. We followed the AA program in every principle. I want to thank AA's so very much for showing us the way. Without your leading us we would still be the unhappy folks we were.

In our meetings we tell our own experiences just as AA's do. We tell how we came to find that we needed Al-Anon and what Al-Anon has done for us. And we seek to help other families that were, or are, having the same sort of experience.

In 1950 Bill traveled all over Canada and the United States to see how AA's would react to the idea of a general conference for Alcoholics Anonymous, and in doing so he discovered quite a few types of groups of the family of alcoholics. He thought that they should have a Central Office here in New York, just as AA did, so that they could be unified in their use of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions - a place where inquiries could be received, literature prepared and the public informed so that those in need would know where to turn.

A good friend and I started a small office in Bedford Hills. By then AA had had eighty-seven inquiries from wives or groups who wished to register. As AA was not equipped to handle the families of alcoholics it handed over this list to us and we wrote to them. Fifty groups responded and were registered with us. That was in '51. Today (1967) there are over 3,000 Al-Anon groups.

The numerical potential of Al-Anon is greater than AA's because it is composed not only of mates of alcoholics, but children, parents and other relatives and friends. It is estimated that five people are seriously affected by one alcoholic.

Though we have barely scratched the surface, the future is bright, thanks to you AA's for your wonderful example and inspiration.

 

Thank You, Lois, for without you and the Al-Anoners, many of us drunks would have never found the program. Thank God, that wives and husbands and children had a place to go to start seeking help!

Anne Ripley Smith
b. March 3, 1881, d. June 1, 1949
Co-Founder of Al-Anon Family Groups
Wife of Dr. Bob
"The Mother of A.A."

"Let me Tell You About Anne Smith"
  or "My First Meeting with Anne"

My husband [Clarence S.] was 34 and an alcoholic. Other people drank normally. My husband just got drunk.

I was eternally on the defensive. I couldn't read. I couldn't listen to good music. I couldn't enjoy anything.

I tried to appear busy. I tried to avoid crowds. Put us at a patty and either Joe [a fictitious name] would get drunk and pass out, which was preferable, or he'd start pawing the women, which was humiliating.

I felt as if I was 200 years old. All 200 years were weighing me down when a friend of ours--this was 12 years ago, and A.A. hadn't gained much reputation--persuaded Joe to attend a meeting of alcoholics in Akron.

To myself I said between gritted teeth "I'll be hanged if I want to associate with a bunch of drunks and their broken-down, haggard wives."

Then that first meeting.

I had lived on the surface for years. I could show a surface kindliness, but I was bitter and resentful inside.

The meeting was in somebody's home. I halted on the threshold that first evening, hesitant, fearful, not knowing what might be ahead. I doubted the whole occasion. This was Joe's affair. If it would bring about his sobriety, OK--but it was not for me. I felt I didn't need it.

Further, I rather enjoyed the hard shell I had built around myself. No one could hurt me any further. I had been shamed and ostracized and pitied. I was proof against further hurts.

And then this greeting. "Come in, my dear."

It was Anne Smith. As gracious, as friendly, as charming as any woman I had ever met or known.

If she had pitied me I would have fled in anger and disgrace. She was wise enough to know that. She understood. She knew that most wives of alcoholics feel fear. But you couldn't be afraid with Anne.

That love of Anne's changed things.

For me it was like the miracle coming to Paul on the road to Damascus.

That night when I reached home I got down on my knees and prayed. I wanted to be different. My parents had always been normally religious. I had never been anything other than religious. But this was different.

When anything of a memorial tribute is printed about Anne I hope it emphasizes this big point: She didn't want glorification for glory's sake. She would have hoped only to tell other wives how to carry on.

She knew how to handle the wife of an alcoholic. She knew the days and nights full of despair, the poverty-stricken effort to keep up appearances, the unsatisfactory blending of shabbiness and pride.

Time after time I saw her melt some other person's heart.

A proud woman, a hard-shelled woman walked in belligerently. She had her speech all prepared: "Well, Mrs. Smith," she began belligerently.

"Call me Anne, my dear."

That love cracked the proud one, won her over.

Anne was a good listener. She knew the therapy of getting things off your chest.

Things might have grown into an old story. But not with her. Every meeting with a newcomer was a fresh experience. She greeted strangers and listened for their names. Next time she'd be able to call them by name,

In those early days there were no women alcoholics in the group. They were just wives-- those who still had wives.

Bill W. emphasizes that in those early days--1935, 1936, 1937-- we few people were clinging together, like a little group of persons saved from a shipwreck.

In those early days most of us didn't have telephones. We were handed a little address book. We were told "All our homes are open to you. Drop in any time."

We did.

Many a time Joe and I dropped in on Dr. Bob and Anne for a potluck meal. We might have bread and milk for supper. We might have corned beef hash for Sunday. There were no apologies. Everybody was honest and genuine. We gave potluck dinners as we were all too poor to furnish much food, Those were the days when with many people at the table we might have 11 kinds of potato salad, because we were all too poor to buy wieners. Everyone brought food. I wonder if A.A.'s today appreciate how pitifully poor most of us were in those struggling days.

It makes me sick to attend some A.A. groups today I've visited A.A.'s from Ohio to California --and see the wives sitting together, in a clique. They don't step out and meet the new ones.

Anne never forgot the newcomers. She knew the wives need hospitalization as much as the man. The alcoholic gets lots of attention—the man's sponsor takes care of that. The other wives should look after the newcomer wife.

Nowadays when many A.A.'s are back on their feet again and are fairly prosperous I am struck with the fact that at Christmas parties many A.A. women are gayly dressed. But the poor ones, the new ones, still too deep in debt to be nicely dressed, and with nothing to be gay about, they hang around the edges, feeling cold and lonely and forgotten.

Anne Smith hated to wear a new dress. I remember one party we were all going to. I had my first new dress, the first bought since my husband had stayed sober long enough to hold down a decent job. I asked Anne which dress she was going to wear, because I knew she had two new ones.

She answered, "I hate to wear a new dress. So many people will be there who can't afford a new one. I hate to embarrass them."

It was a bigness of heart, this continual thinking of others besides herself, that enabled Anne to shape a formless group into what was presently to become A.A. in Akron.

I hope we never lose sight of Anne's use of religion in building her own life and rebuilding the lives of the fearful wrecks who looked to her for guidance and strength I hope we never forget her humility, her courage, her cheerfulness, her unsparing use of herself.

Anne made me realize that all my years of misery have been of some account, because I have been able to translate them into usefulness; into helpfulness for other people.

I have known women who, for instance, lost sons in the war, and ever since they live in the past, constantly bemoaning their loss and curdling every life they come in contact with. Why don't these lonesome and heartbroken women go and visit sick boys in the veterans' hospitals and try to bring a little cheer into the world?

Anne didn't harm other people because she had suffered. Rather, her life was rich because she was able to help people.

Anne never stopped living. She went on to reach out and touch other lives.

I think of her every time I hear that familiar but little understood verse: "He that loseth his life shall save it." Anne lost herself in her work for A.A. Thereby she gained a new and bigger life.

A Cleveland minister in writing about A.A. summed up in this sentence "Freedom is the ability to get outside yourself and lose yourself in the thought and activities of others." That's what Anne did.

-- Dorothy, Cleveland